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meeting in early April to pounce on their suspects on the same day – 12th June. SOCA was still feeling a touch awkward because the Secret Service had been watching JiLsi since the days of Shadowcrew. The Feds and the SS both wanted to bust him.

But Matrix did not do a runner. Indeed, his chats and emails that the German police were intercepting indicated that he was not phased at all by the hushmail. Perhaps the decision to speed up the Matrix case had been premature?

Exactly one week after the first email, he received a second, on 10th May. This time it was from auto496064@hushmail.com, and auto496064 was a tad upset:

Dude you fucked up.
Our network gave you german carders a fair warning and what do you go and do? Talk to the fucking FBI!
You are so damn dumb you deserve to go to jail.
However we intercepted communications between the FBI and a german guy calling himself 'iceman'. They've got an undercover cop baiting you, waiting for you to buy/sell some stuff. We ain't got the name yet. But you might be able to help us blow his cover.
And do yourself a fucking favour. Until we know who the undercover cop is, don't buy from any of those guys.
Because you were so damn clever, to tell the FBI we are on to them, they may hit earlier! Delete any info on your homecomputer, even if it is fucking encrypted, and use only internet shops.

Matrix went into denial and ignored it. He put it down to another game being played, similar to those he remembered from the Iceman affair. But the cops went berserk. This time the surveillance that had been placed on Detlef Hartmann's computer connection picked up the email when he opened it. Frank Eissmann (who was confusingly understood to be 'iceman' by the mysterious auto496064) could not believe that somebody appeared to be monitoring all DarkMarket communications. The fear spread among officers that the entire DarkMarket investigation had been hacked, and that the bad guys knew everything about the case that the police did.

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