Internet’s Biggest Marketplace For Stolen Credit Cards Will Shut Down

UniCC, the largest online marketplace for stolen credit and debit cards, will close next week after facilitating $358 million in transactions over nine years.

Credit and debit cards are used.

Jeff Overs is a news and current affairs correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The owners of UniCC announced in a Russian and English language message on dark web forums that the site will stop operating on January 22.

In exchange for stolen credit cards, UniCC received over $100 million worth of bitcoins, a boom that was caused by the February closing of the largest marketplace for stolen credit cards.

The owners of UniCC told the public not to build any conspiracy theories about the site's closing.

Credit card information can be stolen through a variety of methods. Money can be laundered through online crime and the cards can be used to do so. The dark web, a part of the internet that can only be accessed with special authorization or with special software, is known for hosting illegal activity. Elliptic speculated that UniCC's sudden closing could be related to a desire to avoid increased law enforcement scrutiny after the shuttering of similar online marketplaces. Elliptic described a possible exit scam on the online drug site Monopoly Market, in which a business owner would take payments for orders that are never fulfilled, but then disappear with the money. White House Market, an online drug site that drew inspiration from the show "Breaking Bad", closed in October of 2011. Elliptic says that the business voluntarily shut down last February. The FBI and other law enforcement groups seized the stolen login credentials market in June.

There is a structure called the Tangent.

Silk Road was the first major dark web market to sell everything from drugs to forged driver's licenses and generated over a billion dollars in less than three years. Ross Ulbricht, the site's operator, was sentenced to two life sentences without parole after being convicted of narcotics trafficking, money laundering and "engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise." The charges against Ulbricht were dropped.

The largest seller of stolen credit cards on the dark web has stopped selling them.