COURT FILINGS have disclosed that a thief who stole from bank ATMs for about six months was nabbed by the FBI because he habitually wore a distinctive sweatshirt.

Yuriy Ryabinin was always wearing the same unique sweatshirt in surveillance photos taken when he made withdrawals from ATMs in Missouri and around New York City.

Ryabinin first came to the FBI's attention when he made unauthorised withdrawals from First Bank ATMs in St. Louis, Missouri, while wearing a sweatshirt of an unusual design.

Within five minutes on the morning of October 1 last year in Brooklyn, NY, Ryabinin stole $9,624 from numerous First Bank accounts while wearing the same sweatshirt, according to an FBI court filing. From the photos, the FBI knew that the thief was the same man who had been photographed stealing from bank ATMs in St. Louis, but they didn't know who he was.

A man wearing the same sweatshirt appeared in surveillance photographs taken at ATMs where $750,000 was illegally withdrawn in February from Citibank accounts that had been compromised by backend servers networked to Citibank branded ATMs located in 7-11 stores.

Meanwhile, in another investigation, FBI and US Secret Service agents were monitoring web sites where identity thieves trade in stolen credit and debit cards data. They noticed an individual who posted an ICQ instant-messaging user id number. When they checked in the ICQ directory they found that it belonged to a person named Yuri.

Using Google, the agents linked that ICQ userid number with a person using a ham radio call sign. Another Google search against that call sign discovered photos of Ryabinin at ham radio conferences in Dayton, Ohio, in 2002 and 2003.

In the photos from 2002, Ryabinin was wearing the same unusual sweatshirt as the man who had been photographed making unauthorised withdrawals from ATMs in Missouri and New York City. A call to the FCC with the ham radio call sign gave agents Ryabinin's name and address. They also traced him through an alias on a Michigan drivers licence.

When the agents searched Ryabinin's apartment in Brooklyn, NY, they found more than $800,000 dollars in cash, an electronic device to encode the mag-stripes on counterfeit bank cards, and a computer that was logged on to a web site catering to traffickers in purloined credit and debit card information, according to a US Secret Service affidavit.

In March, Yuriy Ryabinin was indicted in U.S. District Court in New York under the alias Yuriy Rakushchynets, along with Ivan Biltse and Angelina Kitaeva, charged with stealing more than $3 million through the unauthorized use of bank card data.

He might have gotten away with it longer if he'd changed his sweatshirt once in awhile. µ

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