DoJ charged 19 individuals in a transnational cybercrime investigation xDedic Marketplace
January 08, 2024
19 individuals worldwide were charged in a transnational cybercrime investigation of the now defunct xDedic marketplace.
The U.S. DoJ charged 19 individuals worldwide for their role in the operations of the now-defunct xDedic Marketplace.
In January 2019, law enforcement agencies in the US and Europe announced the seizure of the popular xDedic marketplace, an underground market offering for sale access to compromised systems and personally identifiable information.
The black marketplace has been active since 2014, it was first analyzed by experts at Kaspersky Lab in 2016.
At the time, the domain (xdedic[.]biz) went offline following a report from Kaspersky Labs that detailed in its Corporate News section, the scope, and method of operations of the illicit marketplace. The website quickly reappeared in the Tor network.
In 2016 the service was offering up to 70,000 hacked servers for as little as $6, and with 416 registered sellers in 173 countries, the platform was operating a highly successful global business model.
The researchers confirmed that the xDedic marketplace is run by a Russian-speaking group.
Law authorities in the United States, Belgium and Ukraine, in collaboration with Europol, seized xDedic on January 24.
Buyers were able to search accesses to compromised systems by multiple criteria, including price, geographic location, and operating system.
The xDedic administrators maintained servers worldwide, they allowed payment in Bitcoin to protect users’ anonymity. Compromised systems belong to many industries, including local, state, and federal government infrastructure, hospitals, emergency services, major metropolitan transit authorities, accounting and law firms, pension funds, and universities.
According to the investigators, in total the platform offered more than 700,000 compromised servers for sale and facilitated more than $68 million in fraud.
“The xDedic administrators practiced exceptional operational security, operating the website across a widely distributed international network, and utilizing cryptocurrency in order to hide the locations of the Marketplace’s underlying servers and the identities of its administrators, sellers, and buyers.” reads the press release published by DoJ. “In total, xDedic offered more than 700,000 compromised servers for sale, including at least 150,000 in the United States and at least 8,000 in Florida.”
The marketplace offered access to compromised systems in various industries, including local, state, and federal government infrastructure, hospitals, 911 and emergency services, call centers, major metropolitan transit authorities, accounting and law firms, pension funds, and universities.
Many of the charged defendants are foreign nationals and hold citizenship in countries that do not extradite their nationals, requiring the United States to locate and extradite subjects from countries that do. As identified in the table below, to date, 17 defendants have been charged and/or extradited to the United States.
Below is the list of the sentences for the 19 defendants:
| Name(Age, Nationality) | Offense of Conviction | Term of Imprisonment |
| Allen Levinson(31, Nigeria) | Conspiracy to CommitMail and Wire Fraud | 78 months |
| T’Andre McNeely(33, California) | Conspiracy to CommitMail and Wire Fraud | 78 months |
| Michael Carr(33, California) | Conspiracy to CommitMail and Wire Fraud | 78 months |
| Dariy Pankov (29, Russia) | Conspiracy to CommitAccess Device and Computer Fraud | 60 months |
| Glib Ivanov-Tolpintsev (29, Ukraine) | Conspiracy to CommitAccess Device and Computer Fraud | 48 months |
| Alexandru Habasescu(31, Moldova) | Access Device Fraud | 41 months |
| Adedotun Adejumo(45, Oklahoma) | Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud | 33 months |
| Pavlo Kharmanskyi(32, Ukraine) | Access Device Fraud | 30 months |
| Joshua Spencer(29, New York) | Conspiracy to CommitAccess Device Fraud | 28 months |
| Ibrahim Jinadu(36, Georgia) | Conspiracy to CommitWire Fraud | 27 months |
| Brandon Williams(34, California) | Conspiracy to CommitMail and Wire Fraud | 12 months |
| Harold McKinzie(29, Illinois) | Wire Fraud | 5 years’ probation |
| Bamidele Omotosho(42, Nigeria) | Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud | Sentence pending |
| Olayemi Adafin(38, United Kingdom) | Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud | Sentence pending |
| Olakunle Oyebanjo(29, United Kingdom) | Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud | Sentence pending |
| Akinola Taylor(38, United Kingdom) | Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud | Sentence pending |
| Oluwarotimi Ogunlana(29, Texas) | Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud | Sentence pending |
Alongside the aforementioned individuals, DoJ also charged two buyers on the xDedic Marketplace, Olufemi Odedeyi (42, United Kingdom) and Oluwaseyi Shodipe (41, United Kingdom). The duo face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
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Pierluigi Paganini
(SecurityAffairs – hacking, cybercrime)