DARKMARK

among his mitigating circumstances the fact that he had already had one hip replaced and was waiting on a second, so his mobility was severely restricted.

But serious cyber criminals had to generate trust to do business: their reputation was crucial. In DarkMarket, you could only achieve the title of Vendor by proving to the administrators and to the satisfac- tion of the buyers that you could provide the market with stolen credit cards that genuinely worked. These transactions were overseen by five administrators (three after JiLsi was thrown off the site and Matrix arrested) - Master Splyntr, Shtirlitz and Cha0 (and later Lord Cyric played a role, too).

Cha0 joined DarkMarket in February 2006, but his considerable abilities ensured a rapid rise up the hierarchy. Once he had consolidated his position as a prince of DarkMarket, he was able to focus on his real business strategy. He wanted to become the premier vendor of skimming machines and illegal readers worldwide. There was a signif- icant demand for these devices and, if he could create a monopoly, then he would move into the next phase of his plan for maximising his revenue with minimal effort.

Our man from Istanbul was also in charge of DarkMarket's crucial Escrow Service, perhaps the pivotal position in the entire operation. Acting as an honest broker, he would ensure that neither a buyer nor seller of credit cards and other illegal data could rip each other off. In that sense, DarkMarket was a mafia operation in the original meaning of the phrase. It acted as the policeman or arbitrator of a criminal market, just as the men of honour started by policing the agricultural markets of Sicily in the second half of the nineteenth century, before moving into the trade in illegal weapons and building permits.

Cha0's reputation as a scrupulously honest escrow broker was built on his success as a wholesaler of skimming machines. Everybody trusted him. He, by contrast, trusted no one. He never gave away his IP address; he never sent a message that might implicate him in wrongdoing without encrypting it; and nobody could locate him digitally.

Accepting that Cha0 had created a black hole in cyberspace where he was safe and invisible from the cops, Bilal Şen decided he would have to rely on more traditional policing methods to track down his suspect - the 'plod' factor has proved surprisingly important in the work of cybercops.