Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/02/15/max_vision_cybercrook_jailed/
CardersMarket hacking kingpin jailed for 13 years
Iceman slung in cooler
Posted in Security, 15th February 2010 16:04 GMT
Prolific malicious hacker Max Ray Vision was jailed for 13 years over a series of massive credit card scams that cost US banks an estimated $86 million.
Vision (aka Iceman), 37, was also ordered to pay $27.5m in compensation to his victims by senior US District Judge Maurice Cohill Jr during a sentencing hearing last on Friday in Pittsburg. Vision, who has been kept in detention since his arrest in 2007, pleaded guilty to a string of computer hacking and fraud offences last summer.
Highlights of Vision's life of crime include establishing CardersMarket, an online hangout for carders, crackers, scammers and other assorted denizens of the digital underground. Vision ran the forum alongside his other criminal enterprises, which revolved around harvesting and reselling stolen credit card details.
But the scheme came unstuck after Secret Services informants infiltrated CardersMarket, a development that eventually led to Vision's arrest and prosecution. Vision was caught red-handed with 1.8 million stolen credit card details referring to cards issued by hundreds of different banks.
Sentencing guidelines could have led to life imprisonment for his crimes, but Vision obtained a lesser sentence as a result of his co-operation with the authorities in other (unspecified) investigations, Wired reports.
Vision was previously jailed for 18 months over a scripting attack on Pentagon websites back in 2001. ®