11 Charged in Nation's Largest Credit Card Fraud and Identity Theft Case

11 people were charged with stealing over 41 million credit and debit card numbers. This case is the largest identity theft case ever brought by the Department of Justice. It involves people from Estonia, Ukraine, Belarus and China who apparently hacked into retailer's computer networks including Office Max, Barnes and Noble, Boston Market and others. The theives used a technique known as "wardriving" in which they drove around looking for accessible wireless Internet signals. Once they found a signal they installed "sniffer programs" that captured credit and debit card information that passed through the retailer's processing networks. They stored the information on two servers in Latvia. The ringleader was working as an United States Secret Service informant at the time of the thefts.

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