WASHINGTON, May 23 (UPI) -- U.S. indictments unsealed this week charge 38 people with being part of a multinational cybercrime ring that fooled thousands of Americans into giving up credit card and bank information through spam "phishing" e-mails and used it to steal millions of dollars.

The charges, filed in courts in California and Connecticut, were announced Monday in Romania, where most of those charged live. Others accused in the two indictments live in the United States, Mexico, Vietnam and Cambodia, and some are identified only by their Internet screen names.

The indictments charge an international conspiracy, in which Romanian spammers sent millions of so-called phishing e-mails -- purporting to come from banks or other financial services companies. The e-mails asked the recipients to visit a bogus Web site to "confirm" their card details, ATM personal identification numbers and other information.

In one instance, a distributed denial of service attack was used to disable the real Web site of the bank from which the fake e-mails claimed to come, so customers would not be able check there.

The bogus Web sites, generally hosted on a server that had been hacked without its owner's knowledge, collected the card details and sent them to e-mail addresses the spammers had set up.