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By 1999, the lovelorn credit card thief was in state prison, having pleaded guilty to felony theft charges in San Mateo County. Federal investigators allege that he gave his Biosearch account to two men, one of whom has since left the country. The other, they believe, is Mikhail Moiseev, who they allege authorized stolen credit cards for other thieves and eventually became a crime partner of Igor Kogan.
Along with the plethora of MasterCards and Visas stolen from Bay Area mailboxes, postal inspectors noticed that a great many Macy's Department Store cards were being stolen. A number of these cards had been used to purchase $500 gift certificates at Macy's, which could, in turn, be used to buy merchandise in a way that was nearly as untraceable as if it were cash.
One afternoon, a federal agent followed one of his suspects in the credit card case to the Macy's store at Union Square in downtown San Francisco, where he recognized a woman who got out of the car and entered the building through a door marked "Employee Entrance." Inna Zeldovich, the woman who entered the store, was no stranger to law enforcement. Zeldovich at one point was evicted from a condominium in San Bruno after essentially squatting there under a sublease arrangement that the landlord had not approved, and then ceasing to pay the rent. (In fact, court records show that when investigators followed her to work at Macy's, her wages were still being garnished to satisfy that landlord's claim.)
At the direction of federal agents, Macy's security force directed its store cameras on Zeldovich, who was working as a clerk. The cameras allegedly caught her activating stolen Macy's cards from her cash register and selling gift certificates to accomplices who were using stolen credit cards. She was indicted in federal court along with Moiseev, Kogan, and Ilyagueva, and last month pleaded guilty to conspiracy and unlawfully using personal information to gain access to credit.
One more piece of the Russian credit theft puzzle had been put in place. And solving that puzzle proved fruitful beyond just capturing Bay Area criminals. "Our goal was to identify who the bad guys were, what their MO [mode of operation] was, and try to find out things to make use of that MO in other areas," says Dortch.
"In a lot of variations, it's the same [pattern] outside of the Bay Area as well. Basically, when we had the intelligence that we got off of this crew, it gave us insight into how these crimes are being committed."
But as you read this sentence, someone else is almost certainly stealing a credit card somewhere in the Bay Area. Despite all that was learned chasing this particular network of thieves, the epidemic continues. "They're only limited by their imagination," Dortch says.
And their nerve.
In May 2001, a posse of postal inspectors, FBI agents, and local police showed up at the crack of dawn at Igor Kogan's parents' home in San Bruno, where they found and arrested a sleepy Kogan still in his skivvies. Simultaneously, Diana Ilyagueva and Inna Zeldovich were also arrested. Moiseev was taken into custody a few months later.
In December, Kogan pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy, theft, and credit card fraud in San Francisco. Last month, Diana Ilyagueva and Inna Zeldovich also pleaded guilty to charges related to credit card theft. They are scheduled to be sentenced in March.
Mikhail Moiseev jumped bail in November, and apparently took off in a 2003 Ford he'd rented from Enterprise Rent-A-Car in San Bruno. He was recaptured last month in Monterey County, allegedly in possession of six stolen credit cards.
