Earlier this week, a 21-year-old Dutch man pleaded not guilty in Seattle court to charges that he stole at least 44,000 credit card numbers and offloaded them all in one large, bulk sale.
David Benjamin Schrooten is claimed by prosecutors to have gone by the online handle Fortezza, which was well known in the online international hacking community, according to a report from the
Seattle News Tribune. Schrooten was arrested in Romania and has been charged with 14 crimes in all. It's believed that he may have been operating as part of some sort of massive fraud ring.
"People think that cyber criminals cannot be found or apprehended," U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan said at a press conference, according to the newspaper. "Today we know that's not true. You cannot hide in cyberspace. We will find you. We will charge you. We will extradite you and we will prosecute you."
Ondrej Krehel, chief information security officer for
Identity Theft 911, writes regularly on his blog about the dangers that hackers can pose to consumers.
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