Officials: Credit Card Data Thief 'BadB' Arrested in France

(Aug. 11) -- A resident of Moscow, "BadB" lived the glamorous life, hopping jets to Europe, freely spending money -- even as U.S. authorities marked him as one of the world's "most prolific sellers" of stolen credit card data.

French authorities arrested Vladislav Anatolievich Horohorin, 27, at the airport in Nice this weekend. Federal law enforcement authorities said he had apparently been living it up on the French Riviera. At the time of the arrest, they said, he was carrying some casino-issued cards that give high rollers additional privileges.

The arrest was trumpeted today as a big catch for authorities working to crack down on the ever-growing and menacing problem of credit card data and identity theft, though officials provided no financial estimates on the losses involved.

Authorities said Horohorin, who called himself BadB online, was one of the founders of the sophisticated CarderPlanet. Established in 2002, the site sold credit card information from cardholders around the world on the Internet for anywhere from a few dollars to several hundred dollars. The U.S. Secret Service, as part of "Operation Firewall," shut down that site and others in 2004, but Horohorin continued to operate using sites such as "carder.su" and "badb.biz, investigators said.

"The network created by the founders of CarderPlanet, including Vladislav Horohorin, remains one of the most sophisticated organizations of online financial criminals in the world," Michael Merritt, assistant director for investigations at the Secret Service, said in a statement. "This network has been repeatedly linked to nearly every major intrusion of financial information reported to the international law enforcement community."

Horohorin was relishing the good life, authorities said. A citizen of Israel and Ukraine, he kept an apartment in Moscow and was building a home in Israel -- all the while jet-setting around Europe, they said.

But while he was enjoying himself, the Secret Service kept running across his name during investigations into stolen credit card data, officials said. According to an indictment unsealed today in U.S. District Court in Washington, Horohorin boasted on the Internet of being one of the biggest vendors of "dumps" -- an industry term referring to stolen credit card data.

On May 15, 2009, a Secret Service agent using a computer in Washington contacted BadB about purchasing data, according to the indictment. Using a Western Union in Arlington, Va., Secret Service agents sent $1,250 that was put into an account.

Four days later, undercover Secret Service agents spent $1,160 from the account to buy 58 credit card "dumps." "Several of the purchased dumps were subsequently verified by Visa to be authentic devices," the indictment said.

In July 2009, Secret Service agents saw that BadB was selling "dumps" from a variety of banks around the world, the indictment said. But this time, while communicating via the Internet, BadB said he was no longer accepting funds through Western Union and purchases had to be made through "WebMoney," an online electronic payment system based in Moscow.

Agents then sent $1,246. A week later, agents bought 13 "credit card dumps," the indictment said.

In November 2009, a federal grand jury in Washington indicted Horohorin on charges of access device fraud and aggravated identity theft. But the indictment remained under seal while authorities tried to hunt him down.

"These criminals are mistaken to think that they can escape detection by committing their crimes behind a computer screen in a foreign country," U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. said in a statement.