A California man who helped funnel stolen cash to a global network of hackers and carders was sentenced Thursday to 6 years in prison for conspiracy to launder money.
Cesar Carranza, 38, also known as “uBuyWeRush,” ran a legitimate business selling liquidation and overstock merchandise online and from three California stores.
But, according to an indictment (.pdf), he also sold MSR-206’s to carders to encode stolen bank card data onto blank cards, and he served as a conduit to transmit stolen money between mules and carders.
He worked with many of the top carders in the criminal underground between 2003 and 2006, including Maksim “Maksik” Yastremskiy, a Ukrainian carder who allegedly worked with TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez and was considered by authorities to be one of the top sellers of stolen card data on the internet.
In 2003 and 2004, Carranza became an approved and trusted vendor on online criminal forums such as CarderPlanet and Shadowcrew, advertising his goods and services and dispensing advice on the best tools to use for various criminal endeavors.
According to court records, he admitted in messages he posted to the forums that he himself had done carding between 1990 and 1998, but retired to become a vendor for other carders.
“I decided to supply all you guys making the real big bucks,” he allegedly wrote. “So if you need me I sell Card Printers, Card Embossers, Tippers, Encoders, Small Readers and more.”
He was first arrested in California in 2004, but was never charged with a crime. Although he was selling MSR-206s through eBay at the time, selling the devices is not illegal. Carranza told Threat Level, however, that police accused him of selling his merchandise to terrorists.
He subsequently sold off his MSR business. But, according to court records, his services as a money launderer for carders continued to flourish, even though it was clear that law enforcement agencies were closely watching him.
Hackers in East Europe and elsewhere would steal credit and debit card numbers and PINs through phishing and other means, then pass the data to so-called mules in the U.S., who would encode the numbers onto the magnetic stripe of blank cards, then use the cards to withdraw money from the accounts at ATMs. They would then send the money back to their co-conspirators in East Europe through Western Union or through e-Gold, an online digital currency.
Authorities say Carranza helped launder about $2.5 million in this way by operating as an e-Gold money exchanger. The mules would give him cash or deposit money into his bank account, and he would either transfer the money to the bank account of another e-Gold exchanger who would convert it to e-Gold for a carder, or he would change the money himself into e-Gold currency through his own e-Gold account, then transfer it to the e-Gold account of carders in East Europe and elsewhere. They would then use a local e-Gold money exchanger to convert the digital fund into their local currency.
One such mule who transmitted stolen money in this way described to Threat Level in 2006 how he obtained hundreds of stolen card numbers from Romanian phishers and Russian hackers that he met online. The man, who used the nickname “John Dillinger,” withdrew more than $150,000 from ATM machines before transferring the money back to East Europe through Western Union and through an e-Gold money exchanger in California.
In addition to laundering stolen funds, authorities say Carranza was a middleman for carders to purchase “dumps” (account and other data stored on a bank card’s magnetic stripe) from one another.
Around January 4, 2006, according to authorities, Carranza transferred about $15,000 worth of e-Gold to the e-Gold account of a carder who went by the nickname “CC-2″ — a known specialist in hacking financial databases and siphoning card data to sell to other criminals. Carranza indicated in a note to the transaction that he was retaining a 6-percent commission for the service. He transferred another $45,000 worth of e-Gold to CC-2’s account over the next two months. In March and April 2006, authorities say he also transferred $33,000 to Maksim Yastremskiy. The latter was arrested in Turkey in 2007 and sentenced to 30 years in prison there and is still wanted in the U.S. for his alleged role in the TJX carding ring.
Between 2003 and 2007, authorities say that more than $2 million went into and out of Carranza’s e-Gold account.
In 2006, e-Gold, under investigation for facilitating money laundering between carders, froze two of Carranza’s e-Gold accounts, which contained about $19,000 at the time. Carranza told Threat Level then that he was considering legal action against e-Gold to release his funds. “I no longer trust the e-gold integrity,” he said. He didn’t follow through on the threat.
He was indicted in 2008 on charges of conspiring to commit access device fraud and money laundering. He pleaded guilty last December to one count of conspiring to launder stolen money.
See also:
- Ukrainian Carding King ‘Maksik’ Was Lured to Arrest
- In Gonzalez Hacking Case, a High-Stakes Fight Over a Ukrainian’s Laptop
- I Was a Cybercrook for the FBI
- Confessions of a Cybermule
- Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold
- E-Gold Gets Tough on Crime
What makes a man want to amass more money than God, and once he has, keep going? For each hedge-fund manager the answers are a little bit different, and a little bit the same. From today's Bloomberg Markets we believe we have identified the four primary things that motivated Harbinger Capital founder Philip Falcone (or as readers of this blog may know him, Mr. Lisa Falcone), whose fund made $11 billion betting against subprime, to become who he is today.
We begin with a sepia-tinted moment when Falcone first leaves his Minnesota hometown, all gawky of limb and Lionel Richie of hair, to seek his fortune in the big city.
Neil Sheehy, from nearby International Falls, had offered Falcone a ride to Harvard University, which had recruited both of them to play hockey for the Crimson. The car stalled in front of Falcone’s house, and Sheehy had to restart it on a hill while Falcone’s mother and one of his sisters sobbed their goodbyes.
“It’ll be all right, Mrs. Falcone; it’ll be all right,” Sheehy recalls telling Caroline Falcone as the car chugged to life and headed east.
Falcone was one of nine, and his mother still cared that he was leaving home! This is meaningful and leads us to Motivation 1: Phil can never let his mama down.
[To wit, later: "Galloway says he once set up a meeting for Falcone with a billionaire investor who was interested in Harbinger. Falcone said he couldn’t make the meeting because he had to go see his mother."]
Immediately after leaving home, life decided to punk young Philip by showing him that even when you think that things are tough, they can always get worse.
Falcone rode to Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his feet on the dashboard because Sheehy had packed a skate-sharpening machine on the floor of the front seat... Halfway there, the roof liner came loose and showered the young men with fiberglass insulation that stuck to them as they sweated in the late.
Motivation 2: The fuck he's going to go through something like that again. He is going to kick life's ass!
Then, he did not quite fit in at school.
Falcone was wide-eyed when he arrived at Harvard in 1980, says hockey teammate Greg Olson, who’s now a dentist in Minnetonka, Minnesota. “He was a deer in the headlights,” Olson says. After recovering from the initial shock, Falcone made himself something of a campus don. Hockey teammates called him “Fashion Phil” because he cared so much about his clothes, Olson says. He had a blue, three-piece suit that he wore often, and he always wore stylish shoes.
Motivation 3: Show those jerkoffs who called him a hick and a fag who the man is.
But after graduation, he was more confident.
[Wife Lisa] was working as a model when she met Phil Falcone through mutual friends at a Manhattan restaurant in the late 1980s.
Motivation 4: GIRLS!
Of course, a hot wife and incredible financial success doesn't keep the critics at bay. If anything, it just makes them worse.
“Just because a manager got the subprime trade right, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a skilled manager,” says Brad Balter, managing partner of Balter Capital Management LLC, a Boston-based firm that invests in hedge funds for clients. “There have been several funds that benefited from that bet in 2007 whose performance was mediocre before and continues to be mediocre today.”
Motivation 5: Show those jerkoffs who suggest he is a one-hit wonder who the man is. Then show them again. And again. Until he dies.
Falcone Losing Touch Borrowing From Funds While His Investors Denied Cash
Apple TV jailbreak <b>news</b>: USB restore mode discovered
Breaking news Feed � iFixit: Apple TV has 8GB of onboard flash storage � Office 2011 to ship October 26 � Apple Remote app v2 now available for iOS 4 � Confirmed: No FaceTime in UAE, reported working in SA unless phones are updated ...
<b>News</b> Roundup: Ryan Murphy Confirms Chord Overstreet Will Not Play <b>...</b>
Ryan Murphy finally put an end to the speculation about Kurt's new boyfriend on 'Glee' -- well, sort of. We finally know once and for all.
Small Business <b>News</b>: The White Paper Overview
Pundits still say they are a great way to develop credibility for your business easy to distribute in their popular current PDF format and also, if done right,
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bench craft company rip off
Apple TV jailbreak <b>news</b>: USB restore mode discovered
Breaking news Feed � iFixit: Apple TV has 8GB of onboard flash storage � Office 2011 to ship October 26 � Apple Remote app v2 now available for iOS 4 � Confirmed: No FaceTime in UAE, reported working in SA unless phones are updated ...
<b>News</b> Roundup: Ryan Murphy Confirms Chord Overstreet Will Not Play <b>...</b>
Ryan Murphy finally put an end to the speculation about Kurt's new boyfriend on 'Glee' -- well, sort of. We finally know once and for all.
Small Business <b>News</b>: The White Paper Overview
Pundits still say they are a great way to develop credibility for your business easy to distribute in their popular current PDF format and also, if done right,
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A California man who helped funnel stolen cash to a global network of hackers and carders was sentenced Thursday to 6 years in prison for conspiracy to launder money.
Cesar Carranza, 38, also known as “uBuyWeRush,” ran a legitimate business selling liquidation and overstock merchandise online and from three California stores.
But, according to an indictment (.pdf), he also sold MSR-206’s to carders to encode stolen bank card data onto blank cards, and he served as a conduit to transmit stolen money between mules and carders.
He worked with many of the top carders in the criminal underground between 2003 and 2006, including Maksim “Maksik” Yastremskiy, a Ukrainian carder who allegedly worked with TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez and was considered by authorities to be one of the top sellers of stolen card data on the internet.
In 2003 and 2004, Carranza became an approved and trusted vendor on online criminal forums such as CarderPlanet and Shadowcrew, advertising his goods and services and dispensing advice on the best tools to use for various criminal endeavors.
According to court records, he admitted in messages he posted to the forums that he himself had done carding between 1990 and 1998, but retired to become a vendor for other carders.
“I decided to supply all you guys making the real big bucks,” he allegedly wrote. “So if you need me I sell Card Printers, Card Embossers, Tippers, Encoders, Small Readers and more.”
He was first arrested in California in 2004, but was never charged with a crime. Although he was selling MSR-206s through eBay at the time, selling the devices is not illegal. Carranza told Threat Level, however, that police accused him of selling his merchandise to terrorists.
He subsequently sold off his MSR business. But, according to court records, his services as a money launderer for carders continued to flourish, even though it was clear that law enforcement agencies were closely watching him.
Hackers in East Europe and elsewhere would steal credit and debit card numbers and PINs through phishing and other means, then pass the data to so-called mules in the U.S., who would encode the numbers onto the magnetic stripe of blank cards, then use the cards to withdraw money from the accounts at ATMs. They would then send the money back to their co-conspirators in East Europe through Western Union or through e-Gold, an online digital currency.
Authorities say Carranza helped launder about $2.5 million in this way by operating as an e-Gold money exchanger. The mules would give him cash or deposit money into his bank account, and he would either transfer the money to the bank account of another e-Gold exchanger who would convert it to e-Gold for a carder, or he would change the money himself into e-Gold currency through his own e-Gold account, then transfer it to the e-Gold account of carders in East Europe and elsewhere. They would then use a local e-Gold money exchanger to convert the digital fund into their local currency.
One such mule who transmitted stolen money in this way described to Threat Level in 2006 how he obtained hundreds of stolen card numbers from Romanian phishers and Russian hackers that he met online. The man, who used the nickname “John Dillinger,” withdrew more than $150,000 from ATM machines before transferring the money back to East Europe through Western Union and through an e-Gold money exchanger in California.
In addition to laundering stolen funds, authorities say Carranza was a middleman for carders to purchase “dumps” (account and other data stored on a bank card’s magnetic stripe) from one another.
Around January 4, 2006, according to authorities, Carranza transferred about $15,000 worth of e-Gold to the e-Gold account of a carder who went by the nickname “CC-2″ — a known specialist in hacking financial databases and siphoning card data to sell to other criminals. Carranza indicated in a note to the transaction that he was retaining a 6-percent commission for the service. He transferred another $45,000 worth of e-Gold to CC-2’s account over the next two months. In March and April 2006, authorities say he also transferred $33,000 to Maksim Yastremskiy. The latter was arrested in Turkey in 2007 and sentenced to 30 years in prison there and is still wanted in the U.S. for his alleged role in the TJX carding ring.
Between 2003 and 2007, authorities say that more than $2 million went into and out of Carranza’s e-Gold account.
In 2006, e-Gold, under investigation for facilitating money laundering between carders, froze two of Carranza’s e-Gold accounts, which contained about $19,000 at the time. Carranza told Threat Level then that he was considering legal action against e-Gold to release his funds. “I no longer trust the e-gold integrity,” he said. He didn’t follow through on the threat.
He was indicted in 2008 on charges of conspiring to commit access device fraud and money laundering. He pleaded guilty last December to one count of conspiring to launder stolen money.
See also:
- Ukrainian Carding King ‘Maksik’ Was Lured to Arrest
- In Gonzalez Hacking Case, a High-Stakes Fight Over a Ukrainian’s Laptop
- I Was a Cybercrook for the FBI
- Confessions of a Cybermule
- Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold
- E-Gold Gets Tough on Crime
What makes a man want to amass more money than God, and once he has, keep going? For each hedge-fund manager the answers are a little bit different, and a little bit the same. From today's Bloomberg Markets we believe we have identified the four primary things that motivated Harbinger Capital founder Philip Falcone (or as readers of this blog may know him, Mr. Lisa Falcone), whose fund made $11 billion betting against subprime, to become who he is today.
We begin with a sepia-tinted moment when Falcone first leaves his Minnesota hometown, all gawky of limb and Lionel Richie of hair, to seek his fortune in the big city.
Neil Sheehy, from nearby International Falls, had offered Falcone a ride to Harvard University, which had recruited both of them to play hockey for the Crimson. The car stalled in front of Falcone’s house, and Sheehy had to restart it on a hill while Falcone’s mother and one of his sisters sobbed their goodbyes.
“It’ll be all right, Mrs. Falcone; it’ll be all right,” Sheehy recalls telling Caroline Falcone as the car chugged to life and headed east.
Falcone was one of nine, and his mother still cared that he was leaving home! This is meaningful and leads us to Motivation 1: Phil can never let his mama down.
[To wit, later: "Galloway says he once set up a meeting for Falcone with a billionaire investor who was interested in Harbinger. Falcone said he couldn’t make the meeting because he had to go see his mother."]
Immediately after leaving home, life decided to punk young Philip by showing him that even when you think that things are tough, they can always get worse.
Falcone rode to Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his feet on the dashboard because Sheehy had packed a skate-sharpening machine on the floor of the front seat... Halfway there, the roof liner came loose and showered the young men with fiberglass insulation that stuck to them as they sweated in the late.
Motivation 2: The fuck he's going to go through something like that again. He is going to kick life's ass!
Then, he did not quite fit in at school.
Falcone was wide-eyed when he arrived at Harvard in 1980, says hockey teammate Greg Olson, who’s now a dentist in Minnetonka, Minnesota. “He was a deer in the headlights,” Olson says. After recovering from the initial shock, Falcone made himself something of a campus don. Hockey teammates called him “Fashion Phil” because he cared so much about his clothes, Olson says. He had a blue, three-piece suit that he wore often, and he always wore stylish shoes.
Motivation 3: Show those jerkoffs who called him a hick and a fag who the man is.
But after graduation, he was more confident.
[Wife Lisa] was working as a model when she met Phil Falcone through mutual friends at a Manhattan restaurant in the late 1980s.
Motivation 4: GIRLS!
Of course, a hot wife and incredible financial success doesn't keep the critics at bay. If anything, it just makes them worse.
“Just because a manager got the subprime trade right, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a skilled manager,” says Brad Balter, managing partner of Balter Capital Management LLC, a Boston-based firm that invests in hedge funds for clients. “There have been several funds that benefited from that bet in 2007 whose performance was mediocre before and continues to be mediocre today.”
Motivation 5: Show those jerkoffs who suggest he is a one-hit wonder who the man is. Then show them again. And again. Until he dies.
Falcone Losing Touch Borrowing From Funds While His Investors Denied Cash
bench craft company rip off
Apple TV jailbreak <b>news</b>: USB restore mode discovered
Breaking news Feed � iFixit: Apple TV has 8GB of onboard flash storage � Office 2011 to ship October 26 � Apple Remote app v2 now available for iOS 4 � Confirmed: No FaceTime in UAE, reported working in SA unless phones are updated ...
<b>News</b> Roundup: Ryan Murphy Confirms Chord Overstreet Will Not Play <b>...</b>
Ryan Murphy finally put an end to the speculation about Kurt's new boyfriend on 'Glee' -- well, sort of. We finally know once and for all.
Small Business <b>News</b>: The White Paper Overview
Pundits still say they are a great way to develop credibility for your business easy to distribute in their popular current PDF format and also, if done right,
bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off
Apple TV jailbreak <b>news</b>: USB restore mode discovered
Breaking news Feed � iFixit: Apple TV has 8GB of onboard flash storage � Office 2011 to ship October 26 � Apple Remote app v2 now available for iOS 4 � Confirmed: No FaceTime in UAE, reported working in SA unless phones are updated ...
<b>News</b> Roundup: Ryan Murphy Confirms Chord Overstreet Will Not Play <b>...</b>
Ryan Murphy finally put an end to the speculation about Kurt's new boyfriend on 'Glee' -- well, sort of. We finally know once and for all.
Small Business <b>News</b>: The White Paper Overview
Pundits still say they are a great way to develop credibility for your business easy to distribute in their popular current PDF format and also, if done right,
bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off
Apple TV jailbreak <b>news</b>: USB restore mode discovered
Breaking news Feed � iFixit: Apple TV has 8GB of onboard flash storage � Office 2011 to ship October 26 � Apple Remote app v2 now available for iOS 4 � Confirmed: No FaceTime in UAE, reported working in SA unless phones are updated ...
<b>News</b> Roundup: Ryan Murphy Confirms Chord Overstreet Will Not Play <b>...</b>
Ryan Murphy finally put an end to the speculation about Kurt's new boyfriend on 'Glee' -- well, sort of. We finally know once and for all.
Small Business <b>News</b>: The White Paper Overview
Pundits still say they are a great way to develop credibility for your business easy to distribute in their popular current PDF format and also, if done right,
bench craft company rip off
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