A 23-year-old Russian national has been indicted in the U.S. and added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Cyber Most Wanted List for his alleged role as the administrator of Marketplace A, a cyber crime forum that sold stolen login credentials, personal information, and credit card data.
Igor Dekhtyarchuk, who first appeared in hacker forums in 2013 under the alias “floraby,” has been accused of charges of wire fraud, access device fraud, and aggravated identity theft, a set of offenses that could lead to up to 20 years in federal prison.
According to the FBI’s Wanted poster, Dekhtyarchuk previously studied at the Ural State University in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and was last known to reside in the city of Kamensk-Uralsky.
“Marketplace A specialized in the sale of unlawfully obtained access devices for compromised online payment platforms, retailers, and credit card accounts, including providing the data associated with those accounts such as names, home addresses, login credentials, and payment card data for the victims, who are the actual owners of those accounts,” the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.
More than 48,000 compromised email accounts and over 39,000 online accounts are alleged to have been traded on the marketplace since its launch in May 2018, with the service averaging about 5,000 daily visitors.
In addition, the carding forum is said to have offered potential customers the ability to purchase a combination of online and credit card accounts belonging to the same victim at different price points, as well as rent a software program that enabled its customers to use the stolen information to access the compromised accounts of an unnamed company.
The FBI said between March and July 2021 it made as many as 13 purchases Dekhtyarchuk through an “online covert employee,” following which the credentials or the login cookies were sent either via a link or the Telegram messaging service upon completing the transaction, granting the investigators access to 131 different accounts.
“The cyber criminal marketplace operated by Dekhtyarchuk promoted and facilitated the sale of compromised credentials, personally identifiable information (PII), and other sensitive financial information,” said FBI Houston Special Agent in Charge, Jim Smith.
“Cyber criminal actors behind these marketplaces go to great lengths to obfuscate their true identities and often utilize other sophisticated methods to further anonymize their activities,” Smith added.