The United States Secret Service and the Internal Revenue Service identified James Kong as the primary suspect in an investigation of fraudulent transactions through a consumer credit card service for health consumers.

The investigation determined that Kong used his knowledge of the targeted company’s customer service support centre’s computer systems to steal the account numbers of 1,000 customers and 95 participating service providers. Kong made fictitious and unauthorised charges to customer accounts and posed as health service providers to redirect payments into bank accounts in Asia. On December 3, 2008, a 76 count federal indictment and arrest warrant was issued for Kong for bank, wire, access device, computer frauds, identity theft and money laundering by the Grand Jury of the District Court of Ohio.

Similarly, Dzmitry Valeryevich Burak is the subject of charges in the federal district of the Southern District of California and also the State of New York.

In California, Burak and others who were involved in an international criminal group used the Internet to traffic in stolen and counterfeit credit cards. An investigation of Burak’s e-mail accounts uncovered more than 55,000 stolen credit card account numbers, which were associated with more than $21 million in actual losses.

In New York, Burak sold thousands of stolen credit card numbers and other personal identifying information online. During a five-year period, Burak accessed or sold more than 9,000 stolen credit card numbers, more than $4 million worth of stolen property and defrauded credit card companies for more than $1 million.