Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, say they seized control of the Torpig botnet for 10 days earlier in 2009 and uncovered 70GB worth of financial data, from credit card numbers to bank account credentials. Torpig, also known as Mebroot and Sinowal, has been called the stealthiest rootkit in the wild by security vendor Prevx.

If you want to read the article:
Or you can go directly to the UCSB paper of the "seizing":