Access to the undercover site, which was taken offline in May this year, was restricted to registered members who were required to provide their email addresses and sometimes even pay a registration fee to access the site.

Among those arrested in the U.S. were an individual who allegedly offered a $50 remote access tool for stealing financial information from compromised computers, another who stole card data from a bank, a hotel and online retailers, and one who possessed information on more than 50,000 compromised credit and debit cards.

One of the alleged carders specialized in a so-called Apple call-in scheme, where he would use social engineering skills and stolen payment card data to try and fraudulently obtain replacement products from Apple, according to the attorney's office.

Each of the arrested individuals face charges that carry sentences ranging from 5 to 20 years in prison.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at or subscribe to . His e-mail address is .