Two Dublin residents who are believed to be members of a Romanian organized cybercrime gang were imprisoned in Ireland today for credit card fraud.

Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard that Daniel Almajanu and Albert Gimy Linul were “considered to be members” of a Romanian criminal gang that had made millions of dollars by running an extensive card-skimming operation in the UK.

Gang members stole victims’ credit card information by installing a “deep insert skimmer” on various HSBC ATM outlets. The skimmers read the details of each card as it was inserted and fed the stolen data back to the gang. 

Thirty-five-year-old Almajanu used the stolen data and a card reader/writer machine to create clones of the compromised credit cards. The cloned cards were then passed to 29-year-old Linul, who used them to buy items.

On multiple occasions Linul bought cartons of cigarettes from several newsagents around Dublin, which were then sold on for profit.

Judge Melanie Greally said evidence submitted to the court showed that the offenses committed by the two men “represent an offshoot of an organized and sophisticated international fraud.”

Greally said that Almajanu had played a “pivotal organizational role” in the scam and was responsible for recruiting Linul into the operation. 

Both men were arrested in February 2020 after gardaí noticed them acting suspiciously in Dublin’s Temple Bar. Almajanu had five fake cards in his possession while Linul had sixty cloned cards hidden in his sock. 

A search of Linul’s Prussia Street residence revealed a credit card reader/writer and a laptop containing the details of over a thousand credit cards from which Almajanu and Linul could have stolen over $6m. 

Almajanu, who has four convictions in Romania and was previously deported from the UK after serving two years in prison there for fraud, was sentenced to four years and four months in prison by Greally. The judge sentenced Linul to three years in prison. 

The Garda National Economic Crime Bureau said Almajanu was the target of law enforcement investigations in Belgium, the UK, and Romania and was the focus of Europol and Interpol.

HelpSystems has announced a new acquisition to further boost its security product offerings. Cloud security company Digital Defense will join HelpSystems’ growing cybersecurity portfolio to enable customers to access a more comprehensive security assessment toolkit.

The deal is the latest in a number of recent acquisitions announced by HelpSystems, following the additions of the data classification companies Titus and Boldon James last June, cloud-based data protection provider Vera in December 2020, and FileCatalyst at the start of this year.

The IT software firm has now added Digital Defense’s cloud native vulnerability scanning engine to its cybersecurity product portfolio. This enables organizations in industries such as healthcare, legal and financial services to proactively detect security gaps in their infrastructure and rapidly take action to protect against internal and external cyber-threats.

A feature of the vulnerability scanning engine is its ability to allow pen-testers to focus on identified issues rather than blindly testing the entire network. Digital Defense also has a team of US-based pen-testers to carry out tests on behalf of organizations that lack the expertise to undertake this function.

Kate Bolseth, CEO at HelpSystems, commented: “Every day we have customers who want to know what they can do to strengthen their security postures and protect their employees, customers and sensitive information from malicious actors.

“The addition of Digital Defense offers threat-weary IT teams the capabilities they need to increase infrastructure security on two fronts: via leading-edge vulnerability management technology as well as seasoned pen-testing resources to broaden our existing expertise. We are so happy to welcome the team and the award-winning products they’ve developed to HelpSystems.”

Larry Hurtado, president and CEO, Digital Defense, said: “Digital Defense will continue to protect the ever-expanding IT underpinnings of thousands of organizations as part of HelpSystems.

“This powerful combination not only enables our customers to take advantage of HelpSystems’ broad security and automation solutions, but it also gives us more horsepower to continue to advance how organizations around the world understand and address information security.” 

A 41-year-old man from Virginia who waged a cyber-harassment campaign against the mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and his family has been sentenced to prison.

Norfolk resident Adam Maxwell Donn was charged in July 2020 with cyberstalking G.T. Bynum. Between June 11 and June 22, 2020, Donn barraged the mayor and his family with 14 threatening calls and 44 emails in the hope of intimidating Bynum into canceling a political rally scheduled to take place in Tulsa in June 2020.

Donn threatened to publish the home address of the Bynum family online along with personal information, including the children’s cell phone numbers and the passwords to their social media accounts. He said that he hoped doing so would cause a crowd to encroach on the Bynums’ home and cause the mayor and his family harm and emotional distress.

In an email dated June 19, Donn wrote to the mayor saying that he hoped that Bynum and his family contracted Covid-19 and suffered. He also threatened to show up to Bynum’s next bible-study group and asked the mayor’s wife when she would be home so he could come to her house and meet her. 

A voicemail received by the mayor’s wife from Donn mentioned the street she lived on and asked if she still lived there “before his guys made a delivery.”

Court documents further stated that Donn masqueraded as the mayor’s wife and sent emails to her colleagues via her business website. In those emails, he stated that he was infected with Covid-19 and that he would show up at their office unless they sent the messages on to the mayor’s wife.

Despite Donn’s campaign of harassment, the political rally for former president Donald Trump went ahead as scheduled. 

On October 21, Donn pleaded guilty to cyber-stalking. On January 25, US District Judge Claire Eagan sentenced Donn to 15 months in federal prison to be followed by three years of supervised release. She further ordered Donn to pay Tulsa’s mayor $2,380 in restitution. 

“Words can and do lead to violence. That was the fear of the Bynum family as they received Adam Donn’s vile and violent threats to inflict harm upon them,”  said US Attorney Trent Shores.

“This sentence sends a clear message that there are real life consequences in the form of federal prison time for anyone who wants to engage in cyberstalking.”