Ardit Kutleshi, 28, a Kosovar national, pleaded guilty to charges related to his creation and operation of Rydox, an illicit website and marketplace for cybercriminals to buy, sell and trade stolen personal information, and to access devices and other tools for carrying out cybercrime and fraud.
“The guilty plea of Ardit Kutleshi for operating the Rydox marketplace exposes a sophisticated scheme to profit from stolen identities and cybercrime tools,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “This guilty plea sends a strong message to all cybercriminals that the Justice Department will identify, arrest, and prosecute cybercriminals regardless of where they are in the world through international cooperation, technical expertise, and cutting-edge law enforcement.”
“Cybercriminals Ardit Kutleshi and his brother Jetmir – who pleaded guilty and was sentenced in December 2025 prior to his deportation back to Kosovo – operated the Rydox marketplace for their own gain, making hundreds of thousands of dollars from the marketplace where cyber criminals could purchase information and tools to effect and further their online crime,” said U.S. Attorney Troy Rivetti of the Western District of Pennsylvania. “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. Our office will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to find and prosecute individuals who attempt to profit from the illegal sharing and sale of other people’s personal information and access devices, and related cybercrime.”
“Rydox put cybercriminal tools and sensitive data up for sale, including the stolen identities and logins of thousands of people,” said Assistant Director Brett Leatherman 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. We will continue to use every legal tool at our disposal to extradite cybercriminals and take down their infrastructure.”
According to court documents, since at least 2016, Rydox conducted over 7,600 transactions involving stolen personally identifiable information (PII), stolen access devices, means of identification, and cybercrime tools and services, receiving at least $232,000 in revenue. These transactions involved the sale of PII stolen from victims located in the United States. Kutleshi pleaded guiltyin the District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania to aggravated identity theft and money laundering conspiracy. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 9, 2027, and faces a mandatory minimum penalty of two years in prison for the aggravated identity theft count and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for the money laundering conspiracy count. A federal district court judge will determine the sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
Kutleshi was arrested by Kosovo law enforcement in December 2024 and extradited from Kosovo to the United States in 2025. In December 2024, the United States also judicially seized the domain www.Rydox.cc, which hosted and facilitated access to the Rydox website. The seizure of this domain prevented the owners and third parties from using the site to continue to buy and sell cybercrime tools and stolen personal identifying information of U.S. citizens.
The FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office investigated this case in coordination with the Kosovo State Prosecutor’s Special Prosecution Office, the Kosovo Police’s Cybercrime Investigation Directorate, the Albanian Special Anti-Corruption Body (SPAK), the Royal Malaysia Police’s Commercial Crime Investigation Department, and the Attorney General’s Chambers of Malaysia.
Senior Counsel Thomas Dougherty of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole Stockey for the Western District of Pennsylvania are prosecuting the case. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs also provided significant assistance.
CCIPS investigates and prosecutes cybercrime and intellectual property (IP) crime in coordination with domestic and international law enforcement agencies, often with assistance from the private sector. Since 2020, CCIPS has secured the conviction of over 180 cyber and IP criminals, and court orders for the return of over $350 million in victim funds.