14 DAY TRIAL // Back in March 2012, federal authorities from the United States announced the arrests of 19 individuals as part of an operation dubbed “Open Market.” The suspects were accused of selling personal and financial information on hacker forums, and being part of activities such as credit card trafficking and identity theft.
However, at the time, the government didn’t reveal how the individuals were caught.
Wired has obtained some internal Secret Service documents which reveal that the agency had infiltrated a major underground forum, Carder.su.
A Secret Service agent, Mike Adams, took over the online identity of Celtic, an individual arrested by authorities for cloning credit cards with magstripe information purchased from cybercriminal forums.
First, Adams became a member of CardersMarkey, a forum that went down in September 2007. Then, the agent joined Carder.su.
On Carder.su, Adams sold fake driver’s licenses. At first, he only sold them for three states, but later he expanded his operations to 13 states.
The fake IDs contained everything they needed to make them look perfect: holograms, scanable barcodes, UV printing, and they were even encased in authentic government laminate.
His customers were thrilled by the quality of his work and Carder.su’s administrator ended up vouching for his products, even after the forum underwent serious purging.
Wired reports that Adams sold products to at least 110 customers. In the meantime, grand jury subpoenas gave investigators access to the suspects’ online accounts at Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL and even ISPs and hosting companies.
Besides the individuals who purchased fake IDs, authorities have also targeted vendors who sold criminal goods and services. However, of the 27 suspects, only 6 have been arrested because they’re based in the US.
Eight of them are known only by their nicknames, while the other 13 cannot be arrested because they live in countries such as Ukraine, Morocco and Nigeria, where US authorities don’t have jurisdiction.