(Bloomberg) -- Stealing credit card information had become a grind. The hacker was spending 12 hours a day hunched over a keyboard, scanning the Internet for weaknesses he could exploit to pilfer data he’d sell for increasingly meager sums.
And so Hieu Minh Ngo began looking for another scam. What the Vietnamese hacker discovered transformed him into one of the most prolific identity thieves in U.S. history. All he needed was a web portal and a bit of social engineering. After that, he said, your information belonged to him.
Over almost two years, according to U.S. officials and court records, Ngo made $2 million by providing illegal access to a massive database of personal information to hundreds of criminals. It was so easy, he said, that he sometimes labored no more than an hour or two a day.
Recommended For You
Want to continue reading?
Become a Free PropertyCasualty360 Digital Reader
Your access to unlimited PropertyCasualty360 content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:
- Breaking insurance news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
- Weekly Insurance Speak podcast featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders
- Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
- Critical converage of the employee benefits and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, BenefitsPRO and ThinkAdvisor
Already have an account? Sign In Now
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
