Boeing Employees Credit Union prides itself in proactivelydetecting and stopping any type of fraud and immediately notifyingauthorities and working with them to catch criminals.

That's why BECU was concerned when several media sources,including Credit Union Times, erred in reporting Tuesdaythat thousands of BECU credit card numbers were traced to thepossession of a Russian hacker who was arrested last week byfederal authorities.

BECU said Wednesday that only eight credit card numbers had beenstolen, and four were used to make under $5,000 in fraudulentpurchases. As soon as BECU became aware of this, the credit cardnumbers were immediately discontinued and Seattle police werenotified, the credit union said.

“We take the stance that it is in the best interest of ourmembers to proactively not only to reach out to them but also toreach out to law enforcement to help them solve these cases. In thelong run, that is going to help everyone,” said Todd Pietzch, BECUpublic relations manager.

The Department of Justice reported that Dmitry Zubakha, 25, ofMoscow, was taken into custody July 18 in Cyprus and facesextradition to the U.S. to face various computer hacking charges.Zubakha also faces charges of possessing credit card numbers fromthe $10.6 billion Seattle-based credit union that were used to make fraudulentpurchases in 2009.

According to the indictment, Zubakha and his co-conspirator,Sergey Logashov, allegedly mounted a denial of service attacksagainst Amazon, Priceline and eBay in 2008. The attacksprimarily disrupted the Amazon site and the ability of customers toaccess the site for hours while the company attempted to deal withthe attacks from a “botnet,” or web of connected computer, theindictment charges.

The DOJ indictment read Zubakha “possessed credit card trackdata for over 28,000 credit cards, which included credit cardaccount numbers for accounts established through and issued by theBoeing Employees Credit Union.” However, the indictment didnot specify that only eight of those 28,000 credit card accountnumbers came from BECU.

“Eight of those credit card numbers were identified as belongingto our members and only four of those had any fraud on them,”explained Pietzch. “Once we identified them (credit card numbers)we shut them down, so there was less than $5,000 worth offraud. The other 27,000 credit card numbers were from otherfinancial institutions.”