The U.S. Justice Department has piled on more charges against alleged cybercrime kingpin Roman Seleznev, a Russian national who made headlines in July when it emerged that he’d been whisked away to Guam by U.S. federal agents while vacationing in the Maldives. The additional charges against Seleznev may help explain the extended downtime at an extremely popular credit card fraud shop in the cybercrime underground.
The 2pac[dot]cc credit card shop.
The government alleges that the hacker known in the underground as “nCux” and “Bulba” was
Roman Seleznev, a 30-year-old Russian citizen who was
arrested in July 2014 by the U.S. Secret Service. According to
Russian media reports, the young man is the son of a prominent Russian politician.
Seleznev was initially identified by the government in 2012, when it named him as part of a conspiracy involving more than three dozen popular merchants on carder[dot]su, a bustling fraud forum where Bulba and other members openly marketed various cybercrime-oriented services (see the original indictment here).
According to Seleznev’s original indictment, he was allegedly part of a group that hacked into restaurants between 2009 and 2011 and planted malicious software to steal card data from store point-of-sale devices. The indictment further alleges that Seleznev and unnamed accomplices used his online monikers to sell stolen credit and debit cards at bulba[dot]cc and track2[dot]name. Customers of these services paid for their cards with virtual currencies, including WebMoney and Bitcoin.
But last week, U.S. prosecutors piled on another 11 felony counts against Seleznev, charging that he also sold stolen credit card data on a popular carding store called 2pac[dot]cc. Interestingly, Seleznev’s arrest coincides with a period of extended downtime on 2pac[dot]cc, during which time regular customers of the store could be seen complaining on cybercrime forums where the store was advertised that the proprietor of the shop had gone silent and was no longer responding to customer support inquiries.
A few weeks after Seleznev’s arrest, it appears that someone new began taking ownership of 2pac[dot]cc’s day-to-day operations. That individual recently posted a message on the carding shop’s home page apologizing for the extended outage and stating that fresh, new cards were once again being added to the shop’s inventory.
The message, dated Aug. 8, 2014, explains that the proprietor of the shop was unreachable because he was hospitalized following a car accident:
“Dear customers. We apologize for the inconvenience that you are experiencing now by the fact that there are no updates and [credit card] checker doesn’t work. This is due to the fact that our boss had a car accident and he is in hospital. We will solve all problems as soon as possible. Support always available, thank you for your understanding.”
2pac[dot]cc’s apologetic message to would-be customers of the credit card fraud shop.
IT’S ALL ABOUT CUSTOMER SERVICE
2pac is but one of dozens of fraud shops selling stolen debit and credit cards. And with news of new card breaches at major retailers surfacing practically each week, the underground is flush with inventory. The single most important factor that allows individual card shop owners to differentiate themselves among so much choice is providing excellent customer service.
Many card shops, including 2pac[dot]cc, try to keep customers happy by including an a-la-carte card-checking service that allows customers to test purchased cards using compromised merchant accounts — to verify that the cards are still active. Most card shop checkers are configured to automatically refund to the customer’s balance the value of any cards that come back as declined by the checking service. Continue reading →