The U.S. Department of Justice has led a global effort to shut down a huge online cybercrime forum, resulting in the arrest of both people involved in running it and those who used its services.

The site, called the Infraud Organization or Infraud for short, was established in 2010 as a forum on the shady part of the internet known as the dark web. It offered a marketplace for stolen data such as the sale of credit card data, social security numbers, malware, hardware and tools related to credit card fraud.

The Justice Department-led action, revealed today, resulted in the arrest of 36 individual in seven countries — 13 defendants in the United States and the remainder in Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Kosovo and Serbia. Among those arrested was Svyatoslav Bondarenko, a 34-year-old Ukrainian national and the mastermind behind the site.

Along with Bondarenko, those arrested included a number of moderators for the forum, along with vendors and “VIP members,” although the overall number arrested was only a small percentage of the forum’s estimated 11,000-plus members. The Justice Department noted that other defendants remain at large and said the investigation is continuing.

“Today’s indictment and arrests mark one of the largest cyberfraud enterprise prosecutions ever undertaken by the Department of Justice,” Acting Assistant Attorney General John P. Cronan said in a statement. “As alleged in the indictment, Infraud operated like a business to facilitate cyberfraud on a global scale. Its members allegedly caused more than $530 million in actual losses to consumers, businesses, and financial institutions alike — and it is alleged that the losses they intended to cause amounted to more than $2.2 billion.”

Cronan added that the department “refuses to allow these cybercriminals to use the perceived anonymity of the Internet as a shield for their crimes. We are committed to working closely with our international counterparts to identify, investigate, and bring to justice the perpetrators of these crimes, wherever in the world they operate.”

Those arrested stand accused of multiple crimes including identity theft, bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. It’s not clear whether the department will seek extradition for those arrested outside of the United States, but given that the charges were lodged in a Las Vegas court, it’s highly likely it will.

Image: 136770128@N07/Flickr