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Police has arrested three people in connection with hacking into ATM machines installed in 7-11 stores which resulted in loss of millions of dollars to Citibank customers.

All three persons Yuriy Rakushchynets, Ivan Biltse and Angelina Kitaeva have been charged and their trial is under progress in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Seven other people have been arrested over the case and they may have stolen over $2 million by making clones of cards and then withdrawing the money from legitimate cash machines. On his arrest Biltse was reportedly found with $800,000 in cash at his home, so the final total may be much higher.

According to the details these three hacked into an ATM transaction processing firm and collected the PIN numbers from cards used in 7-11 stores. These machines were built and maintained by 7-11 chain although they were branded as Citibank’s. The incident happened in March 08.

Rob Julavits, spokesman for Citibank said:

Citibank’s systems were not compromised in this incident, which ended in March. This had to do with 7-11’s network. Earlier this year Citibank received notice from a third-party transaction processor for the ATM industry that the processor’s systems were potentially compromised in late 2007.

Citibank has already notified and reissued cards to all customers who were affected by this incident.

The 7-11 network is run by two companies which operate the ATMs, Cardtronics and Fiserv Inc. Fiserv was unavailable for comment but is reportedly not involved with the case and Cardtronics has also denied involvement.

Cardtronics released the following statement:

Cardtronics is not involved in this criminal prosecution and therefore does not anticipate that it will issue any statements with respect to this case or the alleged conduct of the defendants in this case. All ATMs owned or operated by Cardtronics have encrypted PIN pads, as well as triple data encryption (3DES) as required by the various electronic fund transfer networks.

FBI says the main perpetrator of this crime is in Russia, who supplied the information and took 70 per cent of the proceeds, with 25 per cent going to the people withdrawing the cash and five per cent covering expenses.

7-Eleven is a worldwide chain of convenience store in eighteen countries, with its largest markets being Japan, the United States, Taiwan, and Thailand.