A leading figure in a notorious cybercrime organization has pleaded guilty before a Nevada court to racketeering charges.
Russian national Sergey Medvedev — aka “Stells,” “segmed” and “serjbear” — pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), according to the Department of Justice (DoJ).
According to the indictment, the InFraud group he was a member of was founded in 2010 by 34-year-old Ukrainian Svyatoslav Bondarenko to be an expert in “carding” — the online trafficking of stolen personal and financial information.
“Under the slogan, ‘In Fraud We Trust,’ the organization directed traffic and potential purchasers to the automated vending sites of its members, which served as online conduits to traffic in stolen means of identification, stolen financial and banking information, malware and other illicit goods,” the DoJ said.
“It also provided an escrow service to facilitate illicit digital currency transactions among its members and employed screening protocols that purported to ensure only high quality vendors of stolen cards, personally identifiable information and other contraband were permitted to advertise to members.”
By March 2017 there were an estimated 10,900 registered members of InFraud. The DoJ claimed that during its seven-year history it made over $568m from its victims — financial institutions, merchants and individuals.
The group was finally taken down in early 2018 after police in Australia, the UK, France, Italy, Kosovo and Serbia swooped on 13 individuals thought to have key roles in InFraud. An indictment was subsequently released charging 36 suspected members.
Medvedev, 33, was extradited from Thailand after being arrested there during the 2018 international police crackdown.
The news comes just days after another Russian national, Aleksei Burkov, was sentenced to nine years behind bars for operating the Cardplanet website, which sold stolen card data.