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Teenagers Jailed For Criminal Version of Facebook

Posted by timothy on from the now-this-sounds-bright dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Three teenagers in the UK have been sentenced for up to five years in jail for creating and operating Gh0stMarket.net, one of the world's largest English-language internet crime forums. The Gh0stMarket website, which had about 8,000 members, was dubbed by the court as the 'criminal equivalent of Facebook,' or 'Crimebook.'"

19 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. facebook this, facebook that by pinkishpunk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    it was a plain and normal forum from what I read, or is suddenly anything facebook, even when you aint having your personal data analysed and sold ?

    1. Re:facebook this, facebook that by MrQuacker · · Score: 3

      Its the new catch-all term for the ignant public. The same way Xerox is for photocopies, or Kleenex is for tissues; Facebook is for forums/social sites.

    2. Re:facebook this, facebook that by Sockatume · · Score: 2

      It's not good journalism if your audience doesn't know what you're talking about, and many more people are familiar with the idea of an online social forum through Facebook than through discussion boards. It doesn't mean the audience are ignorant in the pejorative sense. Once upon a time we called all first-person games "Doom clones" because we'd all played Doom but nobody knew what the fuck "first-person" meant.

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      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    3. Re:facebook this, facebook that by Apothem · · Score: 2

      Once upon a time we called all first-person games "Doom clones" because we'd all played Doom but nobody knew what the fuck "first-person" meant.

      Well this is also because back in those days, most (if not all FPS'es) had about the same artstyle and/or engine. IIRC there were really only two major ones and those were the BUILD engine (Duke Nukem 3D) and the RayCaster Engine (Doom 1&2). Since they both roughly looked the same and the only real difference is how they calculate certain types of geometry, this really doesn't surprise me. Granted, I was pretty young when these games came out, so I dont really remember anyone calling them that.

  2. Arrested for What? by ko7 · · Score: 5, Informative

    From TFA: "19-year-old Nicholas Webber and 18-year-old Ryan Thomas were still at school when they were arrested after trying to pay a £1,000 ($1,600) hotel bill with a stolen card in October 2009. After finding details of 100,000 stolen credit cards on Webber’s laptop, the police uncovered the existence of the website, as well as registered losses on 65,000 bank accounts. "

    It would seem the evidence obtained from the boy's computer implicates them in much more serious crimes than just running a shady website.

    1. Re:Arrested for What? by TechnoFrood · · Score: 2

      Wouldn't have helped much with the Police here in the UK, you can get thrown in jail for not handing over your encryption password/keys.

    2. Re:Arrested for What? by Schadrach · · Score: 2

      Except I thought TrueCrypt hidden partitions worked like this:

      You create an encrypted partition/disk image/whatever of a given size.
      You request it have a hidden partition, and that the hidden partition be some smaller size.
      TrueCrypt creates a partition of the larger size and hides the smaller one in the same space (but at the other end of the disk/file/partition/whatever).

      So you have, for example, a 200GB TrueCrypt partition that contains a 160GB hidden TrueCrypt partition. Providing the password for the nonhidden partition shows you the 200GB partition, providing both shows you the 160GB hidden partition, and writing more than 40GB to the 200GB partition corrupts the hidden partition.

    3. Re:Arrested for What? by Zerth · · Score: 2

      Nah, the thumbdrive is just holding your guaranteed random bits that you bought for use as a One Time Pad.

      Doesn't everyone have a few gigs of random bits, just in case? Sure, you can buy a decent hardware generator for a few hundred bucks, but you'll cache your random ahead of time because if you need to send a big file, nobody wants to wait for the random to dribble in like it was coming over a POTS modem.

  3. Not quite... by nettdata · · Score: 5, Informative

    They weren't jailed for a social website, they were jailed for stealing and selling credit card numbers for millions of dollars and had offshore bank accounts.

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    $0.02 (CDN)
    1. Re:Not quite... by Rakshasa+Taisab · · Score: 2

      And they still have those offshore accounts...

      What does really (not) surprise me is they were using those stolen cards for stupid smalltime stuff like pay hotel bills. Seriously, that's just stupid when you're making enough money illegally.

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      - These characters were randomly selected.
  4. Potential by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sounds like these fellows have potential, someone send them a MBA and put them in charge of a bank!

    1. Re:Potential by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Someone with potential knows that there are entirely legal and protected ways to completely fuck-over your fellow man. They go to school and learn how to not go to jail. Failing that, you might choose to become a politician.

      These were a couple of borderline-retarded kids that did the same BS that's been getting people busted for decades. There's nothing 'l33t' about scamming cards and then making a nice, centralized little website for fellow dumbshits to congregate and brag on.

      I, for one, celebrate this kind of ineptitude... as it results in the redirection of asshats to their new, rightful places of residence.

  5. Re-educate them! by MrQuacker · · Score: 2

    They need to be re-educated. Train them in Banking, then they can rob the public blind with impunity!

  6. Re:Crimebook? by Nursie · · Score: 2

    It is an interesting question, but moot in this case because the forum operators were involved in credit card fraud and money laundering.

  7. Crimebook hehe by philmarcracken · · Score: 5, Funny

    I would have thought the police would have allowed a 'crimebook' to continue if it lived up to the assumption of the name. I'm sure coppers already have their own crimebook and could use this as second life.

    Michael Rowland: 'Gonna rob the local servo on Mitchel ave. 12am today..'
    Constable Steven Briggs likes this
    See all 14 comments

  8. Re:Crimebook? by SharpFang · · Score: 2, Funny

    It is an interesting question, but moot in this case because

    WTF does Moot have to do with this?

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  9. Link to TFA by tick-tock-atona · · Score: 2

    This is the original article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/mar/02/ghostmarket-web-scam-teenagers

    Bonus picture of kid being a douche.

  10. In other news... by gnalre · · Score: 4, Funny

    Microsoft has taken a 2% stake valuing the site at 2 billion dollars....

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    Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
  11. The courts should thank him by francium+de+neobie · · Score: 2

    Now that you have criminals going to the Internet and disclosing what they're doing... so you can round them up before they commit crimes. And you wanna stop that? Seriously?