An ongoing investigation has revealed that Hieu Minh Ngo, a 24-year-old Vietnamese national, purchased consumer records directly from Court Ventures, which was acquired by Experian, the major credit bureau in March 2012.
Hieu Minh Ngo, arrested in February 2013 by the US authorities, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud, access device fraud and identity fraud, and could face up to 45 years behind bars. Ngo will be sentenced on 16 June.
Interestingly, Ngo told the judge during the hearing, that he could hear voices of “haunted stuff, ghosts, evil.” On the other hand, his lawyer claimed that he didn’t know anything about his client’s medical problems.
Last October, security journalist Brian Krebs published a detailed story of how the credit bureau indirectly sold consumer data to an ID theft service run by Hieu Minh Ngo. This Monday, Krebs revealed a transcript of his guilty plea proceedings, in his blog post.
According to the reports, Ngo masquerading as a Singapore-based private investigator, had tricked Court Ventures, a company in an information exchange agreement with US Info Search. He gained access to the personal as well as financial details of more than 200 million US citizens and by regularly paying Court Ventures via cash wire transfers.
Ngo marketed that data through operating an ID theft service with websites like Superget.info and Findget.me, giving his customers access to a cache of personally identifiable information (PII) belonging to 200 million Americans, including addresses, previous addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, along with their Social Security numbers.
Ngo’s customers have made payments of around $1.9 million for about 3.1 million queries on Americans over the course of 18 months. While it’s unclear exactly how many Americans’ information have been compromised, Krebs highlights that each query produced more than one result (in some cases, up to 10 results).
