Source: Queens District Attorney's Office
Complete item: http://www.queensda.org/newpressreleases/2009/may/operation%20plastic%20pipeline_05_2009_ind.pdf
Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, joined by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, today announced that an international forged credit card and identity theft ring based in the New York metropolitan area and with roots in Nigeria has been successfully dismantled following the indictment this week of forty-five individuals.
The ring - which was comprised of three separate identity theft and forged credit card groups that employed multiple cells - is alleged to have been responsible for stealing the credit cards and personal credit information of thousands of American and Canadian consumers, costing these individuals, as well as financial institutions and retail businesses, more than $12 million in losses over the past year alone.
District Attorney Brown said, "Our investigation reveals that - in terms of just the sheer number of people indicted - this is one of the largest identity theft networks uncovered in recent history and is just possibly the tip of a much larger global credit card trafficking operation.
Besides draining the bank accounts of individuals throughout North America, we believe that the defendants - some of whom live in California, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Toronto - also shipped stolen or fraudulently obtained credit cards to buyers around the world and that purchases were made in such far-off places as Japan, Saudi Arabia and Dubai. Particularly disturbing is that we have no way of knowing if any of these accounts have fallen into the hands of terrorists and are being used to finance their terrorist activities or to undermine the efforts of homeland security and other law enforcement officials intent on keeping our borders and citizens safe.
Such a serious threat to public safety cannot go unchallenged. We will continue to work closely with our law enforcement colleagues to stamp out such fraud and help to maintain our nation's safety and security."
