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An international law enforcement team has arrested a Chinese national and disrupted a major botnet network that officials say he ran for nearly a decade, amassing at least US$99 million ($149 million) in profits by reselling access to criminals who used it for identity theft. child exploitation and financial fraud, including pandemic aid fraud.
The US Justice Department quoted FBI Director Christopher Wray as saying on Wednesday that the “911 S5” botnet – a network of malware-infected computers in nearly 200 countries – was possibly the largest in the world.
Authorities also seized $43 million in cryptocurrency, Leatherman said.
Cybercriminals used Wang’s network of zombie home computers to steal “billions of dollars from financial institutions, credit card issuers and account holders, and federal lending programs since 2014,” according to an indictment filed in the Eastern District of Texas.
The administrator, Wang, sold access to the 19 million Windows computers he hijacked — more than 613,000 in the United States — to criminals who “used that access to commit a staggering array of crimes that victimized children, threatened public safety and defrauded financial institutions and federal lending programs,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in announcing the ouster.
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He said criminals who bought access to the zombie network from Wang were responsible for more than $7.5 billion in estimated losses due to fraud against aid programs.
Officials estimated that 560,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims originated from compromised IP addresses.
Wang allegedly ran the botnet through 150 dedicated servers, half of which were hired by US-based online service providers.
The indictment said Wang used his ill-gotten gains to buy 21 properties in the United States, China, Singapore, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates and St. Kitts and Nevis, where he allegedly obtained citizenship through investment.
In its news release, the Ministry of Justice thanked the police and other authorities in Singapore and Thailand for their assistance.
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