FBI says Dark Market sting netted 56 arrests

5 comments | 13I like it!
October 16, 2008, 08:15 PM —  IDG News Service — 

A two-year undercover FBI sting operation targeting online fraudsters has netted 56 arrests and prevented millions of dollars in economic losses, the FBI said Thursday.

The FBI said it had infiltrated online "carder" forums hosted on the DarkMarket.ws Web site, which was widely used by online scammers to buy and sell stolen credit card numbers, other financial information, and even the devices used to make fake banking cards. Before it was shut down earlier this month, the Web site had registered more than 2,500 members.

The FBI ran its sting in cooperation with the U.K.'s Serious Organized Crime Agency and authorities in Turkey and Germany. "The arrests this week in the U.K. are a good demonstration of the coordination taking place today between the FBI, the Serious Organized Crime Agency... and other law enforcement agencies around the globe," FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Shawn Henry said Thursday in a statement.

In addition to the drawing the 56 arrests, the sting helped the FBI seize compromised accounts and prevent the loss of about US$70 million in fraud, the FBI said. It has also generated new leads that are being tracked down by international law enforcement.

Dark Market's members have had a lot to be nervous about this week.

Although Dark Market was thought to have been administered by a criminal going by the name Master Splyntr, German Public Radio reported on Monday that the FBI had been running a sting operation on the site since late 2006, and that Master Splyntr was actually an FBI agent named J. Keith Mularski.

The FBI did not respond to requests for further comment on this story.

According to a report in Wired News, Master Splyntr announced that Dark Market would be closing last month after one of the Web site's administrators, Cha0, was arrested in Turkey after "reportedly kidnapping and torturing a police informant."

"It is apparent that this forum … is attracting too much attention from a lot of the world services (agents of FBI, SS, and Interpol)," Wired quotes Master Splyntr as writing in a forum post. "I guess it was only time before this would happen. It is very unfortunate that we have come to this situation, because ... we have established DM as the premier English speaking forum for conducting business. Such is life. When you are on top, people try to bring you down."

IDG News Service

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Close

On Twitter now

fraud

Powered by Twitter
You are logged in | Sign out
Sign in and post to Twitter

What are you thinking?

Cancel Tweet sent

On Twitter now

Comments

spoken like a true agent?

Spoken like a true agent, or not.....I am not so sure this
dude is an agent as the german police would want you to think, maybe just want to discredit him in case he spawns another website with his name attached to it.
| reply

Hey first anon

Guess what federal agency is tracking your IP to see how often you used that website..
| reply

look some dude seling

look some dude seling http://DarkMarket.pl
| reply
peer-to-peer

jfruh
Apple syncing patent can't come soon enough

pasmith
New Twitter features borrow from 3rd party clients

Esther Schindler
Open Source Changes the Software Acquisition Process

mikelgan
How to set up continuous podcast play on the new iTunes

David Strom
Five important Windows 7 mobility features

sjvn
Guard your Wi-Fi for your own sake                        

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Grepping on Whole Words

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace