Romanians Behind Cyber-Fraud Ring Plead Guilty in US
Fifteen defendants including several Romanians have pleaded
guilty before a US judge of involvement in a multi-million dollar scheme to
defraud US citizens through online auctions of non-existing goods, a US Justice
Department statement issued on Monday by the US embassy in Bucharest said.
The defendants, many of whom were extradited from Romania in
2019, are yet to be sentenced in the US. Most of them operated from the city of
Alexandria in Teleorman Country near the border with Bulgaria, in the south of
Romania, court documents show.
The syndicate was active from 2013 and most of its members
were arrested in 2018 in Romania.
They typically made money posting ads of cars that didn’t
exist and convincing American victims to “send money for the advertised goods
by crafting persuasive narratives, for example, by impersonating a military
member who needed to sell the advertised item before deployment,” the statement
read. To carry out the fraud, they created fictitious online accounts, often
using stolen identities of US citizens.
They also delivered fake invoices issued in the name of
reputable companies to make the transactions look legitimate, and went as far
as setting up call centres operated by ring members who impersonated customer
support agents to assure victims of the authenticity of the ads.
The latest to plead guilty did so last week before a court
in Kentucky.
One suspect, Bogdan-Stefan Popescu, 30, who operated a
carwash in Bucharest at the time of the events, admitted to managing the ring’s
activities by distributing “the language and photographs for fake
advertisements as well as usernames and passwords for IP address anonymizing
services” used to defraud its victims in the US.
Popescu said he connected members of the syndicate with
those “who would impersonate eBay customer service representatives over the
phone”. Starting from 2013, he also oversaw Bitcoin transactions with the money
obtained from the frauds, the plea documents show.
Another who last week pleaded guilty was Liviu-Sorin
Nedelcu, 34, who posted fake vehicle ads online using fictitious entities to
sell vehicles. “Once Nedelcu and his co-conspirators convinced victims to
purchase falsely advertised goods, they sent the victims invoices for payment
that appeared to be from legitimate sellers, such as eBay Motors,” the US
statement read. Nedelcu and his co-defendants “engaged in a sophisticated money
laundering scheme to convert the victim payment into Bitcoin”.
Weeks before, on May 19, Vlad-Calin Nistor, 33, also pleaded
guilty. He confessed to being the founder of a Bitcoin exchange company based
in Romania and to having “exchanged over $1.8 million worth of Bitcoin for
co-defendant Bogdan Popescu.” Another member of the ring, Beniamin-Filip
Ologeanu, 30, also from Romania, worked with others to post advertisements in
auction websites such as eBay and classifieds online service Craiglist and
conspired with the gang US-based associates to launder the proceeds.
Comments
Post a Comment