Trail in global credit card theft ring leads to Miami

Investigators looking into a vast international credit card theft ring extending from Ukraine and Belarus to China and victimizing nine of the largest U.S. retailers faced a central mystery: Who was orchestrating the crimes on the ground in the United States?

It turned out, investigators now say, that he was right under their noses. And it was a reference to a character in the popular U.S. comedy "Seinfeld" - the Soup Nazi - that helped break the case.

Albert Gonzalez, 27, a second-generation Cuban-American from Miami, was a seemingly reformed hacker turned U.S. Secret Service informant, helping agents identify his former cohorts in the shady online underworld where stolen credit and debit card numbers are bought and sold.