Albert Gonzalez

He, along with his team, were featured on the 5th-season episode of the CNBC series American Greed titled: "Episode 40: Hackers: Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin'".

Gonzalez had three federal indictments.

Albert Gonzalez (born 1981) is an American computer hacker, computer criminal and police informer, who is accused of masterminding the combined credit card theft and subsequent reselling of more than 170 million card and ATM numbers from 2005 to 2007, the biggest such fraud in history.

Gonzalez and his accomplices used SQL injection to deploy backdoors on several corporate systems in order to launch packet sniffing (specifically, ARP Spoofing) attacks which allowed him to steal computer data from internal corporate networks.

During his spree, he was said to have thrown himself a $75,000 birthday party and complained about having to count $340,000 by hand after his currency-counting machine broke.

Gonzalez stayed at lavish hotels but his formal homes were modest.

In 2000, he moved to New York City, where he lived for three months before moving to Kearny, New Jersey.

While in Kearny, he was accused of being the mastermind of a group of hackers called the ShadowCrew group, which trafficked in 1.5 million stolen credit and ATM card numbers.

Although considered the mastermind of the scheme (operating on the site under the screen name of "CumbaJohnny"), he was not indicted.

According to the indictment, there were 4,000 people who registered with the Shadowcrew.com website.

Once registered, they could buy stolen account numbers or counterfeit documents at auction, or read "Tutorials and How-To's" describing the use of cryptography in magnetic strips on credit cards, debit cards and ATM cards so that the numbers could be used.

Moderators of the website punished members who did not abide by the site's rules, including providing refunds to buyers if the stolen card numbers proved invalid.

In addition to the card numbers, numerous other objects of identity theft were sold at auction, including counterfeit passports, drivers' licenses, Social Security cards, credit cards, debit cards, birth certificates, college student identification cards, and health insurance cards.

One member sold 18 million e-mail accounts with associated usernames, passwords, dates of birth, and other personally identifying information.

Most of those indicted were members who actually sold illicit items.

Members who maintained or moderated the website itself were also indicted, including one who attempted to register the .cc domain name Shadowcrew.cc.

The Secret Service dubbed their investigation "Operation Firewall" and believed that up to $4.3 million was stolen, as ShadowCrew shared its information with other groups called Carderplanet and Darkprofits.

The investigation involved units from the United States, Bulgaria, Belarus, Canada, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

Gonzalez was initially charged with possession of 15 fake credit and debit cards in Newark, New Jersey, though he avoided jail time by providing evidence to the United States Secret Service against his cohorts.

19 ShadowCrew members were indicted.

Gonzalez then returned to Miami.

The hacking was an embarrassment to TJ Maxx, which discovered the breach in December 2006.

The company initially believed the intrusion began in May 2006, but further investigation revealed breaches dating back to July 2005.

One of his alleged co-conspirators was Stephen Watt, known in the hacker world as "Unix Terrorist" and "Jim Jones."

Watt worked at Morgan Stanley in New York City and wrote the sniffer program.

While cooperating with authorities, he was said to have masterminded the hacking of TJX Companies, in which 45.6 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen over an 18-month period ending in 2007, topping the 2005 breach of 40 million records at CardSystems Solutions.

Gonzalez and 10 others sought targets while wardriving and seeking vulnerabilities in wireless networks along U.S. Route 1 in Miami.

They compromised cards at BJ's Wholesale Club, DSW, Office Max, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority and T.J. Maxx.

The incident occurred in September 2007.

About 5,000 card numbers were stolen.

Fraudulent transactions totaling $600,000 were reported on 675 of the cards.

Authorities became suspicious after the conspirators kept returning to the restaurant to reintroduce their hack, because it would not restart after the company computers shut down.

The first was in May 2008 in New York for the Dave & Busters case (trial schedule September 2009).

The second was in May 2008 in Massachusetts for the TJ Maxx case (trial scheduled early 2010).

Gonzalez was arrested on May 7, 2008, on charges stemming from hacking into the Dave & Buster's corporate network from a point of sale location at a restaurant in Islandia, New York.

The third was in August 2009 in New Jersey in connection with the Heartland Payment case.

On March 25, 2010, Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

Gonzalez bought his first computer when he was 12, and by the time he was 14 managed to hack into NASA.

He attended South Miami High School in Miami, Florida, where he was described as the "troubled" pack leader of computer nerds.

The indictment referred to Gonzalez by the screen names "cumbajohny", "201679996", "soupnazi", "segvec", "kingchilli" and "stanozlolz."