U.S. Agent Lures Romanian Hackers in Subway Data Heist
U.S. Secret Service Agent Matt O’Neill was growing nervous. For three months, he’d been surreptitiously monitoring hackers’ communications and watching as they siphoned thousands of credit card numbers from scores of U.S. retailers.
Most every day O’Neill was alerting a credit card company or retailer to an online heist. The result was predictable: the companies canceled hijacked credit and debit cards and the aggravated hackers’ customers began complaining that the stolen card numbers weren’t working as promised.
It was only a matter of time before the cyber thieves realized they were being watched. “We were hoping they wouldn’t figure it out until we could catch them,” O’Neill said.
