EPILOGUE

At first glance the demise of DarkMarket appeared to deal
a major blow to crime on the Internet. But it didn’t.
It did, however, temporarily place a spanner in the works of
some major carding networks, including Cha0’s operation in
Turkey, Maksik’s in Ukraine and Freddybb’s in England.
But the primary message that other serious cyber criminals
took from the whole affair was simple: engagement in carding
forums like Shadowcrew and DarkMarket, especially those
English-language sites with large memberships, now entailed
an unacceptable level of risk.

There was already some evidence that members whose main
aim was to make money rather than enhance their reputation
were far less present on DarkMarket than they had been on
Shadowcrew. The number of posts made by people like
Freddybb declined dramatically from one to the other. On
Shadowcrew he posted fifty public messages and 200 private.
On DarkMarket this stood at fifteen and twelve respectively.
The US Secret Service’s takedown of Shadowcrew clearly
demonstrated the vulnerability of these sites and Freddybb had
learned the lesson: lower your visibility.

Alongside the dangers of being busted, the carding forums
had in any event outlived their use. It was via these websites
that criminals had, over almost a decade of activity,
established global networks of people they could trust.
Whether as buyers or sellers of illegally procured data and
documents, they had found their markets.

But the exposure of Keith Mularski as Master Splyntr,
and the revelation that DarkMarket was in part a
law-enforcement sting operation, undoubtedly hastened the
demise of the carding forums. This wrecked the long-term
strategy of the FBI and its partner agencies in