March 19, 2024 at 01:27AM
Moldovan national Sandu Boris Diaconu has been sentenced to 42 months in a US prison for operating the illicit E-Root Marketplace, offering hundreds of thousands of compromised credentials. The DoJ seized the infrastructure associated with E-Root and Perfect Money and said it’s recovering $2.3 million worth of cryptocurrency linked to a pig butchering romance scam.
Summary of Meeting Notes:
– Sandu Boris Diaconu, a Moldovan national, was sentenced to 42 months in prison in the U.S. for operating the illicit marketplace E-Root Marketplace, offering hundreds of thousands of compromised credentials for sale.
– The marketplace allowed buyers to search for compromised computer credentials, RDP and SSH credentials, and provided an online payment system called Perfect Money to hide transaction trails.
– Law enforcement seized the infrastructure associated with E-Root and Perfect Money as of late 2020. More than 350,000 credentials were estimated to have been advertised for sale, leading to ransomware attacks and identity tax fraud schemes.
– Diaconu served as the administrator of E-Root Marketplace between January 2015 and February 2020, was arrested in the U.K. in May 2021, and was extradited to the U.S. in late October 2023.
– The DoJ also announced the recovery of $2.3 million worth of cryptocurrency linked to a pig butchering romance scam that victimized at least 37 individuals across the U.S.
– Crypto phishing scams continue to be a significant issue, with approximately 57,000 victims losing about $47 million to such scams in the month of February 2024.
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