Former Minnesota Man Indicted for Scheme Using the Dark Web

MINNEAPOLIS (WJON News) -- A former Minnesota man has been indicted on wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges.

According to court documents, he bought nearly 2,500 stolen login credentials from a malicious dark web marketplace and used them to make fraudulent financial transactions.

From about February through November in 2020 29-year-old Andrew Shenkosky created a scheme while living in Minnesota.  He bought and accessed stolen account information from the Genesis Market, an online marketplace that was ultimately taken down by the FBI in April of 2023.

Genesis Market compiled hundreds of thousands of stolen login credentials, including cell phone numbers, email addresses, usernames, and passwords from malware-infected computers of victims across the world, and then it offered that stolen information for sale on the dark web.

Shenkosky bought nearly 2,500 stolen credentials of various victims on Genesis Market.  He then used that stolen data to make an unauthorized withdrawal from a victim's bank account without their knowledge.  He also tried to sell some of the victims' stolen account data.

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The case is the result of an investigation by the FBI Cybercrime Unit and the FBI Minneapolis Office.

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