KOSOVO national Ardit Kutleshi, 28, has pleaded guilty in a US federal court to helping run Rydox, an online criminal marketplace that sold stolen personally identifiable information, access devices, means of identification and cybercrime tools. According to US Department of Justice court documents cited in the report, Rydox operated from at least February 2016 and processed more than 7,600 transactions involving data stolen from US victims.
The marketplace reportedly listed more than 321,000 products and had about 18,000 users, generating at least $232,000 in revenue. Thousands of US victims were affected.
Kutleshi pleaded guilty in the Western District of Pennsylvania to aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He faces a mandatory minimum two-year sentence for aggravated identity theft and up to 20 years for the money-laundering charge, with sentencing scheduled for 9 February 2027. His brother Jetmir, who also helped operate Rydox, pleaded guilty separately, was sentenced in December 2025 and deported to Kosovo.
US authorities seized the Rydox domain and, in a coordinated operation with Malaysian police, took control of servers in Kuala Lumpur and seized $225,000 in cryptocurrency. Kutleshi was arrested in Kosovo in December 2024 and extradited to the US in 2025. The investigation involved authorities in the US, Kosovo, Albania and Malaysia.