A man has been sentenced to 37 months in jail by a New York court for hacking into the online brokerage accounts of Charles Schwab customers and stealing around $246,000.
Between September 2006 and December 2007 Aleksey Volynskiy was part of a gang that used trojan horses to hack personal computers and steal login details from victims accessing their bank and brokerage accounts online.
According to the FBI, the operation was carried out from Russia by Alexander Bobnev, who is still at large. Once the information has been stolen, Bobnev and others accessed the accounts and made unauthorised sales of securities and wire transfers.
Operating in the US, Volynskiy and co-conspirators, set up "drop" accounts to receive the stolen funds. He then kept some of the money and sent the rest back to gang members in Russia through remittance services.
Volynskiy was also involved in a scam to use stolen credit card numbers to create fake cards and withdraw money from ATMs. The crook handed over 180 stolen credit card numbers to a cooperating witness, says the FBI.
Volynskiy was arrested in December 2008 and pleaded guilty last August to five counts, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and unlawfully access and damage a protected computer, money laundering and access device fraud.
He is the second man to be sentenced in relation to the scam following the jailing of Alexey Mineev in November.