Key takeaway: The case is a reminder for card issuers and underwriting teams that “bust-out” fraud, opening seemingly legitimate accounts with stolen identities and then maxing them out, can scale into millions of dollars in losses before the fraudulent check payments used to temporarily restore credit limits are caught.
Hasan Korkmaz, the 45-year-old owner and operator of Santee, California-based San Diego Logistics Group Inc., pleaded guilty on October 15, 2026, to all 18 counts of an indictment charging him with bank fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California.
Prosecutors said Korkmaz obtained names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and other personal information belonging to nearly 100 people during 2022 and 2023, then used that information to open fraudulent credit card accounts at two banks. He ran up charges on the cards at various businesses, including his own trucking company, with some single transactions reaching $18,500.
To keep the scheme going, Korkmaz made payments to the credit card accounts using checks drawn on accounts with insufficient funds or on accounts that did not exist, which temporarily restored the cards’ available credit limits so he could charge them up again at or near their maximum limits. The scheme caused more than $2.103 million in losses to the two banks.
Korkmaz also laundered the proceeds, including by transferring money to a bank account in Türkiye that he controlled. After carrying out the scheme, he fled to Türkiye and remained there for 18 months before returning to the United States, where he was arrested in June 2025. A sentencing hearing is scheduled for January 8, 2027, before Judge James E. Simmons Jr.
Why it matters: Bust-out schemes like this one target the credit-granting side of the payments industry rather than a single checkout page, but they depend on the same stolen-identity data that fuels account-takeover and card-not-present fraud against merchants. The nearly two-year run of the scheme, combined with the use of fraudulent check payments to manipulate credit limits, underscores why issuers and underwriting teams need identity-verification and payment-monitoring controls built to catch manufactured credit history, not just a single suspicious transaction.
Sources: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of California, The Daily Hodl