Cybercriminal JokerStash Officially Retired With A $1B Fortune

The popular cybercriminal JokerStash has officially retired with an amassed fortune of over $1 billion as per the blockchain analytics company Elliptic as we are reading more in our latest crypto news.

According to the cybersecurity company Gemini Advisory, the cybercriminal JokerStash claims to have all of the proceeds of the marketplace in BTC and Elliptic estimated that with BTC alone, the hacker would have taken a total of at least $2 billion. The revenue earned by JokerStash can be estimated from the value of the incoming cryptocurrency payments to the wallet as seen on the blockchain according to Elliptics’ co-founder Tom Robinson:

“Sales dropped over the next two years, reflecting a broader downtrend in carding activity – increased security around card payments has made their theft more difficult, while advances in anti-fraud technology have made it more challenging for carders to make purchases with stolen cards.”

According to him, the Jokerstash hacker notified customers back in October that he/she was hospitalized for over a week with the coronavirus while in December, the FBI and Interpol announced a coordinated seizure of domains used by this site. Elliptic noted that the retirement fund of the hacker probably reached about $1 billion considering the fees charged by the marketplace:

“The first source of revenue is cryptocurrency deposit fees. Any cryptocurrency payments to the site are converted to a US dollar balance, calculated according to the prevailing exchange rate, minus a fee ranging from 8% in the early days of the site to 4% today. On top of that, the marketplace almost certainly takes a cut of all sales of cards provided by the site’s partners. The commission taken by Joker’s Stash is not known, but for similar marketplaces it ranges between 10 to 30%.”

Joker’s Stash announced that it will stop all operations on February 15^th but the site became inaccessible at the start of February as Robinson noted and estimated that others will take their place “at the heart of the cybercrime economy.” In the meantime, once the hacker announced the closure of the website, it was clear that it will not open again:

“We are also want to wish all young and mature ones cyber-gansters no to lose themselves in the pursuit of easy money. Remember, that even all the money in the world will never make you happy and that all the most truly valuable things in this life are free.”