Rydox cybercriminal marketplace operator pleads guilty following co-conspirator brothers’s deportation

One of the key figures behind the Rydox cybercriminal marketplace pleaded guilty this week to aggravated identity theft and money laundering charges.

Ardit Kutleshi, 28, was extradited from his home country of Kosovo last year after prosecutors accused him and his older brother of running Rydox — an illicit platform used by cybercriminals to sell stolen personal information, illegal access to devices and other tools for carrying out fraud. 

Kutleshi will be sentenced in February and faces a mandatory minimum of two years in prison for the aggravated identity theft charge and a maximum penalty of 20 years for the money laundering count.  

U.S. Attorney Troy Rivetti noted that Kutleshi’s brother previously pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served before being deported back to Kosovo in December. 

When contacted for comment about whether Kutleshi will also be deported, a Justice Department spokesperson directed Recorded Future News to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not respond to requests for comment. The DOJ did not say whether he is still in their custody or not. 

Rivetti said the brothers made “hundreds of thousands of dollars from the marketplace where cybercriminals could purchase information and tools to effect and further their online crime.”

“These types of cybercrimes cause not only financial loss, but also ongoing psychological harm to the victims who lose both money as well as trust in institutions and the online market infrastructure,” Rivetti said. 

Kutleshi helped run Rydox for nearly a decade and the site facilitated more than 7,600 transactions that brought in $232,000. Prosecutors said Rydox had about 18,000 users who bought Social Security numbers and manuals on how to create scam pages and more. Users had to make a deposit to the site before being approved to buy products sold on the platform. 

Brett Leatherman, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, said the platform offered anyone access to troves of stolen identities and login information for thousands of people.

Leatherman added that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies previously worked to shut the site down, seizing the Rydoc.cc domain that hosted the platform in December 2024, when Kutleshi was arrested by Kosovo law enforcement. 

Law enforcement in Albania assisted in the operation, arresting another person involved in running Rydox. Police in Malaysia seized several servers used to run the site as well.