NEW YORK – A Malaysian national, arrested in October hours after flying into Kennedy International Airport, pleaded guilty yesterday to hacking into the Federal Reserve’s computer system and to illegally possessing hundreds of thousands of card account numbers and other account information, including those from a number of credit unions.
Lin Mun Poo, 32, made a career of compromising computer servers belonging to financial institutions, defense contractors, and major corporations, among others, and selling or trading the information, according to authorities.
Poo was arrested at a New York diner on Oct. 21, within hours of flying into the country. He had an encrypted laptop that held credit card data from some 400,000 accounts, including members of Mercer County New Jersey Teachers FCU and Firemen’s Association of the State of New York FCU, and others. The credit union data was stolen from credit union data processor FedComp, according to prosecutors. Poo told authorities he had traveled to the U.S. to obtain credit card data from other hackers he planned to use to create bogus cards and withdraw cash from ATMs.
Poo also hacked into the computer network of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland last June, resulting in thousands of dollars of damage from the effects on 10 or more computers. No Federal Reserve data or information was accessed or compromised, but Poo admitted he added “malicious code” to a Federal Reserve computer.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 13.
