Independent research index / First release
CarderPlanet: trust inside an illicit market
A forum could make strangers willing to trade, even when the traded information was stolen. The documented case of Roman Vega provides one route into that history; it is not a complete account of every participant.
Source review: 16 October 2026 · Introductory account
From forums to a market
The Justice Department describes Roman Vega as a co-founder and senior administrator of CarderPlanet in the early 2000s, after his earlier Boa Factory site. Its account emphasizes hierarchy and reputation mechanisms. These details are useful for understanding organization, rather than as a model to reproduce.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice — 2013 historical account.
2003–2009: arrest, transfer, and plea
According to the same official account, Vega was arrested in Cyprus in February 2003, extradited to the United States, transferred to the Eastern District of New York in 2007, and pleaded guilty in January 2009 to conspiracies involving money laundering and access-device fraud. These are Vega’s procedural milestones, not a single collective legal outcome for the forum.
2013: sentence, with limits to the inference
Vega received an 18-year prison sentence in December 2013. The announcement supports that historical outcome; it does not establish his present custody status. Nor does it establish criminality for everyone who encountered the forum. The profile deliberately avoids a list of alleged associates whose individual case outcomes have not been checked.
Source: U.S. Attorney, Eastern District of New York — sentencing announcement.
Why names alone are insufficient
A 2010 Justice Department announcement separately described allegations against Vladislav Horohorin involving CarderPlanet and other forums. It is a charging-stage source, not a substitute for a final judgment. This distinction matters in a networked archive: a documented allegation belongs to a dated case record, not an unqualified relationship label on every person or organization nearby.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice — August 2010 charging-stage account.