Friday, March 28, 2008

Security Fix: The Curious Case of Dmitry Golubov

Dmitry Ivanovich Golubov


Brian Krebs writes on Security Fix:

Earlier this month, Security Fix took a look at Dmitry Ivanovich Golubov, a Ukrainian politician once considered by U.S. law enforcement to be a top cybercrime boss.

Golubov took rather strong exception to the way he was characterized in that post, denying involvement in any type of cybercrime activity. The problem, Golubov claimed, is that the FBI confused him with someone else.

According to Golubov, he was the victim of identity theft. Someone gained access to his passport, scanned it and posted it online along with a note confessing his involvement in a multinational credit card theft ring.

[Former FBI Agent E.J. Hilbert, who worked closely on the Golubov investigation] ...Hilbert says he's speechless at the vehement denials.



More here.

Image source: Wired.com / U.S. Postal Inspection Service

posted by Fergie @ 3/28/2008 12:28:00 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Cyber Criminal Leads Ukranian Political Party


Graham Cluley writes:

Meet Dmitry Golubov, leader of the Internet Party of the Ukraine (IPU).

The party held its first official congress on March 1st (you can see some photographs of the event here), where Golubov no doubt reaffirmed his party's platform of rooting out public corruption, returning nuclear weapons to the Ukraine and "electronic government against bureaucracy".

What Golubov may not have talked about in his address to a packed conference room was that in July 2005 he was arrested in Odessa, and accused of being "Script", the mysterious hacker who ran the CarderPlanet website that became a mecca for cybercriminals interested in trading information about how to make money from stolen credit card numbers and identities.

Millions of dollars are said to have been lost by American financial institutions because of CarderPlanet.com, and Golubov was eventually jailed for his involvement.

Curiously, the tale didn't end there however. In December 2005 two Ukranian politicians managed to convince a judge to release Golubov from prison claiming there was insufficient evidence of his guilt. Golubov has strongly denied his guilt, claiming that he was himself the victim of "identity theft" that framed him.

More here.

Image source: Graham Cluley's Blog

posted by Fergie @ 3/04/2009 10:24:00 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Tracking the Russian Scammers

Kim Zetter writes on Wired News:

Dmitry Ivanovich Golubov, a 22-year-old Ukrainian who went by the nickname "Script," was considered one of the godfathers of Eastern European carding rings. As one of the leaders of CarderPlanet, authorities say Golubov facilitated the theft and international trading of millions of credit and debit card numbers that resulted in multimillion-dollar losses to banks and merchants over several years.

So when Ukrainian police finally nabbed Golubov in the summer of 2005 it was a coup, representing the culmination of dogged investigative work by U.S. Postal Inspector Greg Crabb and other law enforcement officials in the United States.

"Golubov was such a high-profile target," Crabb told Wired News. "The Secret Service, FBI and myself were working Golubov in different districts over the United States trying to get some inroads into where he was coming from."

But achieving the arrest wasn't easy. While U.S. authorities collared numerous small-time crooks in the United States who used the stolen card numbers that Golubov's ring distributed, efforts to nab Golubov himself proved futile for three years, due to indifference from Ukrainian authorities.

More here.

posted by Fergie @ 1/31/2007 11:15:00 AM 0 comments