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An FBI Agent's 3 Years Undercover With Identity Thieves

Posted by timothy on from the doing-my-best-nelson-laugh dept.

snydeq writes "InfoWorld offers the inside story of how FBI Supervisory Special Agent J. Keith Mularski, aka Master Splynter, penetrated and took over DarkMarket.ws, the infamous underground carding board hacked by Max Butler and later transformed by Mularski into an FBI sting operation. The three-year tour sent Mularski deeper into the world of online computer fraud than any FBI agent before, resulting in 59 arrests and preventing an estimated $70 million in bank fraud before the FBI pulled the plug on the operation in October."

1 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Reloadable cards. by khasim · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm still wondering why the various banks don't offer reloadable cards for their customers. Why wander around with your ENTIRE credit limit in your wallet?

    And for debit cards, your ENTIRE checking account balance.

    Instead, allow the user to transfer the amount that he thinks he will need to a secondary card. That way, if anything compromises that card, the MOST they can get is whatever he put on that card.

    As for online purchases, how about one-use card numbers? Just go to the bank site, put in how much you want to pay and the bank will give you a one use number for that amount. Then the maximum you lose if the online site is fake is that specific amount. They never get the real numbers to your real accounts.