$200 Million Cybercrime Forum Disabled; 11 People Arrested

Vietnamese and UK police arrested 11 people and disabled a cybercrime forum that facilitated more than $200 million worth of credit card fraud, according to a press release by the Serious Organized Crime Agency.

The forum Mattfeuter.ru had about 16,000 members and sold more than a million credit card numbers that were leaked after hacking and fraud. Three of the people arrested in the UK were “significant” users of the illegal forum. Police also caught 23 year-old Duy Hai Truong, a suspected ring leader from Vietnam.

“One of the world’s major facilitation networks for online card fraud has been dismantled by this operation, and those engaged in this type of crime should know that that they are neither anonymous, nor beyond the reach of law enforcement agencies,” said Andy Archibald, interim deputy director of SOCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit.

Mattfeuter members gained access to the website through a secure login, then specified the quantity and type of credit card data they wanted. Users were also able to check if the information they were buying was usable, and had discounts for bulk purchases.

The operation was led by the Vietnamese High-Tech Crime Unit, the Criminal Investigation Division of the Ministry of Public Security of Vietnam, SOCA, the UK’s Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit, and the FBI. According to Police, other arrests may soon follow.