Two Russian men have pleaded guilty to involvement in what authorities called the largest computer hacking scheme ever prosecuted in the United States, compromising more than 160 million credit card numbers and causing more than $300 million of losses.
On Wednesday, Dmitriy Smilianets, 32, pleaded guilty in federal court in Camden, New Jersey, to conspiring to commit wire fraud, three years after his arrest in what authorities say was the largest computer hacking scheme ever prosecuted in the United States.
Smilianets, a Moscow resident, made his plea a day after another Russian, Vladimir Drinkman, 34, pleaded guilty in the case to conspiring to illegally access computers and conspiring to commit wire fraud.
Both men were arrested while travelling in the Netherlands on 28 June. Three others charged remain at large, authorities said.
Prosecutors said that as far back as 2003, the men worked to install "sniffers" designed to comb through and steal data from computer networks of financial companies, payment processors and retailers.
Prosecutors said the defendants then used an array of computers to store and ultimately sell data they collected.
They said Smilianets was in charge of sales, selling data to trusted identity theft wholesalers, selling credit card numbers for $10 to $50 a piece depending on country of origin.
Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Nate Raymond. Editing by Tom Brown
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