Cybercrime Marketplace Mastermind Faces 18 Years In Prison

wiredmikey writes "A Ukrainian national, Roman Vega, who pleaded guilty in 2009 to creating a popular online marketplace for selling stolen financial account data has been sentenced to 18 years in prison. Called one of the world's 'most prolific cybercriminals' by the Department of Justice, Vega, 49, will serve significant time in prison for his role in co-founding the notorious website CarderPlanet. In the early 2000s, Vega co-founded and became a high-ranking administrator of the notorious website, which became one of the first and busiest online marketplaces for the sale of stolen financial information, computer hacking services and money laundering. At its height, CarderPlanet had more than 6,000 members and had a hierarchical leadership structure that borrowed its leadership titles from La Cosa Nostra, US authorities said."

Comments

Considering the damages

[FlyHelicopters]

Frankly, considering the economic damage he did, the thousands (if not millions) of people he screwed over and caused pain and suffering to, the time wasted to clean up his mess...

18 years is quite small, I'd have no problem with executing him. If people who commit crimes behind computer keyboards were actually punished more often, we might have less of it. As it is, the fraud and abuse online are really more like the wild west than the 21st century.

Re:Considering the damages

[DavidClarkeHR]

Frankly, considering the economic damage he did, the thousands (if not millions) of people he screwed over and caused pain and suffering to, the time wasted to clean up his mess...

18 years is quite small, I'd have no problem with executing him. If people who commit crimes behind computer keyboards were actually punished more often, we might have less of it. As it is, the fraud and abuse online are really more like the wild west than the 21st century.

Economic damage is not a good way to assess penalties. Compare and contrast with Aaron Swartz, Jamie Thomas-Rasset, Kevin Mitnick ...

No, this guy needs to go away because he was breaking the law - not because of how much he broke it.

Re:Considering the damages

[girlintraining]

No, this guy needs to go away because he was breaking the law - not because of how much he broke it.

No, he needs to go away because he didn't give the government it's cut of the action. That's how Wall Street can trigger a decade-long economic recession and nobody goes to jail, but one guy running a website faces infinity years in the electric chair while being anally abused by goats.

This has nothing to do with how little or much he broke the law -- it's about setting an example: Don't steal. The government hates competition.

Re:Considering the damages

[dj245]

Frankly, considering the economic damage he did, the thousands (if not millions) of people he screwed over and caused pain and suffering to, the time wasted to clean up his mess...

18 years is quite small, I'd have no problem with executing him. If people who commit crimes behind computer keyboards were actually punished more often, we might have less of it. As it is, the fraud and abuse online are really more like the wild west than the 21st century.

Economic damage is not a good way to assess penalties. Compare and contrast with Aaron Swartz, Jamie Thomas-Rasset, Kevin Mitnick ... No, this guy needs to go away because he was breaking the law - not because of how much he broke it.

The parent poster is advocating a more severe sentence because of the total amount of suffering caused. If I punch someone in the face, that's assault, but the damage is limited to 1 person and is relatively minor. It is also in most cases not a permanent cause of pain and suffering. The punishment is light.

If I intentionally and maliciously gave someone a papercut, that is assault too. But the amount of suffering is pretty low. In all likelihood you would have a tough time getting a court to hear your case even.

But what if I ran around intentionally and maliciously giving people papercuts? What if I inflicted papercuts on millions of people? For each person, the damage is minor. In aggregate though, it is a lot of pain and suffering.

Committing thousands or millions of small crimes used to be hard. Now with the internet and computers, it is easy. It seems like you are arguing that multiple counts of the same crime shouldn't stack. In cases where someone hacks 1 company 1000 times or using 100 different methods, maybe you have a point. Sometimes prosecuters go a little crazy. But multiple crimes should stack if there are multiple victims who all suffered.

Who created the damages in the frist place ?

[Taco Cowboy]

When we open a bank account, we place our trust to that bank, and that bank has the responsibility to protect our account with it.

When we shop at a store with a credit card, we place our trust on the integrity of the store and also that of the credit card company (with the bank issuing that credit card).

And if we do not lose our credit cards, but the information regarding our cards was stolen somewhere , who should we blame ?

Do we blame the one who stole the information or the one who were so fucking careless with the sensitive information in the first place ?

Let us understand this one thing - if you really want to blame, blame those institutions that has betrayed our trust.

The hackers are only exploiting the opportunities left OPENED by those fuckers who were so careless.

If ever there were damages, stop blaming the guy who operated a website - blame those motherfucking banks and credit card companies !

Re:Who created the damages in the frist place ?

[Suomi-Poika]

Yes, I find this quite strange case indeed. Roman Vega was arrested in 2003. He has been incarcerated in USA since then. He is a Ukrainian citizen. He was accused of credit card theft and had to wait TEN YEARS to get his conviction. Now, since he is a first timer, and his ten years in jail must be counted in - shouldn't he be freed immediately? He is not a terrorist and the pre-2003 systems his hackers were exploiting were literally stone-age systems without any double or triple verification procedures.

Naturally the biggest question is that if this guy is only a operator of cybercrime www-site in Ukraine then what the hell he is doing in USA? Terrorism and murder I would understand but credit card crimes committed in the 90s and early 00s simply is an unjustified reason to kidnap foreign citizens and make them wait ten years to get their conviction. If your payment systems are so broken that 3rd world hackers have free reign over them you don't arrest the 3rd world hackers, you repair your payment systems. It would have taken less time and taxpayers' money than send FBI and Secret Service, kidnap this guy, jail him, hold legal processes for ten years and then jail him some more. Sugar on top is: USA has to loan the money to do all this.

Well, perhaps some United States citizen can explain this to me?

Re:Who created the damages in the frist place ?

[FlyHelicopters]

You're right, we shouldn't blame the criminal, we should blame the banks!!!

Really? So if someone crashes into me because they had too much to drink, I should blame the car company and the beer company and not the idiot drinking and driving?

Let it be known

[FuzzNugget]

If you're going to pillage the bank accounts of thousands (or millions) of people, you gotta do it through deceptive ponzi mortgage schemes and buying off market regulators to make it legal.

Re:Where can I contribute to his defence fund?

[Beerdood]

"Hey I didn't actually sell financial information, I only helped set up a system that allowed criminals to sell stolen credit card details!"
"Hey I didn't actually molest those children, I only created a forum that let people purchase CP from eachother!"
"Hey I don't own any slaves, I only helped some sellers find some and shipped them across to people willing to buy!"
"Hey I didn't kill those thousands of civilians, I just helped facilitate a deal between an arms dealer and a corrupt dictatorship!"

Yeesh. "merely providing a forum to communicate". It's assholes like you that make the world burn - you damn well know the consequences of the actions of a scheme, a forum set up specifically for selling stolen financial information , but somehow rationalize it away in the name of some libertarianish idea of 'all free speech should be allowed' because you're actually facilitating in the crime yourself!