NEW YORK – An Israeli hacker, arrested a decade ago as a 19-year-old who penetrated the Pentagon’s database, was convicted last week of a prepaid cards scheme authorities said drained as much as $10 million from U.S. credit unions and banks.
Ehud Tanenbaum, now 29, was arrested in Canada last year, but was extradited to the U.S. to face charges he used information stolen from a distributor of prepaid and debit cards to siphon funds from credit union and bank depositors in the U.S., according to U.S. authorities. He was also charged with hacking into the database of one-time credit union OmniAmerican Bank and using customer information to forge phony payment cards.
In both cases, the information was used by thieves in Bulgaria, Sweden, Canada, Germany, as well as the U.S. to withdraw millions of dollars in cash from ATMs.
Tenenbaum, known by his online alias "the analyzer," was arrested in 1998 along with several other Israelis and two California teens for breaking into the Pentagon’s computers and other government networks.
