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Carderprofit.cc Was FBI Carding Sting, Nets 26 Arrests

Posted by Unknown on from the crime-pays-but-then-prison dept.

tsu doh nimh writes in with news of a major sting operation against carders. From the article: "The U.S. Justice Department today unveiled the results of a two-year international cybercrime sting that culminated in the arrest of 26 people accused of trafficking in hundreds of thousands of stolen credit and debit card accounts. Among those arrested was an alleged core member of 'UGNazi,' a malicious hacking group that has claimed responsibility for a flood of recent attacks on Internet businesses." The trick: the FBI ran a carding forum as a honeypot.

12 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. The trick? by Rakshasa-sensei · · Score: 2, Insightful

    FBI created some criminals.

    1. Re:The trick? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      FBI created some criminals.

      Sure they did. Those poor innocents, tricked into doing something they weren't already doing.

    2. Re:The trick? by mikael_j · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you're talking about Silk Road then I'm sure the authorities are pretty annoyed by it since at least here in Sweden they can't really do much if they somehow intercept a package containing drugs, weapons or some other contraband at the border and they can't follow the money or otherwise tie it to you (and it being addressed to you doesn't count since if it did you could just mail a few illegal items to anyone you wanted and tell the cops those people were expecting packages containing said illegal items).

      --
      Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
    3. Re:The trick? by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is much more of a real crime than "piracy." Good on them for getting some people actually causing harm.

    4. Re:The trick? by alen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      this is how law enforcement works, you take down one criminal conspiracy at a time.

    5. Re:The trick? by L4t3r4lu5 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Silk Road thing set off my tin foil hat alarm. If I were a TLA, there's no way I'd openly admit that there was a way to be completely out of their reach.

      $5 says Tor, or at least Silk Road is compromised, or maybe even a honeypot itself. If you were into the kind of thing they're in to, and a little short on the brain cell front, wouldn't you flock to the "Guaranteed safe by the FBI!" places?

      --
      Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
    6. Re:The trick? by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They illustrated that crimes can be solved by normal police work without spying on hundreds of millions of innocent people.

  2. No this isnt entrapment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If you think it is, you are an idiot that has no clue what the term entrapment means.

  3. Waste of time by benjfowler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The carders they busted are low-life amateurs, not serious criminals. I'm sure the FBI and friends will milk this for all it's worth, but it's the equivalent of nicking a couple of shoplifters while at the same time, Mexican drug lords are burning down the entire city.

    Come and wake me up when they bag some REAL criminals, like the big Russian gangsters robbing SMEs out of hundreds of millions per annum.

    The real criminals are untouched -- and untouchable.

    1. Re:Waste of time by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Insightful

      People who've stolen hundreds of thousands of credit card numbers are worth arresting, even if there are other people who are worse.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  4. It's self-promotion .... by King_TJ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Of course the parent poster is right... I'd imagine any serious credit card thief would be operating through Tor, doing anonymous payment with something like Bitcoin, and not even fooling around with signing up on new sites of unknown/unverified origins.

    But this is pretty typical for the FBI. They're as interested in the P.R. as anything else. They need to show they're making arrests and giving the news media something positive to print. It helps ensure their continued funding for the division handling these high-tech crimes and they probably also figure it's a deterrent to beginners, who could become tomorrow's elite card thieves otherwise.

  5. Real criminals? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Real criminals? If they were actually using credit card information to make illegal purchases, they ARE real criminals! Just because you don't have to mug someone to get his wallet doesn't matter. At least when you are mugged (assuming you don't have to go to the hospital) you know your personal information has been stolen. When your personal information is stolen via the computer, you often don't learn about it until the big bills start to pile up. Also, a mugger usually steals only hundreds (maybe thousands) a credit card thief usually starts at that point and goes up from there. In terms of money lost, we went the FBI to go after them and the thieves running the big banks and Wall Street. Let the local police deal with the muggers.