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EPILOGUE

At first glance the demise of DarkMarket appeared to deal a major blow to crime on the Internet. But it didn’t. It did, however, temporarily place a spanner in the works of some major carding networks, including Cha0’s operation in Turkey, Maksik’s in Ukraine and Freddybb’s in England. But the primary message that other serious cyber criminals took from the whole affair was simple: engagement in carding forums like Shadowcrew and DarkMarket, especially those English-language sites with large memberships, now entailed an unacceptable level of risk.

There was already some evidence that members whose main aim was to make money rather than enhance their reputation were far less present on DarkMarket than they had been on Shadowcrew. The number of posts made by people like Freddybb declined dramatically from one to the other. On Shadowcrew he posted fifty public messages and 200 private. On DarkMarket this stood at fifteen and twelve respectively. The US Secret Service’s takedown of Shadowcrew clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of these sites and Freddybb had learned the lesson: lower your visibility.

Alongside the dangers of being busted, the carding forums had in any event outlived their use. It was via these websites that criminals had, over almost a decade of activity, established global networks of people they could trust. Whether as buyers or sellers of illegally procured data and documents, they had found their markets.

But the exposure of Keith Mularski as Master Splyntr, and the revelation that DarkMarket was in part a law-enforcement sting operation, undoubtedly hastened the demise of the carding forums. This wrecked the long-term strategy of the FBI and its partner agencies in

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