A Ukrainian man has pleaded guilty to charges connected with his role as an administrator of notorious cybercrime marketplace SSNDOB.
Vitalii Chychasov, 37, was arrested in March 2022 while attempting to enter Hungary and extradited to the US four months later. A second administrator of the site, Sergey Pugach, was arrested in May 2022.
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Chychasov pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit access device fraud and trafficking in unauthorized access devices, and now faces a maximum of 15 years in prison. As part of the plea deal, he forfeited $5m in proceeds from the access device fraud, according to the Justice Department (DoJ).
The DoJ described SSNDOB as a “series of websites” that sold stolen personal information (PII), including names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers belonging to US citizens. They operated across multiple domains, including Blackjob.biz, SSNDOB.club, SSNDOB.vip and SSNDOB.ws, which Chychasov also handed over to the authorities as part of the agreement.
SSNDOB’s administrators created adverts on various dark web forums for the marketplace’s services, as well as providing customer support, and regularly monitored user activities, including when buyers deposited money into their accounts.
They also worked hard to keep their identity a secret and the site up and running, including by running servers in multiple countries, and requiring buyers to use crypto to buy the stolen data.
The site was frequented by fraudsters who purchased the stolen data to use in various schemes, including tax and credit card fraud, the DoJ said.
It’s claimed the marketplace listed the PII of around 24 million victims and made millions in sales.
As reported by Infosecurity last year when SSNDOB was dismantled, the site received around $22m in Bitcoin since 2015 across 100,000 transactions, with some “power users” spending over $100,000 on bulk purchases of PII.