NEW YORK-Two dozen peo­ple on four con­ti­nents have been ar­rest­ed in an elab­o­rate sting tar­get­ing a black mar­ket for on­line fi­nan­cial fraud, fed­er­al of­fi­cials said yes­ter­day. US.of­fi­cials called the crack­down in the Unit­ed States, Eu­rope, Asia and Aus­tralia the largest en­force­ment ef­fort ever against com­put­er crooks who spe­cialise in steal­ing and traf­fick­ing cred­it card, bank and oth­er per­son­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in­for­ma­tion on the In­ter­net-a prac­tice known as "card­ing."

The of­fi­cials claimed the two-year FBI sting pro­tect­ed more than 400,000 po­ten­tial vic­tims and pre­vent­ed loss­es of around $205 mil­lion. The ar­rests "cause sig­nif­i­cant dis­rup­tion to the un­der­ground econ­o­my and are a stark re­minder that masked (In­ter­net pro­to­col) ad­dress­es and pri­vate fo­rums are no sanc­tu­ary for crim­i­nals and are not be­yond the reach of the FBI," Jan­ice Fedar­cyk, head of the FBI's New York of­fice, said in a state­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to a crim­i­nal com­plaint un­sealed yes­ter­day in fed­er­al court in Man­hat­tan, the sus­pects bought and sold hack­ing pro­grams and stolen in­for­ma­tion via se­cure Web sites. In June 2010, un­der­cov­er in­ves­ti­ga­tors set up their own web­site "as an on­line meet­ing place where the FBI could lo­cate cy­ber­crim­i­nals, in­ves­ti­gate and iden­ti­fy them and dis­rupt their ac­tiv­i­ties," the com­plaint said. The site - called "Carder Prof­it"-was rigged to al­low agents to mon­i­tor and record pri­vate mes­sages and iden­ti­fy the com­put­ers of reg­is­tered users.

AP