The federal government was able to extradite one of heads of an international syndicate that was able to hack into RBS WorldPay and steal funds amounting to over $9M in the span of 12 hours.

The 26 year old Sergei Tsurikov from Estonia was arrested in Russia last March and was brought to the federal court in Atlanta, US where he and 7 of his accomplices were charged with aggravated identity theft, conspiracy, computer fraud and wire fraud.

Although pleading not guilty to the charges, the group was suspected to have infiltrated RBS WorldPay which was based in Atlanta for the Royal Bank of Scotland. They were purportedly able to find and exploit the vulnerability in the company’s network, collected the payment card data it was being processed, and aided in the withdrawal of the banks money using cloned payment cards.

In just 12 hours, 44 payment cards were cloned and used in more than 2,000 ATM machines in almost 300 cities. A total of more than $9 million were stolen. The syndicate used a large number of “cashers” located in the US, Italy, Ukraine and other cities. Their assistance was remunerated with 30-50% of whatever they were able to take while the rest sent to the ring leaders.

Tsurikov and his accomplice supposedly monitored all the transactions while they were taking place using the computer system they were able to infiltrate.

Tsurikov and his accomplices were charged with a 16-count indictment. These charges include conspiracy to commit computer fraud, multiple counts of computer fraud, and aggravated identity theft which if the penalties were added up and if the group were found guilty, they would be faced with prison for the remainder of their lives, and fines of up to $3.5M dollars on top of the $9M stolen during the heist. Quite a big bill considering they allegedly was only able to get about 50% percent of what was stolen.

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