Bitcoin and the darknet are like two peas in a pod these days, albeit that connections has not always been a positive one. Indian police officials arrested two residents involved in credit card cloning. All of the cards were purchased on the darknet with Bitcoin. Moreover, all of the funds stolen through this card scheme were converted to Bitcoin and split among all participants.
Bitcoin Involvement in Darknet Card Scheme
When browsing the darknet, one can pretty much buy anything in the world with Bitcoin. For some people, this is a way of life to earn a living. But for others, it’s all about illegal activity and opposing the law. This had created an ecosystem where stolen credit card information can be bought and sold freely, fueling the internet criminal circuit.
One of those transactions involves four Punjab residents, who purchased a lot of stolen credit card information from the darknet. The majority of this information was used to complete fraudulent Western Union payments, which can be paid for with a credit card online. Police official suspect the group to have completed several hundreds of these transactions, worth US$500 each.
As is usually the case in events like these, greed got the best of all four members, ultimately leading to their arrest. Obtaining stolen credit card information has become increasingly easy these days, mostly through card skimming. Once the information has been obtained, it can easily be sold on the Internet, where it is bought by the highest bidder who pays in Bitcoin.
By continuing their Western Union remittance scam scheme with this fake information, they continued to abuse stolen credit cards. However, by keeping the charges around the US$500 threshold, no suspicion has been raised by card holders sup until this point. That is rather strange, as anyone should notice such an unauthorized charge on their statement right away.
All of this came to light thanks to one Western Union employee, who noted multiple ID’s using the same picture. The group got sloppy in their approach and paid the ultimate price for it in the end. Two of the four individuals involved in this scheme have been arrested already, whereas police officials are still looking for the other two.
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