Romanian hacker extradited to Texas on charge of stealing credit card numbers

A foreign hacker will face a jury in Texas after he was extradited March 3 from Bucharest, Romania, after he sold millions of credit card numbers he got using malware, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Sorin Becheru, 35, was arrested by Romanian authorities Jan. 1 and flown to Texas by the FBI to face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with access devices., according to a news release from the Justice Department. The extradition was done under a bilateral extradition treaty between the U.S. and Romania.

The Justice Department accuses Becheru of using malware that stole credit card numbers from point-of-sale devices with servers located in the U.S. At one point, he had information for more than 240,000 credit cards “belonging to victims located in the (Justice Department’s) Northern District of Texas and elsewhere.”

“Malware is an increasingly insidious threat to U.S. companies and consumers. With just a few keystrokes, sophisticated hackers can compromise millions of accounts,” U.S. Attorney Chad Meacham said in the news release. “The Justice Department will not hesitate to pursue cyber criminals, including those who operate abroad. In the meantime, we encourage Americans to take steps to guard their personally identifiable information online.”

The investigation into the stolen credit card numbers, conducted by the FBI, Secret Service, Romanian National Police and Romanian Ministry of Justice’s Directorate for Investigation of Infractions of Organized Crime and Terrorism, found that Becheru used aliases online to sell the credit card numbers.

Becheru made his first appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Rebecca Rutherford on March 4. If convicted, Becheru faces up to five years in a U.S. federal prison.