Godfather of Retail Identity Theft Indicted

A Florida man and two unnamed Russian co-conspirators were charged Monday with hacking into retail computer networks and stealing data for more than 130 million credit and debit cards, the largest hacking and identity-theft caper in U.S. history.

Virtually every major news media is reporting that Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami and two unnamed computer hackers in Russia victimized Heartland Payment Systems, which is the foundation for the current indictment.

However, it is clear from reports that Gonzalez was the cyber-theft kingpin behind virtually every major retail identity theft over the past five years including those at TJX, 7-Eleven, Hannaford Brothers, BJ's Wholesale Club, Office Max, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, DSW, and Dave & Buster's restaurant chain.

Gonzalez, who was charged in a New Jersey federal court, has been in federal custody since last year. He is facing other hacking charges in Boston, for which he was already indicted, and in New York, which is pending. Convictions for these crimes could put him in prison for life.

According to Monday's indictment, Gonzalez and his co-conspirators committed the theft from October 2006 to May 2008, and sent the data to computer servers in California, Illinois, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

Prosecutors allege the defendants used sophisticated techniques to cover their tracks and to avoid detection. In computer attacks lasting more than a year, the trio allegedly scooped up credit- and debit-card numbers and installed back doors in computer networks to enable them to steal more data in the future. They also installed "sniffer" programs to capture transaction card data in real-time and send it to the hackers.

Gonzalez and his conspirators reviewed lists of Fortune 500 companies to decide which corporations to take aim at and visited stores to monitor which payment systems they used.

According to the indictment, interviews and recent court documents in pending cases Gonzalez says he launched what he called "operation get rich or die tryin'." Court documents say he threw himself a $75,000 birthday party and at one point lamented he had to count more than $340,000 by hand because his money counter had broken. Such large sums, primarily in $20 bills, were allegedly stolen from ATMs.