Albert Gonzalez

Who is Albert Gonzalez?

Albert Gonzalez is an American computer hacker and computer criminal who is accused of masterminding the combined credit card theft and subsequent reselling of more than 170 million card and ATM numbers from 2005 through 2007—the biggest such fraud in history.

Gonzalez and his accomplices used SQL injection to deploy backdoors on several corporate systems in order to launch packet sniffing attacks which allowed him to steal computer data from internal corporate networks.

During his spree he was said to have thrown himself a $75,000 birthday party and complained about having to count $340,000 by hand after his currency-counting machine broke. Gonzalez stayed at lavish hotels but his formal homes were modest.

Gonzalez had three federal indictments:

May 2008 in New York for the Dave & Busters case

May 2008 in Massachusetts for the TJ Maxx case

August 2009 in New Jersey in connection with the Heartland Payment case.

On March 25, 2010, Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

Gonzalez along with his crew were featured on the 5th season episode of the CNBC series American Greed titled: Episode 40: Hackers: Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin’.