The US right this moment unveiled sanctions and indictments in opposition to the alleged proprietor of Joker’s Stash, a now-defunct cybercrime retailer that peddled tens of hundreds of thousands of fee playing cards stolen in a few of the largest information breaches of the previous decade. The federal government additionally indicted and sanctioned a prime Russian cybercriminal generally known as Taleon, whose cryptocurrency trade Cryptex has advanced into certainly one of Russia’s most lively cash laundering networks.
A 2016 display shot of the Joker’s Stash homepage. The hyperlinks have been redacted.
The U.S. Division of Justice (DOJ) right this moment unsealed an indictment in opposition to a 38-year-old man from Novosibirsk, Russia for allegedly working Joker’s Stash, a particularly profitable carding store that came online in late 2014. Joker’s offered playing cards stolen in a gentle drip of breaches at U.S. retailers, together with Saks Fifth Avenue, Lord and Taylor, Bebe Stores, Hilton Hotels, Jason’s Deli, Whole Foods, Chipotle, Wawa, Sonic Drive-In, the Hy-Vee supermarket chain, Buca Di Beppo, and Dickey’s BBQ.
The federal government believes the brains behind Joker’s Stash is Timur Kamilevich Shakhmametov, a person who’s listed in Russian incorporation paperwork as the owner of Arpa Plus, a Novosibirsk firm that makes cell video games.
Early in his profession (circa 2000) Shakhmametov was generally known as “v1pee” and was the founding father of the Russian hacker group nerf[.]ru, which periodically revealed hacking instruments and exploits for software program vulnerabilities.
The Russian hacker group Nerf as described in a March 2006 article within the Russian hacker journal xakep.ru.
By 2004, v1pee had adopted the moniker “Vega” on the unique Russian language hacking discussion board Mazafaka, the place this person grew to become one of many extra dependable distributors of stolen fee playing cards.
Within the years that adopted, Vega would cement his status as a prime carder on different boards, together with Verified, DirectConnection, and Carder[.]professional.
Vega additionally grew to become generally known as somebody who had the within monitor on “unlimited cashouts,” a globally coordinated cybercrime scheme by which crooks hack a financial institution or fee card processor and use cloned playing cards at money machines to quickly withdraw hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in just some hours.
“Hello, there’s work on d+p, limitless,” Vega wrote in a personal message to a different person on Verified in Dec. 2012, referring to “dumps and PINs,” the slang time period for stolen debit playing cards with the corresponding PINs that might permit ATM withdrawals.
This batch of some 5 million playing cards put up on the market Sept. 26, 2017 on the now-defunct carding website Joker’s Stash has been tied to a breach at Sonic Drive-In.
Joker’s Stash got here on-line within the wake of a number of monumental card breaches at retailers like Goal and House Depot, and the ensuing glut of stock had depressed costs for stolen playing cards. However Joker’s would distinguish itself by catering to high-roller prospects — basically avenue gangs in the US that might buy hundreds of stolen fee playing cards in a single go.
Confronted with a purchaser’s market, Joker’s Stash set themselves aside by specializing in loyalty packages, frequent purchaser reductions, money-back ensures, and simply plain good customer support. Huge spenders got entry to probably the most freshly hacked fee playing cards, and have been provided the flexibility to get free substitute playing cards if any turned out to be duds.
Joker’s Stash additionally was distinctive as a result of it claimed to promote solely fee playing cards that its personal hackers had stolen instantly from retailers. On the time, card retailers usually resold fee playing cards that have been stolen and equipped by many third-party hackers of unknown reliability or status.
In January 2021, Joker’s Stash announced it was closing up shop, after European authorities seized a variety of servers for the fraud retailer, and its proprietor got here down with the Coronavirus.
A DOJ assertion credit the U.S. Secret Service for main the years-long investigations (the Service’s unique mandate was not defending the president; it was pursuing counterfeiters, and modern-day carders positively qualify as that). Prosecutors allege Joker’s Stash earned revenues of at the very least $280 million, however presumably greater than $1 billion (the broad vary is a consequence of a number of variables, together with the fast fluctuation within the worth of bitcoin and the stolen items they have been peddling).
TALEON
The proprietors of Joker’s Stash may have sold tens of millions of stolen payment cards, however Taleon is by far the larger fish on this legislation enforcement motion as a result of his varied cryptocurrency and money exchanges have allegedly helped to maneuver billions of {dollars} into and out of Russia over the previous 20 years.
An indictment unsealed right this moment names Taleon as Sergey Sergeevich Ivanov, 44, of Saint Petersburg, Russia. The federal government says Ivanov, who seemingly modified his surname from Omelnitskii in some unspecified time in the future, laundered cash for Joker’s Stash, amongst many different cybercrime shops.
In an announcement right this moment, the Treasury Division stated Ivanov has laundered tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}’ price of digital foreign money for ransomware actors, preliminary entry brokers, darknet market distributors, and different legal actors for about the final 20 years.
First showing on Mazafaka within the early 2000s, Taleon was identified on the boards as somebody who might reliably transfer massive quantities of bodily money. Sources acquainted with the investigation stated Taleon’s service emerged as one of many few remaining home money supply companies nonetheless working after Russia invaded Ukraine in Feb. 2022.
Taleon arrange his service to facilitate transfers between Moscow, St. Petersburg and monetary establishments within the West. Taleon’s personal messages on some hacker boards have been leaked through the years and listed by the cyber intelligence platform Intel 471. These messages point out Taleon labored on most of the similar ATM cashouts as Vegas, so it’s clear the 2 had a longtime enterprise relationship effectively earlier than Joker’s Stash got here into being.
Someday round 2013, Taleon launched a partnership with a cash switch enterprise known as pm2btc[.]me. PM2BTC allowed prospects to transform funds from the digital foreign money Good Cash (PM) into bitcoin, after which have the steadiness (minus a processing payment) obtainable on a bodily debit card that might be used at ATMs, for procuring on-line, or at retail shops.
A screenshot of an internet site reviewing PM2BTC.
The U.S. authorities itself set issues in movement for Taleon’s nascent cryptocurrency trade enterprise in 2013 after the DOJ levied cash laundering costs in opposition to the proprietors of Liberty Reserve, one of many largest digital currencies in operation on the time. Liberty Reserve was heavily used by cybercriminals of all stripes. The federal government stated the service had greater than 1,000,000 customers worldwide, and laundered in extra of $6 billion in suspected legal proceeds.
Within the days following the takedown of Liberty Reserve, KrebsOnSecurity ran a story that examined discussions throughout a number of prime Russian cybercrime boards about the place crooks might really feel protected parking their stolen funds. The reply concerned Bitcoin, but additionally Taleon’s new service.
UAPS
A part of the attraction of Taleon’s trade was that it gave its vetted prospects an “utility programming interface” or API that made it easy for dodgy on-line retailers promoting stolen items and cybercrime companies to just accept cryptocurrency deposits from their prospects, and to handle payouts to any suppliers and associates.
This API is synonymous with a service Taleon and associates function within the background known as UAPS, quick for “Common Nameless Cost System.” UAPS has passed by a number of different names together with “Pinpays,” and in October 2014 it landed Joker’s Stash as its first large consumer.
A supply with information of the investigation instructed KrebsOnSecurity that Taleon is a pilot who owns and flies round in his personal helicopter.
Ivanov seems to have little to no social media presence, however the 40-year-old girl he lives with in St. Petersburg does, and he or she has a photograph on her Vktontake web page that reveals the 2 of them in 2019 flying over Lake Ladoga, a big physique of water instantly north of St. Petersburg.
Sergey “Taleon” Ivanov (proper) in 2019 in his helicopter with the girl he lives with, flying over a lake north of St. Petersburg, Russia.
BRIANS CLUB
In late 2015, a significant competitor to Joker’s Stash emerged utilizing UAPS for its back-end funds: BriansClub. BriansClub sullies this writer’s title, photographs and status to hawk hundreds of thousands of credit score and debit playing cards stolen from retailers in the US and world wide.
An advert for BriansClub has been utilizing my title and likeness for years to hawk hundreds of thousands of stolen bank cards.
In 2019, somebody hacked BriansClub and relieved the fraud shop of more than 26 million stolen payment cards — an estimated one-third of the 87 million fee card accounts that have been on sale throughout all underground retailers at the moment. An nameless supply shared that card information with KrebsOnSecurity, which finally shared it with a consortium of monetary establishments that issued many of the playing cards.
After that incident, the administrator of BriansClub modified the location’s login web page in order that it featured a duplicate of my telephone invoice, Social Safety card, and a hyperlink to my full credit score report [to this day, random cybercriminals confuse Yours Truly with the proprietor of BriansClub].
Alex Holden is founding father of the Milwaukee-based cybersecurity agency Hold Security. Holden has lengthy maintained visibility into cryptocurrency transactions made by BriansClub.
Holden stated these information present BriansClub sells tens of hundreds of {dollars} price of stolen bank cards each day, and that within the final two years alone the BriansClub administrator has eliminated greater than $242 million price of cryptocurrency income from the UAPS platform.
The BriansClub login web page, because it regarded from late 2019 till just lately.
Passive area title system (DNS) information present that in its early days BriansClub shared a server in Lithuania together with only a handful of different domains, together with safe.pinpays[.]com, the crime discussion board Verified, and a slew of carding retailers working underneath the banner Rescator.
As KrebsOnSecurity detailed in December 2023, the Rescator retailers have been instantly concerned in a few of the largest fee card breaches of the previous decade. These embody the 2013 breach at Target and the 2014 breach at Home Depot, intrusions that uncovered greater than 100 million fee card information.
CRYPTEX
In early 2018, Taleon and the proprietors of UAPS launched a cryptocurrency trade known as Cryptex[.]internet that has emerged as a significant mover of ill-gotten crypto cash.
Taleon reminds UAPS prospects they’ll take pleasure in 0% fee and no “know your buyer” (KYC) necessities “on our trade Cryptex.”
Cryptex has been related to fairly a couple of ransomware transactions, together with the most important identified ransomware fee to this point. In February 2024, a Fortune 50 ransomware sufferer paid a record $75 million ransom to a Russian cybercrime group that calls themselves the Darkish Angels. A supply with information of the investigation stated an evaluation of that fee reveals roughly half of it was processed by means of Cryptex.
That supply supplied a display shot of Cryptex’s sending and receiving publicity as seen by Chainalysis, an organization the U.S. authorities and plenty of cryptocurrency exchanges depend on to flag transactions related to suspected cash laundering, ransomware payouts, or facilitating funds for darknet web sites.
Chainalysis finds that Cryptex has obtained greater than $1.6 billion since its inception, and that this quantity is roughly equal to its sending publicity (though the entire variety of outflows is sort of half of the inflows).
The graphic signifies an excessive amount of cash flowing into Cryptex — roughly 1 / 4 of it — is coming from bitcoin ATMs around the world. Specialists say most of these ATM inflows to Cryptex are bitcoin ATM money deposits from prospects of carding web sites like BriansClub and Jokers Stash.
A screenshot of Chainalysis’s abstract of illicit exercise on Cryptex for the reason that trade’s inception in 2018.
The indictments launched right this moment don’t definitively join Taleon to Cryptex. Nonetheless, PM2BTC (which teamed up with Taleon to launch UAPS and Pinpays) and Cryptex have now been sanctioned by the U.S. Division of the Treasury.
Treasury’s Monetary Crimes Enforcement Community (FinCEN) levied sanctions right this moment in opposition to PM2BTC underneath a strong new “Part 9714” authority included within the Combating Russian Cash Laundering Act, adjustments enacted in 2022 to make it simpler to focus on monetary entities concerned in laundering cash for Russia.
Treasury first used this authority final yr in opposition to Bitzlato, a cryptocurrency trade working in Russia that grew to become a money laundering conduit for ransomware attackers and dark market dealers.
THE LAUNDROMAT
An investigation into the company entities behind UAPS and Cryptex reveals a corporation included in 2012 in Scotland known as Orbest Investments LP. Information from the UK’s enterprise registry present the homeowners of Orbest Investments are two entities: CS Proxy Options CY, and RM Everton Ltd.
Public enterprise information additional reveal that CS Proxy Options and RM Everton are co-owners of Progate Options, a holding firm that featured prominently in a June 2017 report from Bellingcat and Transparency International (PDF) on cash laundering networks tied to the Kremlin.
“Regulation enforcement businesses imagine that the entire quantity laundered by means of this course of might be as excessive as US$80 billion,” the joint report reads. “Though it isn’t clear the place all of this cash got here from, investigators declare it consists of important quantities of cash that have been diverted from the Russian treasury and state contracts.”
Their story constructed on reporting published earlier that year by the Organized Crime and Corruption Mission (OCCRP) and Novaya Gazeta, which discovered that at the very least US$20.8 billion was secretly moved out of Russia between 2010 and 2014 by means of an unlimited cash laundering machine comprising over 5,000 authorized entities generally known as “The Laundromat.”
Picture: occrp.org
“Utilizing firm information, reporters tracked the names of some purchasers after executives refused to offer them out,” the OCCRP report explains. “They discovered the heavy customers of the scheme have been wealthy and highly effective Russians who had made their fortunes from coping with the Russian state.”
Wealthy Sanders is a blockchain analyst and investigator who advises the legislation enforcement and intelligence neighborhood. Sanders simply returned from a three-week sojourn by means of Ukraine, touring with Ukrainian troopers whereas mapping out dodgy Russian crypto exchanges which can be laundering cash for narcotics networks working within the area. Sanders stated right this moment’s sanctions by the Treasury Division will seemingly have an instantaneous impression on Cryptex and its prospects.
“Each time an entity is sanctioned, the implications on-chain are immense,” Sanders instructed KrebsOnSecurity. “No matter whether or not an trade is definitely compliant or simply advantage indicators it, it’s the case throughout the board that exchanges will take note of these sanctions.”
“This motion reveals these fee processors for illicit platforms will get consideration finally,” Sanders continued. “Even when it took method too lengthy on this case, Cryptex knew the vast majority of their quantity was problematic, knew why it was problematic, and did it anyway. And this must be a get up name for different exchanges that know full effectively that the majority of their quantity is problematic.”
The U.S. Division of State is offering a reward of as much as $10 million every for info resulting in the arrests and/or convictions of Shakhmametov and Ivanov. The State announcement says separate rewards of as much as $1 million every are being provided for info resulting in the identification of different leaders of the Joker’s Stash legal market (aside from Shakhmametov), in addition to the identification of different key leaders of the UAPS, PM2BTC, and PinPays transnational legal teams (aside from Ivanov).
Picture: U.S. Secret Service.
