Turkish Police Arrest Alleged ATM Hacker-Kidnapper
A notorious Turkish ATM hacker Cha0, who has been accused of torturing a police informant, was arrested Friday by Turkish officials — despite the hacker’s claim that not even the FBI could catch him, Turkey’s Haber 7 reports.
In August, a fellow hacker-turned-informant who used the online nickname Kier accused Cha0 and his associates of abducting and beating him earlier in the year. Cha0 sent a photo of Kier — pictured in only his underwear and holding a sign saying, “I’m a rat. … I am fucked by Cha0” — to Haber 7.
Kier disappeared a second time after telling reporters via an e-mail that Cha0 was protected by Turkish officials. Cha0 denied any role in the second disappearance.
“I always had a question mark on my mind on where Cha0’s men got the resources,” Kier wrote the reporters in Turkish. “I found out firsthand when I had a weapon pointed at my head.”
ChaO’s real name is Cagatay Evyapan, according to the report, and the outlet says it will publish a secret interview with the hacker on Monday.
A well-known figure in the credit card fraud underground, Cha0 markets a high-quality ATM skimmer and PIN pad that fraudsters can covertly affix to certain models of cash machines. The skimmer records the magstripe data on a consumer’s debit or credit card as they feed it into an ATM, while the PIN pad overlay stores the user’s PIN. The stolen magstripe data can later be encoded onto a blank card and used to make withdrawals from victims’ accounts.