Ardit Kutleshi, 28, a citizen of Kosovo, ended up arrested by Kosovo law enforcement in December 2024 and then extradited from Kosovo to the United States in 2025. In December 2024, the United States also 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.
These transactions involved the sale of PII stolen from victims located in the United States.
Guilty Plea
Kutleshi pleaded guilty Tuesday, September 22, in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania to aggravated identity theft and money laundering conspiracy.
Sentencing will be February 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.
“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 United States 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.”
“Rydox turned stolen information and criminal tools into a marketplace, making it easier for criminals to convert someone else’s loss into their next crime,” said FBI Pittsburgh Assistant Special Agent in Charge Amie Loos. “Dismantling this platform was about more than taking a website offline – it was about disrupting the criminal infrastructure that fueled fraud and identity theft against thousands of victims.”
Sophisticated Scheme
“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.
“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.”