Wired magazine’s Threat Level blog has brought to our attention the historic ruling against 37-year-old Max Ray Vision, who has been ordered to serve 13 years in federal prison for identity theft and hacking. Vision’s sentence is the longest such ruling issued against an identity fraud cyber criminal in the United States.
The former Max Butler had already served an 18-month federal prison term for conducting a hack against the Pentagon when he began manufacturing and reselling fraudulent credit card data via his underground Internet forum CardersMarket. Vision stole 1.8 million credit card numbers from various sources, including traditional skimming at restaurant point-of-sale terminals and from other scammers whose websites he hacked and whose customers were absorbed into CardersMarket. The fraudulent purchases made by Vision and his partner using the stolen information is estimated at $86.4 million.
Following his release, Vision is ordered to serve five years under federal supervision, during which time his access to computers and the Internet will be extremely limited. He is also ordered to pay $27.5 million in restitution. The prosecutor in the case commented that Vision provided significant levels of cooperative assistance to the government prior to sentencing, which will hopefully lead to more arrests in the coming months.