Bernik made his charges on behalf of a fictional corporation called Lexbay Ltd., but in the FTC case, the scammers would mimic legitimate companies -- taking real federal tax I.D. numbers and then setting up fake businesses with nearly identical names that appeared to be located nearby. In a move that apparently tricked credit card processors into granting it a merchant account, Adele Services, for example, was set up to mimic a legitimate Bronx, New York group called Adele Organization.

When the scammers tried to register merchant accounts with credit card processors, the processors would do some investigating, but using tricks like these, the scammers were always one step ahead.

In fact, the FTC's description of their operation reads like a textbook on how to set up a fake virtual corporation in the Internet age.

The criminals used a range of legitimate business services to make it appear to credit card processors as though they were legitimate U.S. companies, even though the scammers may have never set foot in the U.S.

For example, using a company called , they were able to give their fictional companies addresses that were very close to the companies whose tax IDs they were stealing. Regus lets companies operate "virtual offices" out of a number of prestigious addresses throughout the U.S. -- the Chrysler Building in New York for example -- forwarding mail for as little as US$59 per month.