Carders are people, who illegally obtain credit or debit card information and use it to steal the cardholder’s money.
The carding industry is huge: millions of people became victims of such frauds only in the United States. Moreover, the operational field for carders is only getting larger, as online shopping and online transactions are getting more and more popular.
The amount of credit card frauds is only increasing, which makes the governments put more and more effort in trying to prevent such crimes. The punishments for carding might be different and depend on such factors as the amounts of money stolen and criminal history of the carder. In case the amounts are low, the carder might be convicted to fees and jail-time, but in case the amounts are high, the scammer is considered a serious criminal and goes to prison.
Despite the fact that punishments might be severe, the carders have developed criminal schemes, in which it is almost impossible to track them down and reveal their identities. They always hide their IP addresses and locations while online, they use fake names and they usually hack other people’s PC’s in order to remotely perform illegal operations without being tracked.
It is rather obvious that after getting someone’s card information the carders cannot simply transfer the funds to their own accounts. They have to put much effort in laundering the money and hiding the track of it, so that law agencies will not be able to reach them.
In most cases, carders use the funds available on the stolen card to purchase something and resell it. This is not as simple as it might sound, however. Once again, they cannot simply order something from Amazon with delivery to their home address, as it will easily be tracked by the police. They have to purchase goods on the name of the other person, then secretly resell the goods and receive the money without leaving any track behind.
All these is only half of the process for large criminal organizations of this kind. As soon as they receive the money, which cannot be tracked, they have to launder them like all other criminals have to, because they cannot simply buy things with money that appeared from nowhere.
The scale of carding is huge nowadays and almost anyone may sooner or later become a victim of such a fraud. The increasing popularity of online transactions and purchases is only increasing the risks of such operations.