US Indicts Russian Over “Carding Shop”

The United States has indicted a 23-year-old Russian man on suspicion of helping to run an illegal online marketplace that sold stolen data to darknet users.

Igor Dekhtyarchuk is accused of working as the administrator for the site, referred to in an indictment returned by federal grand jury on March 16 as Marketplace A. Averaging 5000 daily visitors, the site sold access to more than 48,000 compromised email accounts and more than 39,000 compromised online accounts.

Among cyber-criminals, the site was known as a “carding shop” because it specialized in selling unlawfully obtained access devices for compromised online payment platforms, retailers and credit card accounts. 

Customers of the marketplace would be provided with personally identifiable information stolen from victims, including their names, home addresses, login credentials and payment card data. 

According to an indictment, Dekhtyarchuk is also the real-life identity of a Russian hacker who began appearing in hacker forums in November 2013 under the alias’ floraby.’

“Dekhtyarchuk began advertising the sale of compromised account data in Russian-language hacker forums in April 2018 and opened Marketplace A in May 2018,” said the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas.

It is alleged that after he opened the site, Dekhtyarchuk immediately began to advertise its products. Among the products sold through the site was access to a downloadable software program that the customer could use to input the stolen access devices and access an unnamed company’s compromised accounts.

Dekhtyarchuk was indicted on charges of wire fraud, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft. On March 17 2022, a federal warrant was issued for his arrest. If convicted, Dekhtyarckuk faces up to 20 years in federal prison.  

Dekhtyarchuk was previously a student at Ural State University in Yekaterinburg, Russia, and was last known to reside in Kamensk-Uralsky, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia. He is currently on the FBI’s most wanted list.

“This case exemplifies the need for all of us, right now, to take steps to protect our online identity, our personal data, and our monetary accounts,” said US Attorney Brit Featherston.