The site, which was set up in 2015 and shut down in early 2017, had collected around 3 billion personal identity records and associated passwords from a string of major breaches and made them accessible and searchable for a fee.

A similar site has since emerged whose servers Canadian police believe are located in Russia.

The man, 27-year-old Jordan Evan Bloom, is accused of administering the site and collecting C$247,000 (RM788,000) from the sale of stolen records and associated passwords, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said.

The charges against Bloom include trafficking in identity information, mischief to data, and possession of property obtained by crime, the RCMP said.

Imran Ahmad, a cybersecurity lawyer at Miller Thomson in Toronto, said the charges come with maximum sentences of between five and 10 years in prison.

He said it was likely that Bloom was working with others in running the site, and that the money police say he collected was likely only a portion of the site’s overall haul.

“Cybercriminals typically have an underground network of collaborators and given the size of the database and scope of the endeavour, I suspect others were likely involved,” Ahmad said via email.

The RCMP said Bloom was the sole operator of the Canadian website and that their investigation is closed.

Bloom was charged on December 22, the RCMP said, as part of its cybercrime team’s investigation, dubbed Project Adoration. The RCMP said the assistance of the Dutch national police and the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation was “essential to the investigation.”

Bloom is due back in court on February 16, CBC News said.