A Russian citizen has pleaded guilty to multiple corruption charges after being singled out as one of the leaders of a carding network (a term used to refer to credit card traffic). Authorities claim that this group traded in credit cards, hacking tools and stolen identities.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that Sergey Medvedev, also known as “Stells”, “segmed” and “serjbear”, was one of the leading members of the illegal organization Infraud, a prominent cybercriminal group specializing in payment card data trading.
In addition to credit card traffic, carding also refers to other payment card-related fraud variants, including selling on exchange financial information, illegal purchases, money laundering, among others.
American authorities say that in addition to credit card fraud, Infraud also had thousands of personal and bank records at their disposal, as well as related to the sale of advanced malware.
Infraud remained active for about seven years, cybersecurity experts say. Russian hacker Svyatoslav Bondarenko (also known as “Obnon”, “Rector” or “Helkern”) launched this project in 2010 under the slogan ‘In Fraud We Trust’, which soon after already had a large number of customers and partners. Finally, law enforcement agencies dismantled Infraud in 2017, arresting many of its members.
Among the services that Infraud offered its users are the evaluation of the stolen information, as well as a custody service using cryptocurrencies.
Regular site maintenance also required a lot of attention, especially the task of approving new members. Moderators supervised specific sectors related to the carding group depending on areas of expertise, while vendors were in charge of Infraud’s business activities.
In addition, the DOJ estimates that Infraud generated more than $568 million in actual losses for companies and users, although estimated losses could amount to up to $2 billion. According to the DOJ, virtually any financial activity could have been affected by these hackers.
By appearing before the judge responsible for your case, the defendant pleaded guilty to participating in this fraudulent scheme. Since the authorities intervened in this group, arrests have been made in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Kosovo and Serbia.
He is a cyber security and malware researcher. He studied Computer Science and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2006. He is actively working as an cyber security investigator. He also worked for different security companies. His everyday job includes researching about new cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in enterprise security implementation.