Macedonian extradited to face U.S. charges on selling card data
By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Macedonian citizen was extradited to the United States on Friday to face charges related to his operation of a website called Codeshop that authorities say was responsible for selling the data of thousands of credit cards from around the world. Djevair Ametovski, 29, was arrested in Slovenia in 2014 and was extradited from there to face charges including aggravated identity theft and wire fraud conspiracy contained in a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn, New York. Ametovski, who authorities say was known online as "codeshop," "sindrom" and "sindromx," is expected to appear in court on Saturday, prosecutors said. A lawyer for Ametovski could not be immediately identified. The case stemmed from what U.S. authorities said was a seven-year investigation undertaken amid efforts to combat cyber marketplaces where consumers' financial and personal information are bought and sold. "Today marks a major step in bringing the alleged operator of one such criminal marketplace to justice and should serve as a warning to others who seek to profit from perpetuating these fraudulent schemes," Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said. Prosecutors said that from 2010 to 2014, Ametovski ran a "carding shop" online that obtained and sold data for more than 181,000 unique compromised credit and debit cards, enabling the loss of millions of dollars to thousands of victims. Ametovski obtained the data from hackers, who stole it from financial institutions and other businesses, and used a series of online money exchangers and digital currencies to pay them. Users who bought data on Codeshop used it generally to make online purchases and to encode plastic cards that could be used to withdraw cash at ATMs, prosecutors said. The case is U.S. v. Ametovski, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, No. 14-mj-058. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Toni Reinhold and Leslie Adler)
