FBI is offering a $1 Million reward for Romanian cybercriminals Nicolae Popescu and Dumitru Daniel Bosogioiu who were originally charged in a criminal complaint with 11 other defendants for their participation in a cyber fraud conspiracy which targeted U.S.-based websites such as Cars.com and AutoTrader.com  The defendants allegedly pretended to sell cars from nonexistent auto dealerships in the United States and created phony websites for these fictitious dealerships. As part of the scheme, the defendants produced and used high-quality fake passports to be used as identification by co-conspirators in the United States to open American bank accounts. After the “sellers” reached an agreement with the victim buyers, they would often email them invoices purporting to be from Amazon Payments, PayPal, or other online payment services, with instructions to transfer the money to the American bank accounts used by the defendants. The defendants and their co-conspirators allegedly used counterfeit service marks in designing the invoices so that they would appear identical to communications from legitimate payment services. The illicit proceeds were then withdrawn from the U.S. bank accounts and sent to the defendants in Europe by wire transfer and other methods.
*The charges in the complaint and the indictment are merely allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.