Georgy Kavzharadze, 27, is heading to prison in the United States for 40 months for selling over 3,000 stolen login credentials on a popular dark web marketplace. Kavzharadze sold said credentials between July 2016 and May 2021 on the Slilpp marketplace, which was taken down in 2021 after a coordinated effort by international law enforcement agencies.
The Slilpp marketplace had been operating for nearly a decade before its takedown. Authorities claim it had sold more than 80 million credentials, racking up damages to $200 million. Kavzharadze sold more than 297,300 credentials while listing over 626,000 throughout his five-year tenure on the site.
The site’s takedown sparked an investigation that revealed information on several vendors on the site, including Kavzharadze. The data included transactions and payment information, which, along with wiretap data, was handed over to US authorities by an unidentified country that discovered login credentials and IP addresses of the site’s users.
Law enforcement was able to link transactions of more than $200,000 worth of Bitcoin to Kavzharadze from the marketplace between 2016 and 2018. Consequently, Kavzharadze was arrested and extradited to the US in May 2022 and has been detained since.
Credentials sold by Kavzharadze on the marketplace would lead to devastating financial loss. The original indictment claims that these stolen credentials included login details for five different banks, leading to fraudulent transactions of over $5 million. This sum has since been revised to $1.2 million — a staggering figure he has been ordered to pay back.
The allegations against Kavzharadze are serious. The original indictment charges him with one count of conspiracy, four counts of bank fraud, six counts of access device fraud, and one count of aggravated identity theft. As expected, the combined punishment includes lengthy jail time and recovery of financial losses caused by his actions as restitution.
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