14 DAY TRIAL // Djevair Ametovski, 29, of Macedonia, was extradited from Slovenia to the US and will appear in court today to face criminal charges for his role in Codeshop.su, a website that sold stolen credit and debit card information.
Ametovski, who went online as "codeshop," "sindrom," and "sindromix," was arrested on January 22, 2014, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. After two years of legal battles, the US, with the help of authorities from Slovenia and the Netherlands, managed to extradite the suspect.
Suspect bought data from hackers and then sold it on his site
US officials are claiming that Ametovski was the man behind the Codeshop.su website, a registration-only portal where crooks could create accounts and then buy information obtained from stolen credit card data.
Ametovski was the one in charge of supplying the data, which authorities say he got by purchasing it from underground hackers, which, in turn, obtained it from phishing schemes.
The Codeshop.su portal allowed other crooks to search the stolen credit card information using filters such as bank identification number, financial institution, country, state, and card brand.
The data contained personal details associated with the account holder, including email address, billing address, phone number, and account holder name.
Codeshop data used to create fake plastic cards
Authorities say criminals who purchased this information used it for other crimes, such as to carry out fraudulent online transactions or to create fake cards that they would use to steal money from ATMs.
It is believed that Ametovski sold information on over 181,000 different cards. Officials estimate that crooks using this data inflicted millions of dollars in financial losses to card owners and financial institutions around the world.
US Department of Justice announced they would charge Ametovski with aggravated identity theft, access device fraud conspiracy, and wire fraud conspiracy.
The unique .SU domain used for the Codeshop portal stands for the Soviet Union. Even if the Soviet Union does not exist, Russian authorities still manage this domain. Codeshop was available on the Internet, and not the Dark Web.
