Europol and Canadian cops round up POS terminal tampering gang
Pan-European law enforcement agency Europol has announced the take-down of a global gang of cybercrooks thought to be responsible for compromising point-of-sale (POS) terminals in Europe and North America, netting 30,000 sets of card details.
The investigation, referred to as "Operation Spyglass" (or "Project Lorgnette" to its French-speaking participants) was initiated last summer in Canada, and later drew in participation from French and German police forces as well as Canadian banking groups. Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) provided support and coordination.
The gang members are thought to have tampered with POS terminals in European and North American shopping centres, harvesting card data and disseminating it to teams in several towns across Québec. These teams then processed the data and passed it on to overseas carders, who used it to create counterfeit cards. The 30,000 sets of card details gathered yielded an average €300 each, for a total "potential loss" of €9 million ($12 million, £7.7 million).
