Hacker Gets 4 Years for Shopping with Stolen Customer Credit Cards

A Virginia man will spend the next four years behind bars after hacking into a hospitality company and stealing customer credit card numbers then using them to do some personal shopping.

38-year-old Chirag Patel of Norfolk, Virginia, was sentenced to 51 months in prison, plus three years of supervised release, after being found guilty of Computer Fraud.

According to a press release from the US Department of Justice, between August 2017 and July 2020, Patel systematically hacked into the Phoenix-based computers of an international hospitality company to fraudulently transfer and redeem customer reward points from the company’s customer loyalty program. At the same time he stole credit card numbers and other personally identifying information (PII) from customers and loyalty program members.

“Patel took screenshots of customers’ and members’ information, which included credit card numbers and other PII, and saved the screenshots to a Google Drive he controlled,” reads the announcement.

In the multi-year hacking spree, Patel stole and possessed numbers of more than 1,200 credit cards, including some he used for personal shopping and others he offered for sale.

Patel pleaded guilty to all charges and will spend the next four years in prison. He was also ordered to pay $87,522.25 in restitution to his victims.

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