If names like Max Butler, Jeff Norminton, Brett Johnson and Christopher Aragon don’t mean anything to you, it’s probably because you don’t follow the carder scene as closely as I do. And then there’s Iceman, Gollumfun, Digits, Th3C0rrupted0ne and others. How about ShadowCrew, CarderPlanet and CardersMarket?
Max Butler was the mastermind behind the biggest organized credit card fraud rings in U.S. history. ShadowCrew, CarderPlanet.com and CardersMarket.com were their virtual place of business. During much of the time that those web sites were active I hung out there looking to increase my knowledge of how the credit card fraud world operated. I learned a lot and collected a lot too. A significant portion of the information available to members of Merchant911 came from those three sites. I suspect that if they hadn’t been the subject of Operation Firewall and others, I’d still be getting useful information from them. Of course I was only one of 3,000 members and probably one of the few that wasn’t there for nefarious purposes – me and the undercover law enforcement folks.
It was an interesting experience watching huge numbers of credit card dumps being sold along with detailed instructions on how to receive stolen goods being delivered to legitimate but unsuspecting cardholders. It was amazing to see large numbers of credit card account numbers being posted as “samples” and rather frustrating too. But the most interesting part of it all was just recently learning how it all came to pass, unfolded and finally got taken down. You can read the entire Wired article here.
The carders have, at least for now, been driven a bit more underground than they were but you can bet they are still out there. And, if you look back through the blog entries, you know that it’s big business and much of it is run by organized crime.
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