Russian Pleads Guilty to Running ‘CardPlanet’ to Sell Stolen Credit Cards

The first website Burkov operated was an online marketplace for
buying and selling stolen credit card and debit card numbers—called
Cardplanet—which roughly hosted 150,000 payment card details
between the years 2009 and 2013.

Cardplanet marketplace offered stolen payment card details for
anywhere between $2.50 and $10 a card, depending on the card type,
country of origin, and the availability of card owner
information.

The carding website even offered a paid service that allowed buyers
to instantly verify if a stolen payment card were still valid.

“Many of the cards offered for sale belonged to U.S. citizens.
The stolen credit card data from more than 150,000 compromised
payment cards was allegedly sold on Burkov’s site and has resulted
in over $20 million in fraudulent purchases made on U.S. credit
cards,” the Department of Justice said in an old press release.

The majority of such stolen credit cards are obtained using
illegal means such as phishing and the use of banking malware,
malicious software implanted into cash registers at the stores,
leaked databases, and hacked financial account passwords.

Besides Cardplanet, Burkov also masterminded a separate
invite-only forum website for elite cybercriminals where they
advertised stolen personal identity information, malicious
software, and other illegal services, like money laundering and
hacking services.

“To obtain membership in Burkov’s cybercrime forum, prospective
members needed three existing members to “vouch” for their good
reputation among cybercriminals and to provide a sum of money,
normally $5,000, as insurance,” the Department of Justice said on
Thursday.

“These measures were designed to keep law enforcement from
accessing Burkov’s cybercrime forum and to ensure that members of
the forum honored any deals made while conducting business on the
forum.”

Burkov was arrested at Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport in late 2015 and
extradited to the United States in November 2019 after he lost his
appeal against extradition in the Israeli Supreme Court and the
Israeli High Court of Justice.

According to local
media^[2], Russia last year
offered Israel to release one of its citizens Naama Issachar, who
was sentenced in Russia for drug offenses, in exchange for Burkov’s
release, but Israel turned down that offer and allowed his
extradition to the United States.

On admitted charges of access device fraud and conspiracy to
commit computer intrusion, identity theft, wire, and access device
fraud and money laundering, Burkov is facing a prison sentence of
up to 15 years, which will be announced by the federal court in
Alexandria on 8th May 2020.