FBI and the Romanian Police took in custody over 100 Romanians involved in IT fraud over the past 18 months, FBI director, Robert Mueller, told a press conference held in San Francisco on Friday. Also, Mueller nominated Romania as one of US federal police’s best partners.
“Four years ago, several American companies threatened to suspend IT connections with Romania because of piracy operations originated in that country. Today, Romania is one of our most powerful partners,” Mueller said at the RSA Cyber Security conference, according to a transcript published on the FBI site. He recalled that the FBI has over 60 bureaus around the world, but also special agents closely working with police forces in Romania, Estonia or the Netherlands.
Last May, 20 Romanians were charged with identity theft and card cloning felonies in the United States. Suspects belonged to an international network and were tracked down with the help of the Romanian officers.
In April 2008, another famous hacker was arrested; Vladut, as he was known on the Internet, caused damages to an eBay online auction site by USD two M. In 1999, several Romanian hackers joined a similar Russian organization in an approach called “Cyber-war” and in only two months managed to hack in 21 governmental servers, US Finance Department, Financial Services, Army and Naval Air Stations included.
At the end of February, Romanian police announced that a significant percentage of the number of citizens or financial institutions from abroad targeted by offenders specialized in IT crime are represented by US citizens and institutions. Thus, the Division for organized crime combat initiated an operative task-force together with the FBI, while joint cases were initiated together with foreign police structures for investigation of these criminal groups.
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