A particularly successful Russian hacker is about to serve time behind bars in the US. A federal judge has sentenced Aleksei Burkov, the operator of an elite cybercrime forum, to nine years in prison after pleading guilty in January to two device fraud charges. He’d faced up to 15 years in prison, but that plea apparently didn’t help him avoid most of the punishment.

The invitation-only forum, DirectConnection, let hackers and other online crooks sell their services and stolen goods so long as they had $5,000 and the backing of three current members. The charges also revolved around Burkov’s control of Cardplanet, a site that sold payment card numbers. Over $20 million in bogus purchases were made using stolen US credit cards.