17 indicted in New York on identity theft and other Internet crime charges

: A expansive jury have indicted 17 people, among them a Russian-Ukrainian couple, and a corporation on complaints of personal identity theft, worldwide trafficking in purloined recognition card Numbers and other types of Internet crime, public prosecutors said Wednesday.

The 173-count indictment, resulting from the 2nd form of a two-year investigation, states the suspects trafficked in more than than than 95,000 purloined recognition card Numbers and caused more than $4 million (€2.7 million) in recognition card fraud.

Two of the suspects are a married couple, Vadim Vassilenko, 40, and Yelena Barysheva, 42, who pleaded guilty in September 2006 to falsifying concern records and violating the state's banking law by running an unaccredited bank check cashing and money transportation concern in New York.

Vassilenko, born in Ukraine, was sentenced to two to six old age in prison, and Barysheva, born in Russia, was sentenced to one to three years. Their son, Alexey Baryshev, is being sought, public prosecutors said.

The up-to-the-minute bill of indictment complaints that they and respective other people, who have got been arrested variously in Brooklyn, Maspeth, California, Beaver State and Louisiana, moved more than than $35 million (€23.77 million) in fishy finances through their service, Horse Opera Express International Inc. Today in Americas

Manhattan Assistant District Lawyer Toilet Bandler said the suspects ran Internet advertisements saying they had infinite recognition card Numbers and other identifying information to sell to crooks. One land site was titled "The International Association for the Promotion of Criminal Activity."

At the same time, Bandler said, the suspects provided money transportation and currency exchange services for their customers.

Defense lawyer Daniel Gotlin called the new complaints against Vassilenko and Barysheva unpointed and repetitive, saying many were the same as those charged in 2006. He said public prosecutors also were being vindictive because they had wanted harsher sentences.