THE FRENCH CONNECTION

small. And until recently the eighty or so officers at OCLCTIC did not bother to monitor cyber threats originating in other countries (in contrast to the French military and intelligence communities, which have a highly advanced cyber capability). Operation Lord Kaisersose (the Marseilles crew) and Operation Hard Drive (Dron and Theeeel) went some way towards helping OCLCTIC agents spell out to their political masters why the French police had to engage more effectively with international law enforcement. Perhaps most astonishingly, when OCLCTIC made their arrests – complete with dozens of armed officers charging their way into addresses in Marseilles and outside Paris – there was no coverage at all in the French press: not a single item.

When arresting Theeeel, the police were mildly shocked to find that he was just eighteen years old – the youngest DarkMarketeer to be arrested anywhere in the world. He had become involved in carding to assist the funding of his university studies. If some young women find that they can only make their way through college financially by occasionally selling their bodies, it is quite predictable that young geeks must be tempted to top up their income, too. And as Theeeel discov- ered, once the money starts rolling in, it's hard to kick the habit.

At first, French officers believed that Lord Kaisersose belonged to one of the many gangs of petty criminals that populate Marseilles, France's very own Odessa: another engrossing port with an inimitable culture (and in Marseilles's case a fabulous cuisine as well). From their surveillance, the cops had learned that one of Kaisersose's accomplices, Dustin, owned a restaurant an hour outside the city and had form for minor fraud offences.

But when OCLCTIC officers, along with local Marseilles cops, raided the apartment of the suspect, Hakim B, in central Marseilles, they realised that Lord Kaisersose was in a higher league. Apart from the large variety of computer kit, the flat was furnished in a tasteful and elegant manner. Hakim was no street thug. He was a gifted hacker whose brother, Ali B., happened to work for DHL. There are few busi- nesses more valuable to cyber criminals than the international courier trade. With Ali an insider at DHL, Hakim had ample means of shifting goods and cash in and out of Marseilles without anybody noticing. And that was important – because Hakim was one of the biggest resellers of dumps from the Ukrainian carding king, Maksik.

Over a two-year-period Maksik had sold Hakim the details of 28,000