“The increasing number of such crimes not only impacts the economy but threatens national security,” the FBI said Friday.

The man at the head of the opposition is the FBI’s Shawn Henry, recently appointed head of their Cyber Division. He told reporters Wednesday that the FBI has literally thousands of open cyber crime cases.

“One case in point: We joined our international partners yesterday in announcing a major takedown of a transnational criminal network that was buying and selling stolen financial information through an online forum known as ‘Dark Market‘,” the FBI said Friday.

“The business of the United States is done on the Internet,” said Henry, “And the information that flows electronically 24/7 is increasingly the target of not only identity thieves and scammers, but organized crime groups, terrorists, and overseas governments.”

Yes, even other countries are trying to virtually penetrate the U.S. Henry says about 24 different governments have an “aggressive interest” in obtaining information from or making attacks against American cyber infrastructure.

Henry says that individual hackers and crackers have grouped up into “virtual gangs.”

“In years gone by, if a gang wanted to rob a bank, it needed crooks with various skills — safe cracker, get-away driver, look-out, etc. That’s essentially what we’re seeing in the cyber world today, only these virtual gang members have never met in the physical world,” Henry said.

“There are organized groups that are very successful.”

Michael Patrick Luckett, 37, of Gainesville, Ga. got three years in jail followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay almost $100,000 in restitution to his victims. The Securities and Exchange Commission previously froze $220,900 in Luckett’s accounts, and they will start to distribute that to victims as well.

Luckett pleaded guilty to four counts of mail fraud July 14.

In his scheme, Luckett worked from his Boston apartment and duped about 15 people all around the country to send him more than $450,000 for investment in the fake “Transnational Fund”.

To try and hide his tracks, Luckett filtered the checks through an address in Hartford, which forwarded to Boston. It did not work.

The FBI says Luckett used nearly $100,000 of the funds received for expenses such as his personal rent and meals, making cash withdrawals and promoting the Transnational Fund website to try and get more money.