A Russian hacker extradited from Israel to the United States on hacking charges has pleaded guilty to the charges levelled against him. He admitted to administrating two websites said to have been instrumental in aiding criminals involved in credit card fraud over the internet running into close to $20 million USD in illegal proceeds alone.

Alexei Burkov, (29) admitted to running a rather popular website known as Cardplanet which was mostly known as an online market for the sale of stolen debit and credit card numbers and is said to have hosted over 150,000 payment details since its inception in the year 2013.

For as low as $2.50 dollars, hackers could gain access to a victim’s credit or debit card details and use that information remotely to compromise the finances of their victims regardless of country or the card type. Further information about this site said that it even offered a service that allowed users to verify the validity of the details of a particular card for an additional fee.

The Department of Justice shared yesterday about Burkov’s criminal activity:

To obtain membership in Burkov’s cybercrime forum, prospective members needed three existing members to ‘vouch’ for their good reputation among cybercriminals and to provide a sum of money, normally $5,000, as insurance.

They added:

These measures were designed to keep law enforcement from accessing Burkov’s cybercrime forum and to ensure that members of the forum honoured any deals made while conducting business on the forum.

According to media in Russia in a post made earlier concerning his extradition order, they had intended to trade Naama Issachar arrested in the country for drug-related offenses and a citizen of Israel, for Burkov, but were turned down by their Israeli counterparts who instead extradited the criminal to United States to face punishment for the charges levelled against him.

The extradition followed a lost appeal led by counsel for Burkov in both an Israeli High Court and the Supreme Court, and charged with Access Device Fraud and Conspiracy to Commit Computer Intrusion, Wire, Access Device Fraud, Identity Theft as well as Money Laundering, Burkov might be put away for close to 15 years, dependent on the ruling of a federal court based on Federal Sentencing Guidelines in a sentencing scheduled for 8th May in Alexandria.