One of the world’s most prolific cybercriminals, according to Elliptic, is dying with dignity.
Elliptic announced on Friday that it has shut down the “Joker’s Stash” marketplace, a place where stolen credit cards and identity data were exchanged for bitcoin and other digital money. Authorities, particularly those in the United States, have long been concerned about the potential for criminal use of cryptocurrencies. Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, and Christine Lagarde, the head of the European Central Bank, both called for increased regulation last month.
According to Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson, while law enforcement’s primary worries are related to terrorist financing and money laundering, the primary areas of unlawful usage of digital currencies are related to narcotics, fraud, scams, and ransomware. Elliptic claims that “JokerStash,” an alias for an unknown individual(s), created Joker’s Stash in 2014 and has since posted messages in both Russian and English. It was accessible both through traditional online channels and the underground market that is the dark web. The darknet, sometimes known as the darkweb, is a portion of the internet that cannot be accessed by conventional search engines and is only accessible through anonymous browsers.
According to Elliptic, a company whose clients include law enforcement agencies and financial institutions, JokerStash made more than $1 billion in gains in cryptocurrencies over the years, based on the pricing of those assets today. The price of bitcoin has skyrocketed from around $300 in 2014 to a record high of $49,000 on Friday, driving up the value of other cryptocurrencies. By analyzing the marketplace’s revenue and the fees it collected, the blockchain company arrived with the over $1 billion number, which it said was on the low end of their projections. Even after Interpol and the FBI confiscated the site’s domain names in December, Elliptic reported that it was still active on the dark web. In December, the cyber-security firm Digital Shadows also reported that the darknet site was still accessible online despite the takedown. A call seeking comment from Interpol went unanswered. The FBI was unreachable before or after office hours.
Credit card fraud is a “billion dollar enterprise,” according to Robinson. To paraphrase, “it’s also giving a way to cash out other sorts of cyber-crime.”
On Jan. 15. Joker’s Stash has announced on their website that they would be permanently closing on February 15th. According to Elliptic, the service stopped working on February 3. The note, a screenshot of which was obtained by Reuters, read, “Joker departs on a well-deserved retirement.” “Let’s get out of here, for good.” It was accompanied with a reproduction of Jan Matejko’s “Staczyk,” an 1862 painting of a court jester sitting alone in a bedroom while a party rages on around him.
