A Russian national has been sentenced by a court in California to 30 months in prison for his role as the administrator of Deer.io, a now-defunct marketplace that offered various illicit goods, such as stolen credit card information, other personal information and services to be used for criminal activity.
Kirill Victorovich Firsov was arrested in March 2020 by the FBI in New York City when he flew into JFK Airport from Moscow. At the time of his arrest, the online platform, which started operations as far back as October 2013, hosted nearly 3,000 active shops with sales exceeding $17 million, officials say.
Although Firsov maintained that the bulk of the sales on Deer.io were Russian accounts, the parties agreed that the government could show that shop owners on the Deer.io platform sold at least $1.2 million in U.S.-based stolen information, to include gamer accounts.
According to the US Department of Justice, Deer.io sold not only stolen gamer accounts, but also Americans’ personal information, including names, current addresses, telephone numbers and in some cases Social Security numbers.
“The prosecutor asserted that Firsov knew DEER.IO was selling stolen and counterfeit accounts, because he built the platform, which included a number of icons for U.S.-based companies that anyone setting up a store on DEER.IO could click on to then sell stolen accounts from those U.S. companies. Also, DEER.IO was easily searchable, so anyone - including Firsov - could search the platform for stolen U.S. accounts and information. Even though it sold stolen accounts, DEER.IO was not cloaked in secrecy and required no special password for access, because everything was run out of Russia, and American law enforcement could gain no foothold,” officials said.
Firsov has already spent 15 months in custody, and after serving the remaining 15 months, he will be deported to Russia.