I Was a Cybercrook for the FBI

Hoi Polloi writes "Wired News has a series starting on internet crime. The first piece they have up covers the story of a cybercrook who specialized in credit card fraud. Caught in a sting operation in November of 2002, the man who identified himself as 'El Mariachi' on message boards would lead a double life for the next two years working for the FBI. As he reported on credit card scammers, dodged his former associates, and stopped criminals from defrauding the 2004 presidential campaign, he also tried to keep his life together. A fascinating tale that looks at the face of modern crime, and crime-stopping techniques."

Comments

Re:I was a lying media whore

[spun]

At least they managed to note that logs say whatever the person who writes them wants them to say. How many juries get to learn that at trial?

Any jury at the trial of a defandant who has a decent lawyer? There are strict rules for computer evidence. You need to be able to account for everyone that potentially had access to the data. Any basic computer security course will tell you how easy it is to have electronic evidence thrown out of court.

SNITCHES!

[flyneye]

Good thing he got a "get out of jail,free" card.
Snitches get punked in prison.They are lowest on the food chain next to pedophiles and have a low survival rate.

Re:I was a lying media whore

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a real character from the carding scene, and he DID narc on quite a few people. I've never heard anything about the 2004 election but knowing the characters he associated with, that is probably overstated.

The fact that they do in fact commit identity theft on a fairly massive level, does not change the fact that most of them are try hard drug addicts. Script kiddies of the fraud world.

Most of these people are not capable of being simultaneously meticulously cautious, and exceedingly ambitious. The amount of precautions they take WILL hurt the ammount of business they can do. Caution to the point of staying out of jail involves keeping an extremely low profile, not getting greedy, and resultingly: never making it big. The people who make it big and try to cash out never can.

Criminals are by nature lazy.

Forum scheming is hardly the same thing as a conspiracy that is about to be acted upon. I doubt they got further than analyzing the technical concerns.

Last I heard about "El": once his handlers had no further use for him, they threw him to the wolves of some state cops in regards to some past warrants he aparently never resolved. Good riddance. He was just another one of them till he got caught and they leaned on him. Then he folded like a napkin, became their tool, and started a "new leaf."

Just goes to show the environment makes the man. I wonder how many of you people who scorn criminals would hold your ground if the tables were turned? Would you serve 10 years to keep your conscience clean? It's the same disdain straight A students have for cheaters. Do your thing, but no matter how much hassle these idiots cause you, karmas a bitch, and they dig their own grave 10X deeper.

Feel sorry for them if anything. It's the Christian thing to do.[sic]

Re:The long tail of cybercrime

[BoRegardless]

Even regular scam investment-retirement "opportunity" cons for large sums are not prosecuted.

A friend's inlaws lost $750,000 in retirement funds, and the County DA wouldn't prosecut the case. It was too small and would take too many attorney hours over a long time compared to the workload in the particular county (So.Cal.).

Bo

FBI sez yur under the limit

[Intron]

"According to Thomas, the agent replied that he had multi-million-dollar cases on his desk and wasn't going to waste time on a lousy $50,000 internet scam."

It was nice of the FBI to tell us this limit. Now we know how much we can go for without attracting Sculley and Mulder.