The Dept. of Justice has recently released an excellent report titled: Data Breaches, What the Underground World of “Carding” Reveals.  I will be commenting on this as I read through it, it is extremely thorough and eye-opening.  At first glance, this jumped out at me:

In a second case connecting terrorism and credit card fraud, three British men
were convicted of inciting terrorist murder via the Internet under the United Kingdom’s
Terrorism Act of 2000…. In this case, Younes Tsouli, Waseem Mughal, and Tariq Al-
Daour allegedly ran a network of extremist websites and communication forums through
which al-Qaeda statements were issued and videos of beheadings and suicide bombings
in Iraq and other jihadi propaganda were disseminated…. In a second component of the
case, the three men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud banks and credit card
companies…. In relation to these charges, Al-Daour and his associates allegedly used
stolen credit card numbers obtained through phishing scams and Trojan horses to make
more than $3.5 million in fraudulent charges…. In particular, Al-Daour and his
coconspirators used the numbers at hundreds of online stores to purchase equipment and
other items, including prepaid cell phones and airline tickets, to aid jihadi groups in the
field…. In addition, Tsouli and Mughal allegedly used stolen credit card numbers to set up and host jihadi websites…Significantly, the investigation revealed that these
individuals were members of one or more carding organizations, including the nowdefunct
Shadowcrew criminal organization….

Full article at http://www.cybercrime.gov/DataBreachesArticle.pdf