The salesmanship was robust, according to the indictment. One defendant called himself the “Plastic, Template & Scans King,” for example; another advertised skimmers for sale, including post-sale support services. One allegedly advertised a travel agency offering to fraudulently book flights, hotels, cars and seats at concerts and sporting events using fake or stolen card numbers for Infraud members at a fraction of their actual price, the DOJ alleged.

Members of the ring were also able to post questions about buying and selling information, get free samples from vendors and rate or provide feedback about vendors on the site. In addition, the organization's leaders policed against “rippers” and other rule-breakers to ensure the quality of the contraband sold and to protect the reputation of the general membership, the indictment claimed.

“Over the course of the Infraud Organization's seven-year history, its members targeted more than 4.3 million credit cards, debit cards and bank accounts held by individuals around the world and in all 50 states,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General David Rybicki said in a statement after the indictment was unsealed.

“Like most organized transnational criminal enterprises, Infraud's members had defined roles within the organization's hierarchy. But unlike the organized crime of years past, many of the organization's nearly 11,000 members have never met in person and do not know the true identities of their co-conspirators — they know each other only by their online user names and other anonymized identifiers. Infraud members used the forum's private message threads, digital currency escrow services, VPNs, and other anonymizing software, to keep it that way,” he said.

Members and associates laundered the proceeds from their activities using, among other things, Liberty Reserve, Bitcoin, Perfect Money, WebMoney, and other digital currencies, the indictment alleged. As of March 2017, the Infraud Organization had 10,901 registered members, it said.

“Criminal cyber organizations like Infraud threaten not just U.S. citizens but people in every corner of the globe,” Homeland Security Investigations Acting Executive Associate Director Derek Benner said. “The actions of computer hackers and identity thieves not only harm countless innocent Americans, but the threat they pose to our financial system and global commerce cannot be overstated. The criminals involved in such schemes may think they can escape detection by hiding behind their computer screens here and overseas, but as this case shows, cyberspace is not a refuge from justice.”