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

I was a lying media whore

[spun]

FTFA Footnotes "The logs appear to be legitimate but Wired News was unable to verify that they were recorded on behalf of the FBI or that they were unaltered by Thomas."

Translation: this guy made it all up and sold his story to Wired, the Weekly World News for techies.

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.

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]

I RTFA.... the first page at least....

[tygt]

Thomas says he is telling his story now because he's tired of the life he's lived on the boards over the last five years and resentful of the control the FBI maintained over him for so long. He also wants to warn the public about the risks they face from the carding community and deter kids from being seduced into a life of crime.

Resentful of the control? C'mon, man, you didn't do a day in the slammer, and they could've locked you up tight. So, instead, you're basically outing the russian mafia?

Right then. Good luck, it's been nice knowing you.

Interesting article, but I call BS.

American hacker helps bust Russian cyber crime

[Odiumjunkie]

in other news, sales of Polonium-210 reached a record high today. Details at 11.

Stainless Steal Rat?

[Anonymous Monkey]

Jim? Jim diGriz? Is that you?

Clever

[markov_chain]

1. Plant a story in Wired about crook going light side, becoming famous
2. Script kiddies apply for FBI jobs en masse
3. Busted!

The long tail of cybercrime

[necro81]

FTFA:

He told Secret Service agent Michael Levin what he'd done for the Russians, but Levin wasn't impressed. 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.

Unfortunately, this is true of all crime: the scarce resources of law enforcement are generally allocated to the relatively small number of big crimes, while the much larger number of petty crimes are often left untouched. I'd guess that this is particularly true of cybercrime, where the law enforcement resources are more scarce, the big crimes are bigger, and the little crimes like "petty" identity theft are a drop in the bucket. Identity theft is hardly petty to the victim, however, it can ruin their finances and credit for years, and takes tremendous amounts of work to clear up, even when you are lucky enough to not get stuck with the bill.

The Hollies

[writermike]

Saturday night in my basement
Workin' for the FBI
Chattin' in a nest of bad hax0rz
Cans of Ensure piled up high

EFNet channel on a west server
Fulla lamez0rz who were doing wrong
Just about to email my G-G-Man
When my browser showed a woman's thong

A pair of double-Ds made me open my eyes
My temperature started to rise
She was a big breasted woman with a web cam
From an online porno mall
I just forgot about those bad men
'Cause that big breasted woman had it all

Dog Joke

[lymond01]

In Tennessee, a guy sees a sign in front of a house: "Talking Dog for Sale."

He rings the bell and the owner tells him the dog is in the backyard. The guy goes into the backyard and sees a black mutt just sitting there.
"You talk?" he asks.

"Yep," the mutt replies.

"So, what's your story?"

The mutt looks up and says, "Well, I discovered this gift pretty young and I wanted to help the government, so I told the
CIA about my gift, and in no time they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping. I was one of their most valuable spies eight years running."

"The jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger and I wanted to settle down. So I
signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security work, mostly wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings there and was awarded a batch of medals. Had a wife, a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."

The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.

The owner says, "Ten dollars."

The guy says, "This dog is amazing. Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?"

The owner replies, "He's such a liar. He didn't do any of that stuff."