How a Remote Town in Romania Has Become Cybercrime Central

[Kabron]

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Three hours outside Bucharest, Romanian National Road 7 begins a gentle ascent into the foothills of the Transylvanian Alps. Meadowlands give way to crumbling houses with chickens in the front yard, laundry flapping on clotheslines. But you know you’ve arrived in the town of Râmnicu Vâlcea when you see the Mercedes-Benz dealership.

It’s in the middle of a grassy field, shiny sedans behind gleaming glass walls. Right next door is another luxury car dealership selling a variety of other high-end European rides. It’s as if the sheer magic of wealth has shimmered the glass-and-steel buildings into being.

In fact, expensive cars choke the streets of Râmnicu Vâlcea’s bustling city center—top-of-the-line BMWs, Audis, and Mercedes driven by twenty- and thirtysomething men sporting gold chains and fidgeting at red lights. I ask my cab driver if these men all have high-paying jobs, and he laughs. Then he holds up his hands, palms down, and wiggles his fingers as if typing on a keyboard. “They steal money on the Internet,” he says.

Among law enforcement officials around the world, the city of 120,000 has a nickname: Hackerville. It’s something of a misnomer; the town is indeed full of online crooks, but only a small percentage of them are actual hackers. Most specialize in ecommerce scams and malware attacks on businesses. According to authorities, these schemes have brought tens of millions of dollars into the area over the past decade, fueling the development of new apartment buildings, nightclubs, and shopping centers. Râmnicu Vâlcea is a town whose business is cybercrime, and business is booming.

At a restaurant in a neighborhood of apartment buildings and gated bungalows, I meet Bogdan Stoica and Alexandru Frunza, two of just four local cops on the digital beat. Stoica, 32, is square-shouldered and stocky, with a mustache and prominent stubble. His expression rarely changes. Frunza, 29, is tall and clean shaven. He’s the funny one. “My English will improve after I have a few beers,” he says. We sit at a table on the edge of a big courtyard, piped-in Romanian pop music blaring.

Stoica and Frunza grew up in Râmnicu Vâlcea. “The only cars on the streets were those made by Dacia,” Stoica says, referring to the venerable Romanian carmaker. Access to information was limited, too: Weekday television consisted of two hours of state-run programming, mostly devoted to covering the dictator, Nicolae Ceauşescu. “We had half an hour of cartoons on Sunday,” Stoica says.

In 1989, a revolution that began with anti-government riots ended with the execution of Ceauşescu and his wife, and the country began the switch to a market economy. By 1998, when Stoica finished high school and went off to the police academy in Bucharest, another revolution was beginning: the Internet. Râmnicu Vâlcea was better off than many towns in this relatively poor country—it had a decades-old chemical plant and a modest tourism industry. But many young men and women struggled to find work.

No one really knows how or why those kids started scamming people on the Internet. “If you find out, you let us know,” says Codruţ Olaru, head of Romania’s Directorate for Investigation on Organized Crime and Terrorism. Whatever the reason, online crime was widespread by 2002. Cybercafés offered cheap Internet access, and crooks in Râmnicu Vâlcea got busy posting fake ads on eBay and other auction sites to lure victims into remitting payments by wire transfer. Eventually, FBI agents in the US and Bucharest started to get interested.

In the early days, the perpetrators weren’t exactly geniuses. One of the first cases out of the region involved a team based in the neighboring town of Piteşti. One crook would post ads for cell phones; the other picked up the wired money for orders that would never ship. The two men had made a few hundred dollars from victims in the US, and the guy receiving the cash hadn’t even bothered to use a fake ID. “I found him sitting in an Internet café, chatting online,” says Costel Ion, a Piteşti cop who had been working the cybercrime beat. “He just confessed.”

But as in any business, the scammers innovated and adapted. One early advance was establishing fake escrow services: Victims would be asked to send payments to these supposedly trustworthy third parties, which had websites that made them look like legitimate companies. The scams got better over the years, too. To explain unbelievably low prices for used cars, for example, a crook would pose as a US soldier stationed abroad, with a vehicle in storage back home that he had to sell. (That tale also established a plausible US contact to receive the money, instead of someone in Romania.) In the early years, the thieves would simply ask for advance payment for the nonexistent vehicle. As word of the scam spread, the sellers began offering to send the cars for inspection—asking for no payment except “shipping.”

The con artists got even sneakier. “They learned to create scenarios,” says Michael Eubanks, an FBI agent in Bucharest. “We’ve seen email between criminals with instructions on how to respond to different questions.” The scammers started hiring English speakers to craft emails to US targets. Specialists emerged to occupy niches in the industry, designing fake websites or coordinating low-level confederates.

[Nytro]

Interesant, mai ales ca eu sunt din Valcea. Cica "Hackerville"

Si cei de acolo nu stiu sa faca o pagina de scam, puneau adresa de mail la care se duceau datele ca <input type="hidden" />, dadeau mancare la boschetari si le plateau orele la Internet Cafe ca sa stea sa Copy-Paste-uiasca manual adrese de mail, cei mai multi erau paraleli cu calculatoarele si se mai mira lumea cum de sunt prinsi...

Chiar vorbeam cu cineva despre asta, cred ca foarte putini s-au gandit sa porneasca o afacere in loc sa ia un Audi, foarte putini s-au gandit sa spele banii...

Dar na, si asta a contribuit la semnificatia mass-media a cuvantului "hacker", si cica suntem o tara de "hackeri", nu o tara de hoti, cand de fapt asta au fost si ei. Dar e bine, e loc pentru toata lumea la puscarie, acolo sa stea.

[greerasu_tony]

salutari din hackerville , nitro pe unde locuesti in vl?

[Nytro]

Locuiesc in Bucuresti momentan, facultate. Stateam in Ostroveni. Erau multi astfel de "hackeri" prin Internet Cafe-uri.

[gabyyy]

Mdap...mare smecher Romeo Chita. In unul din dosarele in care era anchetat, era o convorbire telefonica in care un prieten de-al lui i se plangea ca nu mai stie ce sa faca cu banii de VooDoo cafe din Ostroveni stii Nytro? ma rog, s-a desfiintat de mult timp

[jesus]

. . . . . . . . .

[Nytro]

gabyyy: Da, le stiam cam pe toate. Voodoo era la parterul unui bloc cu 10 etaje, pe la Hermes?

[gabyyy]

Da, un bloc cu 10 etaje aproape de Hermes

[Nytro]

Cele mai multe tampenii se faceau de la Internet Cafe-urile: cel din Casa Stiintei, cel de langa Scoala Nr. 9, si mai era unul Underground, in Traian. La asta din urma, cei care se ocupau cu asa ceva, aveau un loc special, mai retras de unde isi faceau treburile.

Eh, sunt multe povestioare cu astfel de porcarii. Idei de baza:
+ au adus bani in tara
+ i-au cheltuit in tara
+ unii au ajuns bogati
- unii sunt in puscarie, dar isi merita soarta
- au adus un renume extrem de prost (desi uzual e mai mult o lauda) atat Romaniei cat si frumosului meu oras natal
- in nici un caz astfel de persoane nu pot fi numite "hackeri", sunt doar un alt tip de hoti

Si probabil altele...

[User Name]

Am fost si eu la Ostroveni,la strandu sau ce e acolo...Sunt din Pitesti,daca stie cineva...