Pierluigi Paganini
June 27, 2020
The Russian national named Aleksey Yurievich Burkov (30) was sentenced to nine years in prison for running Cardplanet and Direct Connection, two credit card market that facilitated payment card fraud, computer hacking, and other illegal activities.
In 2019, Burkov was accused of running the online criminal marketplace, Cardplanet, according to the investigators, the site helped crooks to organize more than $20 million in credit card fraud.
The man operated the Cardplanet site between at least early 2009 through at least August 2013.
In November, the suspect has been extradited to the US to face criminal charges.
Burkov was also operating another invite-only cybercrime forum, to obtain membership prospective members needed three existing members to “vouch” for their good reputation in the cybercrime community. The membership also requested a sum of money, normally $5,000, as insurance. Cardplanet was offering for sale stolen credit-card numbers for a price ranging from $3 to $60.
According to the indictment, Cardplanet was used to sell data from over 150,000 stolen payment cards.
Cardplanet also provided a paid “checker” service that allowed customers to verify the validity of payment card numbers they purchased.
The suspect was arrested in Israel in 2015, his case made the headlines multiple times because media speculated a possible prisoner swap with Naama Issachar, an Israeli-American that was arrested in Russia on cannabis charges. In October, the Israel justice minister approved the extradition of Alexei Burkov to the United States.
In January 2019, Burkov entered the plea to charges including fraud, access device fraud and conspiracy to commit access device fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering in a federal court in Alexandria.
In court, Burkov admitted to running a second website on an invite-only basis that was also for sale stolen payment data.
The man has already served part of his sentence in prison, this means that he will only have to spend the remaining part of the nine years before being released.
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(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Cardplanet)
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