Hot off the Press: New Seizure Banner
As part of a fraud case, the government seized two card shops and rolled out a new website seizure banner.
A six-count indictment charges Richard Verret of Quebec, Canada, with unauthorized solicitation of access devices and trafficking counterfeit access devices. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Louisiana, Verret controlled several websites through which he “advertised the sale of gift cards for major restaurant chains, grocery stores, entertainment venues, and other retail business chains.”
Verret allegedly used Telegram to contact customers.
Police arrested Verret, also known as “Luxury187” and “Miami24k,” in April 2022 at the Orlando International Airport. On May 16, 2022, Verret appeared in court for the first time in the Middle District of Louisiana.
The indictment states that:
“Verret would obtain, by fraudulent methods and theft, large quantities of valid gift card account numbers. Because the account numbers could be loaded into mobile applications and scanned at store registers, used for online purchases, and/or re-programmed onto blank access devices, Verret and others could access the account balances and spend the funds without ever having actual, physical possession of the original, legitimate gift cards. Using various methods to conceal his identity and avoid detection, Verret would sell the account numbers over the internet, offering the numbers for sale at steep discounts. As the indictment alleges, Verret’s websites advertised that they offered gift cards to hundreds of different businesses and that the sites were adding more gift cards “every week.” As of late February 2022, one of the websites offered more than 550,000 gift cards to more than 500 different businesses. The total stored value of all of the fraudulently obtained accounts offered for sale was more than $22 million.”
Federal law enforcement served the registrars of two of Verret’s domains with seizure warrants, ordering them to freeze the domains and display a seizure banner. The seizure banner below is visible on www.miami24k.com and www.miami.gift, both of which Verret allegedly operated.
Hopefully feds fired the artist responsible for the blue banners.
The seizure banner, which appears to be the only interesting part of this case, seems to be unique.
Quebec Man Charged with Offering to Sell More Than 500,000 Stolen Gift Card Account Numbers Over the Internet archive.is, archive.org, justice.gov
“europol got your ass,” a user wrote in one of Verret’s promotional threads on Nulled.to