Carder Works Undercover, Then Betrays USSS
There is an interesting story in Wired magazine about a professional ID thief who was arrested and then worked briefly undercover to bust other carders in the underworld of credit card thieves and ID thieves. But what the guy was really doing was eliminating the competition by using the Government intelligence and systems to put his enemies behind bars. The government eventually caught onto his plan.
Brett Johnson, aka Gollumfun
From Wired Mag here:
Brett Shannon Johnson is a credit-card and identity thief. In five years of crime, the 37-year-old estimates he’s stolen about $2 million — some of it while working as a paid informant for the U.S. Secret Service.
Johnson, a well-known figure in the online carding community who went by the nickname Gollumfun, worked undercover for 10 months in the agency’s Columbia, South Carolina, office helping catch other card thieves. Then last year agents discovered his two-timing, and he went on the lam.
“It was $350 a week (from the Secret Service) vs. $5,000 or $6,000 a week” from his fraudulent tax-refund scam, Johnson told Wired News by phone, prior to his sentencing on charges of aggravated identity theft and other crimes. A federal judge last week ordered him to serve six years and three months in prison, and to pay more than $300,000 in restitution.
Johnson’s case began when he was arrested in February 2005 for buying counterfeit Bank of America cashier’s checks, which he planned to use to purchase items on eBay for resale.
He was already known to the Secret Service. Johnson had been a top administrator on a crime-facilitating web forum called Shadowcrew, and he eluded capture when the Secret Service shuttered the site in 2004 with a dozen arrests of forum members and administrators. But when agents caught him in 2005, they didn’t hold a grudge: They asked him to help them infiltrate other online carding forums in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Agents seemed pleased with his knowledge and skills, and they dubbed the investigation Operation Anglerphish. Two weeks into his new role, however, Johnson started working his own angle. He was generally in the office from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., but by 5:30 p.m. the rest of the agency staff had left, leaving only his handlers behind. After 8 p.m., he says, the agents would get bored and focus on other things, and that’s when he’d collect data for his tax-refund crimes.
Working with criminals to catch other criminals sometimes works. And given Johnson’s skill level and maturity, it should have worked for him too. But the guy was a greedy idiot who couldn’t see past his capture to a probable secure future as a computer-security expert. He just wanted more coin. Perhaps it was the thrill of the theft that drove him as much as the cash.
