The man behind Cardplanet credit card market sentenced to 9 years in prison

A 30-year old Russian national was sentenced to nine years in prison for running Cardplanet and Direct Connection credit card market.

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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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Cardplanet)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.