SHADOWLANDS

Websites modelled on CarderPlanet sprang up everywhere:
theftservices.com, darknet.com, thegrifters.net and scandinaviancarding.com.
There were many more, including one bound by the delightful acronym
parodying American academic communities, IAACA (International
Association for the Advancement of Criminal Activity).

But none succeeded like Shadowcrew during its two years of exist-
ence. And RedBrigade was one of the many carders on Shadowcrew
who hit the jackpot. Law enforcement was just beginning to become
aware of the extent of the business. Banks were effectively clueless,
ordinary folk oblivious.

Hackers were streets ahead, and Mammon ruled everywhere - the
hedge-fund managers, the oligarchs, the oil sheikhs, the Latin American
mobile-phone moguls, the newly empowered black economic elite in
South Africa, the old white economic elite in South Africa, Chinese
manufacturers of global knick-knacks, techno gurus from Bangalore
to Silicon Valley.

Hundreds of carders made vast fortunes during Shadowcrew, many
of them sufficiently naive to piss it all away on the trappings of arriv-
iste wealth. In those days there were no checks on your computer's IP
address when you made purchases over the Web. There was no Address
Verification System on the credit card: you could ship goods anywhere
in the world (except Russia and other former Soviet countries), regard-
less of where the card was issued, and nobody would cross-check it at
any stage.

This novel crime took root well beyond its Ukrainian- and Russian-
language nursery. It began to globalise spontaneously. RedBrigade
recalled how established Asian criminals would now communicate with
college kids from Massachusetts who were talking to East Europeans,
whose computers overflowed with credit-card 'dumps'. Behind some
of the nicknames on Shadowcrew were criminal agglomerates like All
Seeing Phantom, revered among his peers.

A good ten years older than most Shadowcrew members,
RedBrigade saw no advantage in gaining recognition and respect by
attempting to climb the hierarchy. He failed to see why ordinary
members were in such awe of the moderators and administrators of
the boards. Despite its success, Shadowcrew's managers had a puerile,
almost brat-like aspect to their behaviour - hardly surprising as most
were in their late teens or early twenties. He observed that CarderPlanet