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Recently, a video interview with Sergey Pavlovich was released. Formerly a Police Dog carder, now a businessman and blogger. For those who like to read, we have selected interesting fragments and translated them into text. However, these fragments turned out to be quite a lot, so we are releasing the interview in two parts.
In the IT mine Sergey Pavlovich. Sergey, can you tell us who you are?
Yes, it will be easier for everyone: in the past, a cybercriminal, for which he later had to serve 10 years, the author of the book "How I Stole a million. Confession of a Repentant Carder " and founder of the cashback service SecretDiscounter.com. I also run my own YouTube channel-just for the soul... and for the audience. It's called "People PRO".
Is carding easy money?
No. In general, all crime is not easy money. Any money is difficult. To succeed in cybercrime, you still need to reach a certain status, work day and night, be in touch with hundreds of people, speak several languages, and preferably have some kind of information resource such as a blog or forum. I can agree that money is fast in crime. But they are not easy, they are just as difficult as in other areas.
Money aside, why were you doing this?
Did I feel a certain buzz when I broke some systems? No. Carders are not hackers. I consider hackers to be the elite of the cybercrime world. But they're not salespeople. They get card numbers, hack e-bay accounts, and dump databases. And I was only doing it for the money. Yes, and I got there by accident by and large. It was the 90s, and my parents worked two or three jobs to provide for the family. We ordered any products from Western online stores and paid with left credit cards. And then there's more: selling documents, credit card numbers, and pin dumps. I didn't get any high. I earned about $100,000 a month. I didn't spend much money ($3-5 thousand). I used to put them in a stash that my grandfather had in the garden. Cash used to put them in a hookah case.
You called the book How I Stole a Million. Was there really a million, or did you exaggerate a little?
There was more. The Americans charged me $36 million in damages. But how does the damage count: they find the credit cards I was involved in and get the total amount stolen. But I made a lot less money myself, because I didn't steal all that money. For example, I bought data from hackers for $10, and sold it for $50. I ended up pocketing $40. And she was charged, let's say, one and a half thousand. In short, I calculated at the time: I had about $1,200,000 in cash lying around.
Can we say that carders are an endangered species?
No, we have the largest card reader forum. Everyone was hanging out there: carders, hackers, virus writers, and spammers — a motley crowd (about 6 thousand people). Now there are forums where 300 thousand people are sitting. 10 years have passed, and the growth is 50-100 times. Now there are many Telegram channels that teach this for money. But this is also a dubious occupation. What good is it if they teach you how to steal someone else's PayPal?
Wait… Are you saying that there are carder schools that teach this for money?
Yes.
And how many students are there?
They graduate 200-500 students a month.
Does a businessman who sells carding courses earn more on the carding itself or on the courses?
Like all infotsigans, he earns money from sales.
Let's say we are currently being watched by a person who is engaged in carding. What would you recommend to him now?
It depends on what country he is from. If you are from Belarus, then dry breadcrumbs and prepare woolen socks, buy envelopes. Being in Belarus, it is better not to do this at all. If he is from another country, neither I nor you will force him to give up the occupation from which he feeds.
But you quit, didn't you?
So I served 10 years… We can advise you to finish this quickly. Collect some minimum amount and move some legal startup.
You wrote in your book that an even more experienced criminal gets out of prison. You've been in prison for 10 years. You somehow managed to break this scheme.
Getting behind bars, a person rarely agrees that he screwed up, he is to blame, and it was his actions that led him to jail. He blames the circumstances, the authorities, the judge and the prosecutor, who, because of insufficient evidence, realizing that he was involved in the cases, gave him a term of office. He blames them for all this, he is angry…
Well, let's say he stole cars. Once, twice, stolen — it all worked out. For the third time, he was put in jail, and he analyzes what he was caught in. He doesn't think about going out and changing his occupation. And he analyzes what he got caught on, and next time he won't make this mistake. Moreover, he communicates with other criminals, finds someone of his own level or higher. They exchange contacts, and it turns out a kind of networking. Therefore, he comes out more experienced.
So if I wanted to do cybercrime right now, I'd be more experienced. I wouldn't have made the same mistakes I did. In addition, during the time I spent there, I could think of more reliable security systems and so on. But everything ends sometime. I've outgrown that. Well, I understand that the risk still remains. No matter how thoughtful you are, there is still a human factor, some kind of accident. Therefore, I radically changed my field of activity.
Let's talk about cybersecurity now. What mistakes do regular users make?
The first mistake is very light passwords. The second and even bigger mistake is setting the same password for all services. The combination of email and password can be used for different services. Therefore, it makes sense to store especially valuable information on special encrypted disks: This is the DriveCrypt, BestCrypt, VeraCrypt (formerly TrueCrypt) program. They create a virtual container in one of the hard disk partitions, to which you assign, again, a password (preferably not the one that is used to log in to the operating system). Another error is transmitting the password in clear text. If you enter a password on a certain site, make sure that the site URL is the original one, and not some kind of left one.
There are many divorces related to pornography. A message is sent to your email address: "we hacked your computer and filmed you watching pornography... transfer money to such and such an account." Most often, this spammer is just a moron. Sometimes, though, they don't bluff. And sometimes they call from numbers that supposedly belong to some well-known bank or organization. In fact, this is a common number substitution. Then they ask for some payment details and withdraw money from the person who thinks it's really the bank calling. In case of such calls, you can put down the phone and call back. And it turns out that the bank didn't call. There are also divorces on dating sites. Under the guise of a pretty girl, they meet, ask to transfer communication, for example, to VK, find out the list of friends. Or they ask you to go to Skype for intimate communication (where there is a camera). Then the video of intimate communication on Skype is recorded. It turns out that there was not a living person on the other side, but a fragment of the film. The attacker blackmails the victim of deception, threatening to send the record to the entire friend list. Usually, the victim has to pay several hundred dollars. It all depends on who they catch, though. But after paying the blackmailer once, the person can continue to pay him further.
On "Habré" there was an article about breaking through people. She collected some incredible number of likes. They say that you can go to the forum and order a breakdown of people: get information about how much money they have in their account, where they are located, and so on. For some reason, the article caused a frenzied response. Why do you think people write so boldly and openly about offering such services? Do they have any fear that the police will come to them instead of the client?
The police themselves provide these services. I have a couple of channels in Telegram that offer punching across Russia and Ukraine: printouts of all calls to all mobile operators for any period of time, punching SMS, full information on bank accounts, car numbers, the most frequent movements, and other documents such as copies of passports and certificates. This complete set costs 50-100 thousand rubles.
You noticed such an interesting point: from a criminal to a businessman, in fact, one step-it all depends on the vector of energy application. And where does this energy itself come from?
Sports, other practices, as well as doping will give you only 10%. I believe that it should be innate. Therefore, among criminals, 95% is ballast (although it may be impossible to say so). And if you burn them in the crematorium tomorrow, nothing will change on earth. This is a ballast that does not bring anything good to the planet as a whole. These are people who are always complaining, who themselves are worthless in fact, do not strive for anything… Like a worm: crawling and eating something.
And only 5% of people are active, with a high level of energy, who because of their actions got there: someone did business incorrectly, someone was closed by competitors, someone-because of professional crimes. I have a friend there who is a professional car thief-he is a smart, developed guy in all respects. It is not too late to direct it in some other direction. Perhaps he did it all by accident. And I also accidentally found these cards on the Internet at one time. If I had an extra thousand dollars and I got you (figuratively speaking), maybe we would have messed up some bulletin board and would have been the second Avito... or the first. I need him to understand for himself. For me, this happened under the influence of a prison sentence and correct literature.
What countries in the world can't you go to right now?
In general, this is a legal gap. Usually, if a person has already been punished, they are not tried twice for the same thing. But the United States is a boundless country: if something concerns their interests, they will do anything. We all know that… They think you should serve time on their territory. Well, in extreme cases — in the UK. And I turned out to be some kind of idiocy: I stayed in Belarus for 10 years without causing damage to citizens or companies of Belarus. I only caused damage to European countries and the United States. And they still have complaints about me. Then the question is: why the fuck did I sit there for 10 years, if I can't move around the world in peace now? Therefore, I cannot travel to countries that are friendly to the United States, or even to countries that have an extradition treaty with the United States. And sometimes, even without a contract, they harass people in other countries. So my list of countries is limited. I can probably go to 30 countries.
In one of your interviews, you said that you have an idea to register a charitable foundation that would help prisons with sports equipment and books. Let's say I have books. Where should I take them?
Isolation is very scary in prison. The worst thing is that you are cut off from communication with loved ones and family. And those pathetic one or two phone calls a month, emails, and dates a couple of times a year. And you degrade. I found myself sometimes struggling to find my words on the phone. Such information hunger is one of the most terrible methods of human suppression.
Personally, I believe that my transformation from criminal to businessman was influenced by the books I read during that time. And it was mostly philosophy: I read Osho, John Keh, several Christian books (one of them is "Unholy Saints"). Socrates, Plato, Bertrand Russell.
Just about redirecting energy was written by Osho. I have a goal to create a foundation (the name has already been coined by m Freedom forever). At the first stage, we select a list of 500 books that lead to the transformation of a person and make you think. At the second stage, everything is coordinated with publishers, purchased, and the kit is sent to each prison. This will be useful.
And not every zone encourages sports. Although, what else to do behind bars? And often prisoners degrade both mentally and physically. When there is a fund, all this will be easier to solve. And now everything is overgrown with complex bureaucratic procedures.
You said that you started writing a book from the first week of your incarceration.
What else is there to do? Eat, smoke, drink tea... some sports. But mostly you read and write. Cool pastime. I knew I couldn't get out of court. I also thought of using the book to draw attention to myself: I did not cause any damage to Belarus, but I was forced to sit for 10 years and ask for a pardon. But nothing helped, these requests are not read by any of the major officials.
The book began as a diary, continued as a memoir and an attempt to convey some of your experience, just to tell how it was. I had concerns that it would become a manual on cybercrime. But many of the schemes that are outlined there have already been opened, and the people described there are already either in prison or have served time. I changed the surnames a little, the nicknames of those who couldn't be mentioned.
Every month, 30 people write to me thanking me and saying that they were engaged in cybercrime, read a book, and did something else. I only made $200-300 from selling the book. The book is either downloaded on torrents or sent to each other. According to our calculations with the publisher, the book was read by about 40 thousand people, and only 3 thousand copies were sold. I lost about $15k of potential profit.
A friend of mine helped me adapt it for the Western reader. I paid several thousand dollars for it. It is sold on Amazon. The paper version costs $26, while the electronic version costs about $11. Everything suits me there, but in the West books are practically not stolen.
Did you write a book with a pencil or pen and rewrite it 3-4 times?
I also wrote a lot from my mobile phone — I had a Nokia N97 behind bars more than once. And this at that time was almost a mini-laptop. I wrote and immediately sent them to freedom by mail. I wrote 15-20 percent of the text with him. The manuscript was taken away from me when almost all the text was digitized.
But I rewrote the book because I didn't like it. Some chapters I wrote well the first time, and some I rewrote 15-20 times. The book gave me much more than money: new interesting acquaintances. I am happy that I know many of these people. And some of them became my companions. If you have something to say, you should write a book.
Why have you stopped writing now?
I can't keep up with everything. But in my blog (carding.pro I'm telling you something I can't keep quiet about.
In the IT mine Sergey Pavlovich. Sergey, can you tell us who you are?
Yes, it will be easier for everyone: in the past, a cybercriminal, for which he later had to serve 10 years, the author of the book "How I Stole a million. Confession of a Repentant Carder " and founder of the cashback service SecretDiscounter.com. I also run my own YouTube channel-just for the soul... and for the audience. It's called "People PRO".
Is carding easy money?
No. In general, all crime is not easy money. Any money is difficult. To succeed in cybercrime, you still need to reach a certain status, work day and night, be in touch with hundreds of people, speak several languages, and preferably have some kind of information resource such as a blog or forum. I can agree that money is fast in crime. But they are not easy, they are just as difficult as in other areas.
Money aside, why were you doing this?
Did I feel a certain buzz when I broke some systems? No. Carders are not hackers. I consider hackers to be the elite of the cybercrime world. But they're not salespeople. They get card numbers, hack e-bay accounts, and dump databases. And I was only doing it for the money. Yes, and I got there by accident by and large. It was the 90s, and my parents worked two or three jobs to provide for the family. We ordered any products from Western online stores and paid with left credit cards. And then there's more: selling documents, credit card numbers, and pin dumps. I didn't get any high. I earned about $100,000 a month. I didn't spend much money ($3-5 thousand). I used to put them in a stash that my grandfather had in the garden. Cash used to put them in a hookah case.
You called the book How I Stole a Million. Was there really a million, or did you exaggerate a little?
There was more. The Americans charged me $36 million in damages. But how does the damage count: they find the credit cards I was involved in and get the total amount stolen. But I made a lot less money myself, because I didn't steal all that money. For example, I bought data from hackers for $10, and sold it for $50. I ended up pocketing $40. And she was charged, let's say, one and a half thousand. In short, I calculated at the time: I had about $1,200,000 in cash lying around.
Can we say that carders are an endangered species?
No, we have the largest card reader forum. Everyone was hanging out there: carders, hackers, virus writers, and spammers — a motley crowd (about 6 thousand people). Now there are forums where 300 thousand people are sitting. 10 years have passed, and the growth is 50-100 times. Now there are many Telegram channels that teach this for money. But this is also a dubious occupation. What good is it if they teach you how to steal someone else's PayPal?
Wait… Are you saying that there are carder schools that teach this for money?
Yes.
And how many students are there?
They graduate 200-500 students a month.
Does a businessman who sells carding courses earn more on the carding itself or on the courses?
Like all infotsigans, he earns money from sales.
Let's say we are currently being watched by a person who is engaged in carding. What would you recommend to him now?
It depends on what country he is from. If you are from Belarus, then dry breadcrumbs and prepare woolen socks, buy envelopes. Being in Belarus, it is better not to do this at all. If he is from another country, neither I nor you will force him to give up the occupation from which he feeds.
But you quit, didn't you?
So I served 10 years… We can advise you to finish this quickly. Collect some minimum amount and move some legal startup.
You wrote in your book that an even more experienced criminal gets out of prison. You've been in prison for 10 years. You somehow managed to break this scheme.
Getting behind bars, a person rarely agrees that he screwed up, he is to blame, and it was his actions that led him to jail. He blames the circumstances, the authorities, the judge and the prosecutor, who, because of insufficient evidence, realizing that he was involved in the cases, gave him a term of office. He blames them for all this, he is angry…
Well, let's say he stole cars. Once, twice, stolen — it all worked out. For the third time, he was put in jail, and he analyzes what he was caught in. He doesn't think about going out and changing his occupation. And he analyzes what he got caught on, and next time he won't make this mistake. Moreover, he communicates with other criminals, finds someone of his own level or higher. They exchange contacts, and it turns out a kind of networking. Therefore, he comes out more experienced.
So if I wanted to do cybercrime right now, I'd be more experienced. I wouldn't have made the same mistakes I did. In addition, during the time I spent there, I could think of more reliable security systems and so on. But everything ends sometime. I've outgrown that. Well, I understand that the risk still remains. No matter how thoughtful you are, there is still a human factor, some kind of accident. Therefore, I radically changed my field of activity.
Let's talk about cybersecurity now. What mistakes do regular users make?
The first mistake is very light passwords. The second and even bigger mistake is setting the same password for all services. The combination of email and password can be used for different services. Therefore, it makes sense to store especially valuable information on special encrypted disks: This is the DriveCrypt, BestCrypt, VeraCrypt (formerly TrueCrypt) program. They create a virtual container in one of the hard disk partitions, to which you assign, again, a password (preferably not the one that is used to log in to the operating system). Another error is transmitting the password in clear text. If you enter a password on a certain site, make sure that the site URL is the original one, and not some kind of left one.
There are many divorces related to pornography. A message is sent to your email address: "we hacked your computer and filmed you watching pornography... transfer money to such and such an account." Most often, this spammer is just a moron. Sometimes, though, they don't bluff. And sometimes they call from numbers that supposedly belong to some well-known bank or organization. In fact, this is a common number substitution. Then they ask for some payment details and withdraw money from the person who thinks it's really the bank calling. In case of such calls, you can put down the phone and call back. And it turns out that the bank didn't call. There are also divorces on dating sites. Under the guise of a pretty girl, they meet, ask to transfer communication, for example, to VK, find out the list of friends. Or they ask you to go to Skype for intimate communication (where there is a camera). Then the video of intimate communication on Skype is recorded. It turns out that there was not a living person on the other side, but a fragment of the film. The attacker blackmails the victim of deception, threatening to send the record to the entire friend list. Usually, the victim has to pay several hundred dollars. It all depends on who they catch, though. But after paying the blackmailer once, the person can continue to pay him further.
On "Habré" there was an article about breaking through people. She collected some incredible number of likes. They say that you can go to the forum and order a breakdown of people: get information about how much money they have in their account, where they are located, and so on. For some reason, the article caused a frenzied response. Why do you think people write so boldly and openly about offering such services? Do they have any fear that the police will come to them instead of the client?
The police themselves provide these services. I have a couple of channels in Telegram that offer punching across Russia and Ukraine: printouts of all calls to all mobile operators for any period of time, punching SMS, full information on bank accounts, car numbers, the most frequent movements, and other documents such as copies of passports and certificates. This complete set costs 50-100 thousand rubles.
You noticed such an interesting point: from a criminal to a businessman, in fact, one step-it all depends on the vector of energy application. And where does this energy itself come from?
Sports, other practices, as well as doping will give you only 10%. I believe that it should be innate. Therefore, among criminals, 95% is ballast (although it may be impossible to say so). And if you burn them in the crematorium tomorrow, nothing will change on earth. This is a ballast that does not bring anything good to the planet as a whole. These are people who are always complaining, who themselves are worthless in fact, do not strive for anything… Like a worm: crawling and eating something.
And only 5% of people are active, with a high level of energy, who because of their actions got there: someone did business incorrectly, someone was closed by competitors, someone-because of professional crimes. I have a friend there who is a professional car thief-he is a smart, developed guy in all respects. It is not too late to direct it in some other direction. Perhaps he did it all by accident. And I also accidentally found these cards on the Internet at one time. If I had an extra thousand dollars and I got you (figuratively speaking), maybe we would have messed up some bulletin board and would have been the second Avito... or the first. I need him to understand for himself. For me, this happened under the influence of a prison sentence and correct literature.
What countries in the world can't you go to right now?
In general, this is a legal gap. Usually, if a person has already been punished, they are not tried twice for the same thing. But the United States is a boundless country: if something concerns their interests, they will do anything. We all know that… They think you should serve time on their territory. Well, in extreme cases — in the UK. And I turned out to be some kind of idiocy: I stayed in Belarus for 10 years without causing damage to citizens or companies of Belarus. I only caused damage to European countries and the United States. And they still have complaints about me. Then the question is: why the fuck did I sit there for 10 years, if I can't move around the world in peace now? Therefore, I cannot travel to countries that are friendly to the United States, or even to countries that have an extradition treaty with the United States. And sometimes, even without a contract, they harass people in other countries. So my list of countries is limited. I can probably go to 30 countries.
In one of your interviews, you said that you have an idea to register a charitable foundation that would help prisons with sports equipment and books. Let's say I have books. Where should I take them?
Isolation is very scary in prison. The worst thing is that you are cut off from communication with loved ones and family. And those pathetic one or two phone calls a month, emails, and dates a couple of times a year. And you degrade. I found myself sometimes struggling to find my words on the phone. Such information hunger is one of the most terrible methods of human suppression.
Personally, I believe that my transformation from criminal to businessman was influenced by the books I read during that time. And it was mostly philosophy: I read Osho, John Keh, several Christian books (one of them is "Unholy Saints"). Socrates, Plato, Bertrand Russell.
Just about redirecting energy was written by Osho. I have a goal to create a foundation (the name has already been coined by m Freedom forever). At the first stage, we select a list of 500 books that lead to the transformation of a person and make you think. At the second stage, everything is coordinated with publishers, purchased, and the kit is sent to each prison. This will be useful.
And not every zone encourages sports. Although, what else to do behind bars? And often prisoners degrade both mentally and physically. When there is a fund, all this will be easier to solve. And now everything is overgrown with complex bureaucratic procedures.
You said that you started writing a book from the first week of your incarceration.
What else is there to do? Eat, smoke, drink tea... some sports. But mostly you read and write. Cool pastime. I knew I couldn't get out of court. I also thought of using the book to draw attention to myself: I did not cause any damage to Belarus, but I was forced to sit for 10 years and ask for a pardon. But nothing helped, these requests are not read by any of the major officials.
The book began as a diary, continued as a memoir and an attempt to convey some of your experience, just to tell how it was. I had concerns that it would become a manual on cybercrime. But many of the schemes that are outlined there have already been opened, and the people described there are already either in prison or have served time. I changed the surnames a little, the nicknames of those who couldn't be mentioned.
Every month, 30 people write to me thanking me and saying that they were engaged in cybercrime, read a book, and did something else. I only made $200-300 from selling the book. The book is either downloaded on torrents or sent to each other. According to our calculations with the publisher, the book was read by about 40 thousand people, and only 3 thousand copies were sold. I lost about $15k of potential profit.
A friend of mine helped me adapt it for the Western reader. I paid several thousand dollars for it. It is sold on Amazon. The paper version costs $26, while the electronic version costs about $11. Everything suits me there, but in the West books are practically not stolen.
Did you write a book with a pencil or pen and rewrite it 3-4 times?
I also wrote a lot from my mobile phone — I had a Nokia N97 behind bars more than once. And this at that time was almost a mini-laptop. I wrote and immediately sent them to freedom by mail. I wrote 15-20 percent of the text with him. The manuscript was taken away from me when almost all the text was digitized.
But I rewrote the book because I didn't like it. Some chapters I wrote well the first time, and some I rewrote 15-20 times. The book gave me much more than money: new interesting acquaintances. I am happy that I know many of these people. And some of them became my companions. If you have something to say, you should write a book.
Why have you stopped writing now?
I can't keep up with everything. But in my blog (carding.pro I'm telling you something I can't keep quiet about.
