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Cybercrime Marketplace Mastermind Faces 18 Years In Prison
wiredmikey writes "A Ukrainian national, Roman Vega, who pleaded guilty in 2009 to creating a popular online marketplace for selling stolen financial account data has been sentenced to 18 years in prison. Called one of the world's 'most prolific cybercriminals' by the Department of Justice, Vega, 49, will serve significant time in prison for his role in co-founding the notorious website CarderPlanet. In the early 2000s, Vega co-founded and became a high-ranking administrator of the notorious website, which became one of the first and busiest online marketplaces for the sale of stolen financial information, computer hacking services and money laundering. At its height, CarderPlanet had more than 6,000 members and had a hierarchical leadership structure that borrowed its leadership titles from La Cosa Nostra, US authorities said."
18 years is quite small, I'd have no problem with executing him. If people who commit crimes behind computer keyboards were actually punished more often, we might have less of it. As it is, the fraud and abuse online are really more like the wild west than the 21st century.
When we open a bank account, we place our trust to that bank, and that bank has the responsibility to protect our account with it.
When we shop at a store with a credit card, we place our trust on the integrity of the store and also that of the credit card company (with the bank issuing that credit card).
And if we do not lose our credit cards, but the information regarding our cards was stolen somewhere , who should we blame ?
Do we blame the one who stole the information or the one who were so fucking careless with the sensitive information in the first place ?
Let us understand this one thing - if you really want to blame, blame those institutions that has betrayed our trust.
The hackers are only exploiting the opportunities left OPENED by those fuckers who were so careless.
If ever there were damages, stop blaming the guy who operated a website - blame those motherfucking banks and credit card companies !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If you're going to pillage the bank accounts of thousands (or millions) of people, you gotta do it through deceptive ponzi mortgage schemes and buying off market regulators to make it legal.
"Hey I didn't actually sell financial information, I only helped set up a system that allowed criminals to sell stolen credit card details!"
"Hey I didn't actually molest those children, I only created a forum that let people purchase CP from eachother!"
"Hey I don't own any slaves, I only helped some sellers find some and shipped them across to people willing to buy!"
"Hey I didn't kill those thousands of civilians, I just helped facilitate a deal between an arms dealer and a corrupt dictatorship!"
Yeesh. "merely providing a forum to communicate". It's assholes like you that make the world burn - you damn well know the consequences of the actions of a scheme, a forum set up specifically for selling stolen financial information , but somehow rationalize it away in the name of some libertarianish idea of 'all free speech should be allowed' because you're actually facilitating in the crime yourself!
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
Mod is Curious. My main argument is that arguing about intent is futile, as this will amount to thought crime if taken to its logical conclusion. Is that really not worth pondering? (At least, it would be nice to know why not -- if this is truly overrated.)
I haven't researched what his intent was when creating the site, but the facts are these:
1. The site was used to commit large volumes of fraudulent, illegal activity.
2. The operators of the site were fully aware the site was being used for fraud.
3. The operators of the site made no effort to stop this - and more importantly, approved of and facilitated the illegal activity.
4. This continued for many years with lots of evidence left behind to verify that is what happened.
Your calling this "thoughtcrime" is a straw man fallacy and has no validity.
Cousin, let's go bowlink!
I watched an episode once of American Greed about Max Butler who had the longest prison sentence for hacking in history (13 years). In my opinion he had no remorse for what he did. He truly believed he didn't really hurt anyone. In his interview he was basically like, "when they raided me, I thought they were just picking up bricks (encrypted hard drives) but apparently the FBI has some really smart guys". He seemed more remorseful with the fact that he lost to the FBI than anything else. This guy probably deserved the sentence and then some. Also as a note, in the program they eluded to the fact that they needed to catch him with his machine running to decrypt everything....I'm sure the keys were in memory.
neorush
will probably get the same kind of sentence, as the crimes were similar.
New Economic Perspectives
I'm actually responding to the points made in the parent post to which I originally replied. The four quotes he postulated are terrible examples of how to approach the subject. I rejected his notions based on his arguments. At no point am I making a strawman in regards to the article, because frankly, my question would be off topic at best in that case. But being human, I'm still curious.