Joker's Stash, the Internet's largest marketplace for selling stolen card data, announced today that it will be shutting down until February 15, 2021.
The news was announced today by the site's administrator through messages posted on various underground cyber forums, where the site usually advertises the services of.
"The closure of Joker's Stash comes after a very tumultuous 2020," threat intelligence firm Intel 471 said in a blog post documenting the site's shutdown.
“In October, the site's administrator announced that it had been compromised COVID-19, spending a week at hospital. The situation affected them Forums", card replacements and other tasks", the company stated.
"Intel 471 also noticed that customers of the site complained that the quality of the card data was getting worse."
In addition, in December 2020, the FBI and Interpol seized four domains used by the online market.
At the time, the site's administrators said that the law's suppression of domains had a limited impact on the site, as they were used only as proxies to redirect customers from landing pages to the actual marketplace.
However, while the seizure had limited impact, it appeared to affect the site's reputation by showing customers that Joker's Stash was under surveillance by law enforcement agencies.
So while the Joker's Stash admin didn't give many details about the site's shutdown, it's very likely that he feared an upcoming invasion by the Authorities.
Of course, this does not mean that the administrator is no longer safe. U.S. authorities have charged cyber criminals many years after the crimes.
Before announcing his "retirement" today, Joker's Stash was considered one of the most profitable businesses in cyberspace today.
The store is estimated to have made hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal profits, although this money goes to the sellers themselves.
In 2020 alone, the site published more than 35 million CP (card present) and over 8 million CNP (cardless) numbers for sale.
Joker's Stash has been up and running since October 7, 2014. The site's administrator has indicated that they plan to delete all servers and backups when the site is shut down next month.