back to article Stolen-data market RaidForums taken down in domain seizure

After at least six years of peddling pilfered personal information, the infamous stolen-data market RaidForums has been shut down following the arrest of suspected founder and admin Diogo Santos Coelho in the UK earlier this year. Coelho, 21, who allegedly used the mistaken moniker "Omnipotent" among others, according to the …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    When you use an arrogant handle like "Omnipotent", I can guarantee that good old karma is gonna come back to bite that arrogance in the posterior.

    I like to read about such busts, but I also realize they're a fraction of the sites hidden out there that we don't hear about frequently. We only hear about the "big names" in the black market. Mind you, the same goes for all media - Joe Schmoe never makes the news unless he snaps and runs rampant with an AK-47 in a schoolyard or some other such crazy thing.

    1. tfewster
      Pint

      "sudo-nym" - Brilliant! Have one on me ------>

  2. W.S.Gosset Silver badge

    Extradite him?

    Careful -- research has found that extradition causes autism in rats. Preliminary work by defence lawyers to date tends to support this in humans.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Extradite him?

      He's not one of ours so the alternative would be to send him back home to Portugal as an undesirable alien. Portugal can then send him to the US.

      The Beeb report says another 21-year old co founder was arrested in the UK with "£5,000 in cash, thousands of US dollars and ... crypto assets worth more than half a million dollars." Presumably US dollars don't count as cash.

  3. Ben Tasker

    > In the US, all-caps acronyms are a common way for lawmakers to embed some aptly pandering phrase within legislative shorthand. For example, consider the DISCLOSE (Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections) Act of 2015. Europol, however, appears to have resorted to capital letters merely for emphasis.

    It's the same with military ops.

    The left-pondians tend to make some kind of political point when naming, whereas we use a computer to generate a random name so we've sonething non-political but specific to call it.

    Capitalisation of the name in written comms is the accepted style (although not consistently mandatory)

    Take the war in Afghanistan for example:

    US: Operation Enduring Freedom

    UK: OP HERRICK

    Same sort of thing with Iraq

    US: Operation Iraqi Freedom

    UK: OP TELIC

    TBH, I always found the US way weird - there's no real brevity benefit in "Operation Enduring Freedom", you may as well just mention the specific theatre. It also leaves open the chance of a name change if the name becomes inappropriate for some reason.

    It's a bit like naming vulnerabilities, it's useful to have a name to refer to things by, but it doesn't need to mean anything (and it doesn't *have* to be a bacronymn)

    1. Blazde Silver badge

      A bit of a Google shows Europol names tend to be non-random but cryptic. Eg. Operation OPSON targets food crime because (apparently) opson means ‘food’ in ancient Greek. Operation Lake? Illegal trade in endangered eels (which is funny because a lake is about the worst place to look for trafficked eels where they hide among the non-trafficked ones).

      What *is* random is the capitalisation. Sometimes Opson. Other times OPSON.

      In my book capitalisation means shouty and tourniquet is never used in non-shouty situations so it feels appropriate in this instance.

      SCISSORS!

      TOURNIQUET.

      GAUZE.

      DAMNIT DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW TO USE A TOURNIQUET CORRECTLY?

  4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Why, I wonder, are these sites allowed to run for so long? I appreciate that once an operation gets to a certain size there are a lot of individuals involved and the investigation needs to be complex to ensure all its tentacles have been accounted for. Taking it down once it starts to get noticed but before it gets that diversified would have stopped at least some of the criminality it will have facilitated.

  5. Andy The Hat Silver badge
    Happy

    Another random name for an investigations ...

    It is apparently a "need" that everything has to have a name - Operation Freedom, Storm Herbert, Investigation Haveaquicklook.

    Every time a new, annoying name comes up it reminds me of the old Smith and Jones tv sketch which still makes me smile ...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PTMO1qIyCY

  6. VoiceOfTruth

    Extraditions

    It would be interesting to know if anyone is extradited from the USA to face trial in the UK. Specifically for computer-related offences.

  7. Ian Johnston Silver badge

    I imagine that Simon Baron-Cohen's phone will ring very soon, if it hasn't already.

    1. TimMaher Silver badge
      Happy

      Or even Sacha Baron Cohen’s phone?

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
        Coat

        Why would they ring both of them?

  8. mark l 2 Silver badge

    On the BBC website regarding this story it says "Police from the UK, US, Germany, Sweden, Portugal and Romania were all involved in the dismantling of the online platform." Which shows what he was doing was obviously illegal in all of those jurisdictions.

    Since he was arrested in the UK and is a Portuguese citizen I don't see what is the reason he has to be extradited to the US and can't be deported to Portugal to face charges there or tried in the UK?

    Also on the BBC "Special agent Jason Kane, from the US Secret Service, said: "This global investigation signifies the remarkable dedication of the US Secret Service and highlights our partnerships with our foreign law enforcement counterparts essential to disrupting sophisticated networks of cyber-criminals."

    I thought the secret service job was protecting the US president not going after people selling stolen credit card details?

    1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      The secret service was originally a branch of the treasury, it was founded to combat currency counterfeiters.

      1. A.P. Veening Silver badge

        The secret service was originally a branch of the treasury, it was founded to combat currency counterfeiters.

        Still officially is. And the FBI is an off-shoot from the SS.

  9. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
    Coat

    Coelho

    With that name, maybe he should have gone into a legit data centre business?

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