Darknet Crypto Kingpin JokerStash Retires After Illicit $1 Billion Run

The kingpin or kingpins of the world’s biggest illicit credit card marketplace have retired after making an estimated fortune of over $1 billion in cryptocurrency, according to research by blockchain analysis firm Elliptic shared with Reuters. From the report: The “Joker’s Stash” marketplace, where stolen credit cards and identity data traded hands for bitcoin and other digital coins, ceased operations this…

Trump Considers Clemency For Silk Road ‘Kingpin’ Ross Ulbricht

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: In his final weeks in office before Joe Biden’s inauguration, President Donald Trump is weighing granting clemency to Ross Ulbricht, the founder and former administrator of the world’s most famous darknet drug market, Silk Road, The Daily Beast has learned. According to three people familiar with the matter, the White House…

Kingpin Behind Massive Identity-Theft Service Says He’s Sorry

Krebs on Security tells the tale of Hieu Minh Ngo, who earned $3 million by selling the identity records he’d stolen from consumer data brokers (which included social security numbers and physical addresses). “He was selling the personal information on more than 200 million Americans,” one secret service agent tells the site, “and allowing anyone to buy it for pennies apiece.”…

After 5 Years, Australia Finally Cracked a Drug Kingpin’s BlackBerry

“An encrypted BlackBerry device that was cracked five years after it was first seized by police is poised to be the key piece of evidence in one of the state’s longest-running drug importation investigations,” reports the Sydney Morning Herald: In April, new technology “capabilities” allowed authorities to probe the encrypted device, which was used by one of the alleged kingpins and…

Amazon Will Pay $135,000 To Settle Alleged US Sanction Violations

In a statement (PDF) issued this week, the U.S. Treasury Department notes that Amazon has agreed to pay $134,523 to settle potential liability over alleged sanctions violations. TechCrunch reports: The charges specifically pertain to goods and services sent to people located in Crimea, Iran and Syria, which are covered by Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions, between November 2011 and…