14 DAY TRIAL // A Miami man was sentenced to 121 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for purchasing and selling thousands of stolen credit card details on the Internet.
Juan Javier Cardenas, 45, known as Maceo, was charged in June with one count of conspiracy to traffic in unauthorized credit card numbers and to possess unauthorized credit card numbers with intent to defraud, one count of trafficking in unauthorized credit card numbers and one count of fraudulent possession of equipment to make credit cards.
According to the indictment, between November 2007 and May 2009, Cardenas acquired stolen credit card information from hackers and sold it to others for a profit.
He is known to have sent at least 1,500 credit card details via email to five other co-conspirators, who used the information to fraudulently purchase goods.
When police searched his house in May, they found 26,669 credit card numbers stored his computer, as well as equipment used in the manufacturing of counterfeit cards.
At the beginning of September, Cardenas pleaded guilty to the first two charges and the prosecution agreed to drop the third one.
On Wednesday, Florida U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore who handed out the sentence, also ordered him to pay $106,915 in restitution and a $350,000 money judgment.
The type of activity Cardenas was engaged into is known in the infosec community as carding and is usually performed in specialized forums or chat rooms that facilitate such deals between criminals.
Until 2008, the FBI ran a sting operation on an underground forum called DarkMarket, which involved an undercover agent posing as an admin and gathering information on prominent members.
The operation resulted in the arrest and sentencing of several notorious carders worldwide, including DarkMarket's own founder Renukanth Subramaniam, aka JiLsi.