[from]

Now that the complaint is unsealed this guy is probably never going to leave except at gunpoint. Plus he "only" made 18 million (who knows how much of which has already been spent) which is a lot but probably nothing compared to cardholder losses and other people in the stolen card chain. Why didn't they try to shut down Joker's Stash earlier before they walked away with 9 figures and why did they let Russia take down UniCC/Ferum which means none of the actual victims will get any restitution? Disrupting a marketplace that benefits from network effects and reputation is vastly preferable to some inexpensive service that most people here could probably create in a weekend.

[carlmr]

I was also wondering what is exactly the illegal part in a service to check cards, except for who's using it for what.

I'm maybe naïve to this, because I don't know how the check is being performed.

[toast0]

Typically by making a small (fradulent) purchase at an innocent merchant and seeing if it works.

This is illegal because of the fraud. It harms the merchant in all sorts of ways, and also the cardholders and issuers.

[sfe22]

What if they refund it immediately? Maybe that is what they did, to avoid detection. Anyone knows more about this?

[toast0]

If the checker is running the cards on their own merchant account and refunding immediately? Or doing auth, but not capture?

That's going to be in records of accounts that eventually report compromises, and get figured our pretty quick, I'd imagine.

[carlmr]

Isn't that what a lot of legit companies do?