Cybercriminal indictees include informant

WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 (UPI) -- U.S. prosecutors say an investigation into online credit card number theft revealed that one of the perpetrators was an alleged hacker working with police.

One of the people indicted last week in charges released against a loose confederation of cybercriminals was Albert Gonzalez, 27, of Miami. Prosecutors said Gonzalez appeared to be a reformed hacker working with police but was secretly still participating in credit card number theft, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Officials said the busted hacking ring operated internationally, targeting major U.S. retailers by plundering the credit card numbers of millions of American shoppers. Eleven people were indicted as being members of the ring, which allegedly operated from the Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia, where they say the criminals stored much of their data on computer servers.

"This was the largest hacking and theft of credit and debit card information ever successfully investigated and prosecuted within the United States," Craig Magaw, special agent in charge of the Secret Service's criminal investigative division, told the Times. "This case shows that there are no more boundaries."