Russian Citizen Sentenced to 40 Months in U.S. Prison for Selling 300,000 Stolen Credentials
Georgy Kavzharadze, a 27-year-old Russian national, has been sentenced in the United States to 40 months (3.3 years) in prison for selling credentials for more than 300,000 accounts on the hacker marketplace Slilpp, which was shut down in June 2021. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Kavzharadze (known online as TeRorPP, Torqovec, and PlutuSS) sold a massive amount of stolen financial information and personal data on Slilpp.
Court documents reveal that between July 2016 and May 2021, Kavzharadze listed over 626,100 stolen credentials for sale. The credentials purchased by Slilpp users were later used for fraud and attempted transactions totaling about $1.2 million, as buyers used the data to steal money from victims’ accounts.
Interestingly, the original indictment mentioned credentials from five different banks and fraudulent transactions exceeding $5 million. This amount was later reduced to $1.2 million, which Kavzharadze has now been ordered to pay as restitution.
“On May 27, 2021, Kavzharadze’s Slilpp account listed 240,495 credentials for sale, which buyers could use to steal funds from victims’ payment and bank accounts,” the U.S. Department of Justice stated. “The credentials included access data for bank accounts in New York, California, Nevada, and Georgia. Kavzharadze accepted only Bitcoin as payment for the credentials.”
According to published documents, FBI investigators linked Kavzharadze to the withdrawal of over $200,000 from a Bitcoin account (about $450,000 at current rates) associated with Slilpp, which received payments for stolen logins, personal, and financial data.
In August 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Kavzharadze with conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, bank fraud, access device fraud, and aggravated identity theft. He was eventually extradited to the United States (the country of extradition was not specified), where he appeared in court in May 2022. Nearly two years later, on February 16, 2024, Kavzharadze pleaded guilty to trading on Slilpp and conspiring to commit bank and wire fraud.
About the Slilpp Marketplace
From 2012 to 2021, the Slilpp marketplace operated on several domains, both on the dark web and the public internet. Anyone could register an account on the site and start trading hacked and stolen accounts. Over its nine-year history, more than 80 million credentials belonging to over 1,400 companies were sold on Slilpp. The site featured accounts from PayPal, Wells Fargo, SunTrust, Amazon, Verizon Wireless, Xfinity, Walmart, and various bank cards. After its closure, law enforcement called Slilpp “the largest marketplace for hacked accounts ever to exist in the criminal underground.”