Many people associate Bitcoin usage with the darknet, and there is a certain truth to that story. However, criminals use the deep web for selling financial information more than anything. Particularly credit card details remain a very hot commodity, as this information is very easy to abuse. Two men have been using these credit cards to purchase tickets online and resell them, ultimately leading to their arrest.
Contrary to what most people may want to believe, the real currency of the darknet is information. Mainly financial information, such as credit card and bank account details, are of high value to specific individuals. For some reason, this type of information is very common among German darknet vendors.
Darknet Credit Card Fraud Spikes
Given the recent crackdown by the German government officials on darknet forums, the number of arrests related to online criminal activity is on the rise. Two men from Hannover were arrested last month for their involvement in an illegal credit card information scheme. Purchasing stolen credit cards from the darknet is one thing, but using the information to buy train tickets is a very serious offense.
All of these train tickets were then resold at lower prices, to launder the profits from this process. However, this illegal activity quickly put law enforcement agencies on high alert. A lot of their customers complained about tickets being invalid when trying to board the train, as the funds had been charged back already.
Both individuals responsible for abusing this credit card information started this project back in 2012 as a way to generate additional income. Despite banks growing more suspicious of these unusual chargeback reports, no real action was undertaken until the end of 2015. At that time, an official investigation was launched, and it did not take law enforcement personnel all that long to find out who was behind these sales.
It is not the first time train companies deal with fraud on such a massive scale, though. In the past twelve months, nearly 100,000 similar reports were made regarding fraudulent train ticket purchases. Credit cards are a very lucrative target for Internet criminals, as information is easy to obtain, and even easier to abuse these days.
Both individuals have been convicted to nearly four years in federal prison for these grave offenses. Most of the credit cards were purchased for the price of 2-3 euros, and most orders were bulk purchases of ten cards or more. Interestingly enough, the majority of these purchases was made by sending anonymous cash in the mail, instead of Bitcoin.
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