Prolific Carder Arrested in France

On August 7, the French Police National Aux Frontiers arrested Vladislav Anatolievich Horohorin at the Nice airport when he attempted to board a flight to Moscow. This 27-year-old citizen of both Israel and the Ukraine lived, according to rumors, on the French Riviera. At the time of the arrest, the authorities said, he was carrying some casino-issued cards that give high rollers additional privileges. He is now being held in France pending extradition to the United States.

In security circles, Horohorin was known as BadB. He introduced himself as one of the biggest “dump” vendors, selling stolen credit card information since the days of CarderPlanet.

Apart from his association with carder websites such as CarderPlanet or carder.su, BadB managed his own websites. He advertised the availability of stolen credit card information through his web forums, and he directed purchasers to create accounts on his sites. The next screenshot shows one of his websites in 2007.

On AOLNews, and according to the indictment, we can read some details about Horohorin’s activities. On May 15, 2009, a Secret Service agent contacted BadB and purchased credit card dumps. Most of them were subsequently verified by Visa to be authentic. In July 2009, Secret Service agents saw that BadB was selling dumps from a variety of banks around the world. But this time, while communicating via the Internet, BadB said he was no longer accepting funds through Western Union and purchases had to be made through WebMoney. Using this electronic payment system, authorities bought some credit card dumps.

In November 2009, a federal grand jury in Washington indicted Horohorin on charges of access-device fraud and aggravated identity theft. This indictment remained sealed while authorities tried to hunt him down.

Today, the BadB websites are still online.

One of these sites welcomes visitors with a cartoon showing the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, awarding gold medals to cybercriminals.

Horohorin faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a US$250,000 fine on the count of access-device fraud. He has also been charged with one count of aggravated identify theft, which carries a statutory consecutive penalty of two years in prison and a fine of up to US$250,000.