One of the 11 people charged in the pilfering of millions of credit cards from retailers was convicted on unrelated cybercrime charges by Turkish authorities.
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Michael S. Mimoso, Editorial Director
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Maksym "Maksik" Yastremskiy, 25, of the Ukraine was sentenced to 30 years in a Turkish prison for breaking into Turkish bank accounts electronically. Yastremskiy was arrested in 2007 while on vacation in Turkey. Police there found a laptop computer in his hotel room containing bank information, according to a report in the Boston Globe.
Yastremskiy is suspected to be part of the group that carried out the massive data security breach at TJX Cos. Inc. as well as several other retailers. TJX officials admitted that more than 45 million credit and debit cards were stolen over an 18-month period by hackers who managed to penetrate its Wi-Fi network.
Stephen Watt, 25, is awaiting trial in U.S. District Court on charges that he provided a modified sniffer program used to monitor and capture data, including customers credit and debit card information, as it traveled across corporate computer networks.
Yastremskiy is suspected of taking the pilfered data and selling it on the black market and prosecutors say he may have earned more than $11 million from the sale of the data.
U.S. Justice Department officials told the Globe that they continue to seek Yastremskiy's extradition.