Alleged Dark Web Kingpin Doxed Himself With His Personal Hotmail Address (vice.com)

Joseph Cox, reporting for Motherboard: On Thursday, US authorities announced the seizure of the largest dark web marketplace AlphaBay. Europol and Dutch police also claimed seizure of Hansa, another popular market. In their dark web investigations, law enforcement have increasingly turned to hacking tools, including the deployment of browser exploits on a mass scale. But tracking down the alleged AlphaBay administrator was much more mundane, officials said. Alexandre Cazes, who US authorities say used the handle alpha02 as administrator of the site, allegedly left his personal email in a welcome message to new AlphaBay members, according to the forfeiture complaint published on Thursday. The news echoes the arrest of Ross Ulbricht, the convicted creator of the original Silk Road, who made a similar security mistake. "In December 2016, law enforcement learned that CAZES' personal email was included in the header of AlphaBay's 'welcome email' to new users in December 2014," the complaint reads. Users received this message once they signed up to AlphaBay's forum and entered an email address. Cazes' email address -- Pimp_Alex_91@hotmail.com -- was also included in the header of the AlphaBay forum password recovery process, the complaint adds. From there, investigators found the address was linked to an Alexandre Cazes, and discovered his alleged front company, EBX Technologies.

Comments

Re:Or is it really the right person?

[BarbaraHudson]

His laptop wasn't encrypted, he had a file listing all his accounts (including bank accounts) and passwords, and he bought real estate and fancy cars under his name, as well as spending 2 million Euros to try to buy a property in Cypress to get citizenship there. And that's only the beginning.

He had been using that same email address for personal stuff for years, including as the email address for his business

And just in case you had any doubt that this was not a criminal mastermind at work, Cazes had also used his Pimp Alex Hotmail address as well as an email address from his own business – EBX Technologies – to set up online bank accounts and crypto-currency accounts. How did law enforcement know that Cazes was behind EBX Technologies? It was on his LinkedIn profile.

This is a guy who sold fake identities; he should have eaten his own dog food.