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Throughout our chat Çağatay suggested that he and a narrow group of hackers possessed a far greater grasp of what was happening on the darkside of the Web than anybody from the authorities. He implied that his aim was merely to demonstrate the hopelessness of the attempts by the forces of law and order to police the Internet – he contended that there will always be people like him who are ahead of the game.

Remarkably, he seemed unperturbed by his incarceration and the fact that he may have to serve the remaining twenty-two years on his earlier conviction from 2000, not to mention any additional charges that may be preferred against him as a consequence of his activity on DarkMarket.

When we broached the subject of the FBI and Keith Mularski, a withering look spread slowly across his face. 'The FBI have nothing on me. If they did, why did not Master Splyntr send information which the Turkish police could use to charge me?' he asked. 'Instead all they can do is use this small-time nobody, Ortaç, to try and trap me.' Çağatay then claimed that he had hacked into Mularski's database and extracted the information gathered by the FBI on all the DarkMarket members, including the material on himself.

Being in prison, Çağatay was of course unable to document his claims. He said he knew that Splyntr was FBI from the beginning (although Çağatay joined DarkMarket at JiLSi's invitation in February 2006 when Master Splyntr was quite well established on the board) and that his strategy was 'to keep my friends close and my enemies even closer' – hence his willingness to work with Splyntr as an admin- istrator.

It was an appropriate topic on which to end. At its heart, the story of DarkMarket was about two men – Çağatay Evyapan and Keith Mularski, both supported by impressive teams and contacts. Cha0 was no ordinary criminal. While making money was the primary purpose of the enterprise, Çağatay seemed to regard the struggle between himself and law enforcement as having a deeper significance, almost as though he was seeking to demonstrate his superior ability and, by implication, the futility of law enforcement's attempts to police cyber- space. In this lay a strong element of the original anarchism of geek culture – behavioural patterns and moral codes undergo a shift as we move from the real to the virtual. The rules of the game are different and new.

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