Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Albanian Hacker Pleads Guilty in $14 Million Global Bank Fraud

NEW YORK – An Albanian hacker who was part of an international cyberattack conspiracy that stole $14 million from ATM machines all over the world pleaded guilty Friday in New York to bank fraud.

NEW YORK – An Albanian hacker who was part of an international cyberattack conspiracy that stole $14 million from ATM machines all over the world pleaded guilty Friday in New York to bank fraud.

Qendrim Dobruna, 27, was arrested in Germany and extradited to face justice for hacking into a US-based system used to process bank card payments for disaster relief to the American Red Cross.

The offense to which he pleaded guilty carries a maximum 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine. He will be sentenced October 24.

More than 15,000 ATM transactions in 18 countries using the compromised prepaid card data resulted in $14 million in financial losses worldwide, US prosecutors said.

After penetrating the system, the defendant and his associates “helped themselves to funds using prepaid debit cards meant for the needy and vulnerable,” said Brooklyn prosecutor Loretta Lynch.

They hacked into American Red Cross prepaid card accounts, manipulated the balances and withdrawal limits, allowing associates across the world to take out almost limitless amounts of stolen cash from bank machines.

Dobruna was arrested in Stuttgart, Germany in March 2012 by German police then extradited to the United States.

Written By

AFP 2023

Click to comment

Trending

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

As it evolves, web3 will contain and increase all the security issues of web2 – and perhaps add a few more.

Cybercrime

Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group informed some customers last week that their online accounts had been breached by hackers.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft calls attention to a series of zero-day remote code execution attacks hitting its Office productivity suite.

Artificial Intelligence

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.