FBI Says Dark Market Sting Netted 56 Arrests

narramissic writes "A two-year undercover FBI sting operation targeting online 'carder' forums hosted on the DarkMarket.ws Web site has netted 56 arrests and prevented about $70 million in fraud losses, the FBI said Thursday. DarkMarket.ws 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. 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." Of course, they say it in German; non-German speakers may want to consult the Babelfish.

Comments

agent identities

[Danny Rathjens]

Why does the FBI publicize the names of their undercover agents?

Re:agent identities

[drix]

No kidding, I thought the same thing. Hope that guy has Lifelock.

Re:agent identities

[Riot.ATL]

Might be a pseudonym?

Re:agent identities

[autocracy]

Well, they're not undercover, per se. Whenever a case comes to trial, the officer's name always ends up on the record. Further, I presume there is no such thing as a career undercover officer. I believe the way they, and most police organizations at a lower level, work is that willing officers rotate into undercover operations for a period of time, and then rotate back to "real" duty of some kind.

Re:agent identities

[MasterOfMagic]

They need to do way instain fbi> who kill thier agnets, becuse these anget can't fright back? It was on the news this morning a mother in DE, who had kill her three agent. They are taking the three feds back to New York to lady to rest my pary are with the father who lost his feds ; i am truley sorry for Mueller's lots.

Re:agent identities

[hairyfeet]

That doesn't bug me as much as the lack of oversight on these "stings".Did they have an independent branch keeps logs of all conversations online so we know they didn't toss out any "unusable"(entrapment) transactions? And don't think cops won't try to set you up? BS! I'll relate a little personal story just to give a taste.

The good old '90s was the time,where Windows was built on top of DOS and was as stable as a crackhead on bad dope,and I ran a chat room for Windows errors. You know the type,"OMG this thing runs for 5 minutes and then turns blue and says gibberish!".So I'm fixing a VXD error when suddenly this "chick" comes on and starts hitting on me HARD. At first I tell her she is in the wrong site,this is for Windows PC errors,etc but she just won't stop. One filthy suggestion after another and "What's a matter,you don't like hot teen girls or something?" Finally I say " Look I'm working here. Take your dumb jailbait ass and go to a chat site and let those that are having a problem with their PCs get the help they need before I block your IP!"

The screen goes dead for a few minutes,then returns with "This is Officer Jaynes of The Arizona PD working with a federal task force to catch online predators. I just wanted to thank you,for you are the first person who hasn't taken the bait in nearly six months and I was beginning to think all guys were predators." I said "Well considering IANAL but even I know that what you were doing is entrapment,congratulations! I have just looked up the IP range for the Arizona PD and as soon as I push this button you're blacklisted. Buh Bye!"

So I think that the SAME rules that apply to meatspace should be applied to cyberspace. If the FBI does a sting in meatspace everything from the initial conversation right up to the arrest is taped,usually on video,so we can see that no entrapment was going on and to give the FBI extra evidence at trial. So any FBI servers should be managed by a separate company and every single thing going through them should be logged,period. Because I am all for catching pervs and ID thieves,with all the stunts like this,where they didn't even bother to log referrers so a rickroll could have ended with you in jail or dead,frankly I don't trust them as far as I can throw their server blade.

Re:agent identities

[MasterOfMagic]

* woosh *

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_is_babby_formed_How_girl_get_pragnent

Re:agent identities

[Golddess]

How unrealistic is "someone sent me a link"? It's entirely plausible that the link text he clicked was completely unrelated

Yeah, tell me about it.

(Disclaimer, that might be goatse, but I was too chicken-shit to find out for certain.)

Re:agent identities

[Toll_Free]

lol.

You really need to brush up on what entrapment is.

They where NOT trying to entrap you. Selling you narcotics and then arresting you for owning them is NOT entrapment.

Your story is suspect anyway. Any cop worth (his / her) salts isn't going to be telling you that you are a good boy afterwards for not taking the bait.

Looking up IP space for the police? LOL. Heard of AOL dialup?

This post stinks of bullshit. I'm removing my shoes and walking on. snopes couldn't even stand for this one.

--Toll_Free

Re:agent identities

[steelfood]

Selling you narcotics itself in an of itself is not entrapment. Repeatedly pestering you to buy narcotics until you do is entrapment.

Cops are, by and large, dumb. Local (exclusing large cities) and state cops are typically dumber than federal agents. Even for TFA, the FBI was logging into their server from a government IP block. I'm typically skeptical, but I don't see anything glaringly inconsistent with this anecdote. And quite frankly, there have been many such sting operations, and I wouldn't be surprised if a /.er got to experience it firsthand.

Actually, I wouldn't be too surprised if a /.er got caught by such an operation and thrown in prison either...

Re:agent identities

[mcgrew]

Selling you narcotics and then arresting you for owning them is NOT entrapment.

Then what, pray tell, IS? Sure looks like entrapment to me, and if I wind up on a jury where some poor slob got busted for buying dope from a cop, I'll hold out for a "not guilty" verdict. Actually since I don't believe the feds have the constitutional authority to outlaw drugs (they needed a constitutional amendment to outlaw alcohol, and I see no difference between it and any other drug) if I'm on the jury on a drug case, he or she will get off.

If a cop pretends to be a whore and walks up and says "suck your dick for twenty dollars?" that's entrapment. If she just LOOKS like a hooker and walks the streets like a whore (actually any Secret Police is a whore in my book) and you offer HER twenty bucks to suck your dick, first you're paying too much and second it's NOT entrapment.

Sitting outside a dope house and busting you as you come out isn't, as I found out when I drove two friends to a house in the ghetto to meet a slumlord who needed slums cleaned after evicting his impoverished tenents.

It and another episode of the cops abusing my Constitutional rights is journaled here.

Re:agent identities

[Tanktalus]

The definition of entrapment has three things:

1. The idea for committing the crime came from the government agents and not from the person accused of the crime. Offering you narcotics passes this test. Running a site for clearing stolen credit card information, being passive, does not.
2. The government agents then persuaded or talked the person into committing the crime. Simply giving him the opportunity to commit the crime is not the same as persuading him to commit the crime. Asking you merely once if you want to buy narcotics isn't persuading you. Running a site for clearing stolen credit card information isn't, either.
3. The person was not ready and willing to commit the crime before the government agents spoke with him. If you weren't willing to buy narcotics, someone asking you to buy some wouldn't get you to do it. If you didn't already have credit card info to sell, or want to buy stolen credit card, you wouldn't be looking for the sting site.

So, no, this is not entrapment.

Master Splynter?

[oodaloop]

Why are we wasting our time on rodents when the Shredder is still out there?

Ich fuer ein

[Hognoxious]

Ich fuer ein sage wilkommen zu unseren neuen ... ah, fuck it.

Re:Ich fuer ein

[Sique]

Ich zumindest begrüße unsere neuen Oberhäupter.

Re:Ich fuer ein

[dkleinsc]

Wenn ist das Nunstuck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beirhund das Oder die Flipperwald gersput.

Re:Ich fuer ein

[Windows_NT]

man, I took German for 3 years in school, and the only words i recognized were 'ein' and 'wilkommen'. Heres one for ya:
Zwei Kartoffel warst sitzen in der bakofen.
Die erste kartoffel sagt, "Est ist sehr heist!"
Und die zweite kartoffel sagt, "Du meine gute! Ein sprechen kartoffel!."
-- Die Kartoffel witz
Sorry bout the spelling ;)

Re:Ich fuer ein

[Sique]

Ok. For the german readers here a translation:

Zwei Kartoffeln saßen im Backofen.
Die erste Kartoffel sagte: "Es ist sehr heiß!"
Da sagte die zweite Kartoffel: "Du meine Güte! Eine sprechende Kartoffel!"

The question.

[halcyon1234]

I think the real question is this:

How exactly does one pay online for a credit card number?

Re:The question.

[ragethehotey]

Western Union or E-Gold, both relatively untraceable when used by people that know what they are doing. (Which is why a trust-based system such as an online forum is essential to the entire enterprise being able to function, and even so, criminals ripping off other criminals runs rampant)

Re:The question.

[skeeto]

criminals ripping off other criminals runs rampant

Are you saying there really is no honor among thieves?

Re:The question.

[ConceptJunkie]

Thieves, politicians, corporate executives, you name it...

Re:only 56 arrests?

[csartanis]

Err, you actually think someone is looking for bin laden?

Re:only 56 arrests?

[IndustrialComplex]

Err, you actually think someone is looking for bin laden?

Yes. If you think otherwise, then you really need to loosen the tinfoil.

Ebay, Pirate Bay...

[flyingfsck]

So, I take it Ebay and Pirate Bay are FBI stings too?

Re:Ebay, Pirate Bay...

[francium de neobie]

Actually, Microsoft is an FBI sting for catching the criminally stupid.

Re:I don't get it

[Zironic]

Not everyone that visits that kind of forum is engaged in criminal activity. They can only arrest people they have proof against.

This is great news but...

[madsheep]

This is great news and I am happy it was a successful sting operation. Bringing these guys down is something we all like to see and it helps make a lot of hard work of different people pay off. However, there is one item that has been mentioned a few times in other articles that blows my mind on this. From the Wired article:

The German report confirm rumors that have swirled around DarkMarket since late 2006, when uber-hacker Max Ray Butler cracked the site's server and announced to the underground that he'd caught Master Splynter logging in from the NCFTA's office on the banks of the Monongahela River.

In other words they were completely outed, although unsuccessfully, prior to the German report. They were actually hacked and exposed two years ago. That's pretty bad operations security. Never run/manage your sting site from where you really are.. well at least if that plays ties back directly to law enforcement. That's kind of like if a DEA agent showed up to a drug buy and parked his marked police car behind the dumpster nearby. ::face palm::

Turtle PoweR!

[Windows_NT]

When the Evil Darkmarket attacks, these FBI agents dont cut them no slack!
Teenage mutant ninja FBI agents,
Teenage mutant ninja FBI agents,
Teenage mutant ninja FBI agents,
FBI gonna scam you, Turtle power!

Man i miss Saturday morning cartoons

Re:I don't get it

[Dachannien]

Most of those "users" were probably spambots, if it's anything like the forums I maintain. :P

As for the entrapment angle, this one's easy. The FBI guy sets up the site, drops a few whispers around the Tubes, and gets people to show up. Maybe the FBI has some controlled info to spread around so that people get interested, but they can turn those accounts off quickly enough that it doesn't spend a lot of taxpayer money.

After a while, people start exchanging their own stolen credit card info for cash using the site as an intermediary. They discuss their own criminal exploits, and they unwittingly provide the information needed to trace themselves to their physical location, because they now trust the site and don't bother using a proxy for anonymity. The FBI guy only has to stay involved in a general way, making his presence felt as the site's maintainer, and everyone else will continue willingly providing evidence against themselves without the direct prodding of the FBI guy.

And that's not entrapment.

Re:I don't get it

[Jester998]

[italic]Isn't this entrapment? [/italic]
No, entrapment only happens when the authorities coerce you into doing something you wouldn't have done normally (i.e. send a hot female officer who promises to, ahem, 'reward' you if you commit an illegal act against your will). It does not cover things done of your own will (i.e. signing up for a forum and participating).

Re:protection racket

[deniable]

The FBI was given a mission to get online crime under control, so that's what they did. In Australia, one drug squad took control of the local drug scene and supposedly ran it very well.

Re:Oh come ON

[Anonymous Coward]

They were just copying what's been done before.

There have been numerous similar online forums before this, the 3 most famous being, probably:

shadowcrew

carderplanet

darkprofits

these were all actually run by the criminals and not by an FBI sting, so it's not like there wasn't precedent for such an obviously named forum.

Re:I don't get it

[Kent Recal]

i.e. send a hot female officer who promises to, ahem, 'reward' you if you commit an illegal act against your will

Where do I sign up? And do I get to choose hair-color and such?