A Kosovar national has pleaded guilty to operating Rydox, a large illegal online marketplace that sold stolen personal information, login credentials, credit card details, and cybercrime tools.
Kosovo law enforcement and Albania's Special Anti-Corruption Body (SPAK) arrested 28-year-old Ardit Kutleshi and two other Rydox administrators (Jetmir Kutleshi and Shpend Sokoli) in December 2024.
The arrests were part of a joint international law enforcement operation that also shut down the Rydox marketplace, seized the Rydox[.]cc domain, and seized its servers in Kuala Lumpur with the help of the Royal Malaysian Police.
Ardit Kutleshi was extradited from Kosovo to the United States in 2025, when he was charged with crimes related to their Rydox admin role, including conspiracy to commit identity theft, aggravated identity theft, two counts of identity theft, access device fraud, and money laundering.
"Rydox put cybercriminal tools and sensitive data up for sale, including the stolen identities and logins of thousands of people," said Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division. "The FBI and its foreign partners shut the marketplace down, and now the man who created it and ran it pleaded guilty."
According to court documents, between February 2016 and Rydox's shutdown in 2024, marketplace sellers were involved in over 7,600 sales of login credentials, credit card information, and stolen personal information (including Social Security numbers, names, and addresses) of thousands of U.S. citizens.
Rydox also offered over 321,000 other "cybercrime products" for sale to more than 18,000 users, including various devices, software tools, and materials for committing cybercrimes.