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The UK’s largest ever credit card fraud gang has been dismantled in London. The fraudsters, who could have netted an estimated £17m, received jail sentences from a judge who called their offences “very serious. A total of five people, all from Eastern Europe, were involved in the scam. Gang leader Roman Zykin, an illegal immigrant from Russia, was jailed for five and a half years and recommended for deportation at the end of serving his sentence. Two Polish men were also jailed for three and four years respectively, while Estonian “link man” Hannes Pajasalu will serve two years. At a previous hearing Zykin’s wife, Malgorzata, received a six month sentence. The investigation into the gang’s activities lasted for 18 months and spanned several continents, as the FBI, Europol, Estonian police and other authorities and banking bodies, aided UK police in the task of bringing the five to justice. The search for the five culprits was hampered by the gang using sophisticated encryption techniques to hide their electronic traces. Interestingly, the investigation was triggered by a routine stop and search of Roman Zykin by an anti-terrorist patrol at Victoria Station in London, when dozens of mobile phone top-up cards were found in his possession.

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A sophisticated computer hacker had access to servers at wireless giant T-Mobile for at least a year, which he used to monitor U.S. Secret Service e-mail, obtain customers' passwords and Social Security numbers, and download candid photos taken by Sidekick users, including Hollywood celebrities, SecurityFocus has learned. Twenty-one year-old Nicolas Jacobsen was quietly charged with the intrusions last October, after a Secret Service informant helped investigators link him to sensitive agency documents that were circulating in underground IRC chat rooms. The informant also produced evidence that Jacobsen was behind an offer to provide T-Mobile customers' personal information to identity thieves through an Internet bulletin board, according to court records. Jacobsen could access information on any of the Bellevue, Washington-based company's 16.3 million customers, including many customers' Social Security numbers and dates of birth, according to government filings in the case. He could also obtain voicemail PINs, and the passwords providing customers with Web access to their T-Mobile e-mail accounts. He did not have access to credit card numbers. The case arose as part of the Secret Service's "Operation Firewall" crackdown on Internet fraud rings last October, in which 19 men were indicted for trafficking in stolen identity information and documents, and stolen credit and debit card numbers. But Jacobsen was not charged with the others. Instead he faces two felony counts of computer intrusion and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer in a separate, unheralded federal case in Los Angeles, currently set for a February 14th status conference.