📸

Within DarkMarket itself there were three quite well-defined circles involved in the project. The first were the administrators, moderators and others holding senior bureaucratic positions on the site. These tended to be men with advanced hacking skills and certainly fluent computer skills. Furthermore, with the exception of Cha0, they were either not making large sums of money or were working directly as police agents or as confidential informants.

Beyond this, the second circle mostly comprised skilful experienced criminals who worked largely on their own - like Freddybb and RedBrigade. They demonstrated varying degrees of computing ability and, if they themselves were unable to solve a technical problem, they always knew people who could. These individuals were less conspicuous on boards like DarkMarket than the administrators and their crew. Their aim was to make as much money as possible without drawing attention to themselves, although they, too, would occasionally engage in banter and chat about the carding community as a whole.

The third circle was home to highly professional criminals who were virtually invisible - unknown except by myth and reputation to the police and their fellow carders. These were people even beyond major wholesalers of credit cards and malware - such as the Ukrainian Maksik, arrested by Turkey's cybercrime team in Antalya in 2007. The most famous one (who, it is believed, supplied Maksik with much of his material) is the Russian known simply as Sim, who, police assume, is actually another very efficient syndicate. These are people who never emerge from the shadows.

Cha0 was fascinating and important because this was the first time that an outfit resembling traditional organised crime had involved itself in large-scale cybercrime and sought to influence the workings of a website like DarkMarket. This was the first real proof that cybercrime was no longer the domain of second-class citizens alone - it was beginning to attract some bigger figures.

Organised crime has traditionally played a huge role in Turkey. For example, in combination with Kurdish and some other Balkan groups, Turkish gangs dominate the wholesale heroin trade throughout Western Europe.

In late 1996 an armoured Mercedes was involved in a spectacular road accident in the small town of Susurluk. Among the dead were the Chief of the Police Academy and the leader of the right-wing terror

📸