Estonian hacker gets seven years for epic credit card theft

A member of hacking ring that embarked on a daring cyber crime spree from 2005 to 2008 has been sentenced to seven years in prison.

Aleksandr Suvorov, 28, of Estonia admitted in May 2009 that he had helped infiltrate computer networks run by the US Dave & Buster's restaurant chain, from which hackers stole roughly 80,000 credit and debit card numbers at 11 locations.

He pleaded guilty to charges of wire fraud conspiracy, and in 2011, he also acknowledged in court that he sold an undercover US Secret Service agent 160,000 stolen card numbers.

The two cases were consolidated. He was sentenced in a New York federal court.

Prosecutors said Suvorov and two co-conspirators, Albert Gonzalez and Maksym Yastremskiy, masterminded the Dave & Buster's plot.

The break-in was part of a global operation that used "sniffer" software to steal tens of millions of credit and debit cards from a slew of other retailers, including Hannaford Bros. grocery chain, Heartland Payment Systems, the TJX retail chain, BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, 7-Eleven, JCPenney, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority and Forever 21.

The ringleader, Gonzalez, was sentenced in 2010 to 20 years in prison. A year earlier, a Turkish judge ordered Yastremskiy, a Ukrainian, to spend 30 years behind bars.

This article originally appeared at scmagazineus.com