Jaikumar Vijayan provides some interesting details on yesterday’s indictments over on Computerworld. Jai reports:
All of the individuals charged in the U.S. so far are from Russia and East European countries and were either money mules who helped transfer stolen money out of the U.S., or individuals who managed or recruited them.
Most of those charged on Thursday entered the country on J-1 non-immigrant visas, which are frequently used by students in cultural exchange programs and other short-term training programs. The visas allow those holding them to remain in the country for months at a time and permit them to open U.S. bank accounts.
Which raises the obvious question about how well our security screening is working out for us.
But even if we weren’t opening our doors to foreign-born mules, we would still be facing a problem as domestic mules could be recruited and replaced while the brains behind the cybercrime remain outside our borders, as Robert McMillan reports in a related news story.