Shocked I am. Shocked to find that underground bank-card-trading forums are full of liars, cheats, small-time grifters

The denizens of online forums dedicated to trading in stolen credit cards have been shown to be wretched hives of scum and villainy. This not-so-surprising news comes this week via academics at Washington State University (WSU) in the US, who eavesdropped on the activities of two marketplaces and read over 10,714 posts to …

[CAPS LOCK]

Shocking...

...there ought to be a law against it.

[idoxde]

Colour of surprise

Oh, dealing with thieves and, in general, criminal underworld didn't pay off? Well, colour me surprised.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Colour of surprise

Them be racist words!

[logicalextreme]

Re: Colour of surprise

So is it "allow me to be surprised", or "block my surprise inhibitors"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Colour of surprise

I think it's adequate to say "I'm not racist, but colour me surprised".

[sev.monster]

Re: Colour of surprise

Hanlon's Razor. You needed this, buddy.

[Lee D]

Re: Colour of surprise

Quite.

"Oh, that criminal who was going to sell me a thing to help me commit crimes actually committed fraud and took my money and didn't even give me the thing in return!"

Oh, no. You should go to the police. Oops. You can't. Because what you wanted was illegal in the first place and you were just dropping yourself in it.

I do wonder, though, how they paid them - presumably such payment is Bitcoin or something. I doubt a card-skimming forum would accept credit card or Paypal!

It's like a drug dealer selling them talc. What are they going to do? Dob him in? And face a charge themselves?

[gnasher729]

Re: Colour of surprise

People _have_ gone to the police about things like this. Like a druggy whose stash was stolen; went to the police resulting in two arrests and two convictions.

[Hubert Cumberdale]

And there's another

hoodie hacker. Like the one from Tuesday. But this one has three screens and a laptop. I have that. But no hoodie. So I guess I must be one of the good guys.

[Dale 3]

Re: And there's another

Not sure why he needs to have the same code on all three screens though.

[BrownishMonstr]

Re: And there's another

He's never heard of a diff.

[jake]

Re: And there's another

Look closer. It's not the same code. Could be write/compile, run/debug and stdout/stderr/other messages. Or it could be just a mock up with no bearing on reality, like that hoodie.

The laptop probably has pr0n on it. (Mine has a browser open to ElReg, of course.)

[Kane]

Re: And there's another

"The laptop probably has pr0n on it. (Mine has a browser open to ElReg, of course.)"

Why not both?

[sev.monster]

Re: And there's another

Looks like Java or C#.

[slimshady76]

Re: And there's another

Grey hoodie? really? Is he a newbie, or a fan of Gandalf?

[gnasher729]

Re: And there's another

Looks like our IT guy :-)

[Pascal Monett]

Good

It's nice to know that scum are also scum between themselves.

That way they get to feel the pain.

[Ashto5]

Damn You Just Cannot Trust Anyone

:(

So Sad, those poor people just trying to buy stuff online to help themselves.

Maybe the good guys could set up loads of boards like that and get some of the money back ??

[DavCrav]

"This admin, however, regularly received payments for credential goods from users then proceeded to ban the user from the site without delivering anything."

I'm sorry but I found that genuinely funny.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a fertile recruiting ground

for prospective politicians.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sounds like a fertile recruiting ground

And senior management.

[BrownishMonstr]

Maybe the admin is just a good guy, a cyber-age Robin Hood.

Or just a twat.

[logicalextreme]

Not necessarily mutex.

[logicalextreme]

Also brings to mind the eternal HMHB lyric,

Is your child / Hyperactive / Or is he / Perhaps a twat?

[c1ue]

Admin scammer

Or maybe the admin account was cracked...

[Anonymous Coward]

full of liars, cheats, small-time grifters

This is a pretty accurate description of our local CraigsList site.

:-(

[89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921]

>the administrator would ban their victims accounts from the public forums if they called out the scam publicly

Admins with a hidden agenda? Shocked I am. Shocked

[swm]

I always wondered about 89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921 so (after changing the I to a 1) I found the (4) factors:

393649 657481 × 6335 348305 575195 179179 076633 × 69466 777282 071413 430494 981273 × 51 790677 862630 192029 633722 348449

Your welcome.

[jake]

A couple years ago, I asked it if I could call it Mr/s I, but sadly it didn't respond.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Good Guy Scammer

The forum admin was doing the prospective scammers a favour by preventing them from engaging in any further illegal activities.

[VBF]

Ronnie Barker, in "Porridge" "I don't quite know how to put this, gentlemen, but there is a thief among us."