DARKMARK

RedBrigade was earning more money than a Premiership footballer in England, but without the 50 per cent tax rate.

Nothing was out of his reach. He’d peel off the fifty-dollar bills and would see that look on the face of the cashier, meaning, ‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ He figured they thought he must be either a Trustafarian or a dope dealer. But in the Age of Plastic the super-rich were as likely to dress in T-shirt and jeans as in a Savile Row suit. Either way, the merchants always took the money – the jewellers, the car dealers, the wine sellers, the hoteliers – no questions asked. They could never be sure: perhaps this unshaven guy might own Google? And in any case, who cares how he made his money?

One thing kept bugging him. He had too much cash. One evening he came home with $77,000 in his pocket to add to the $300,000 already lying about the apartment. There was also $110,000 worth of money orders. RedBrigade had set up a global cash-out operation, so he would supply the card and account data to an East European middle man, who would organise the raids on ATMs before sending RedBrigade the cash. For that operation he had to start banking again himself. He was tired of trying to stay under the Reporting Guidelines – any transaction of more than $10,000 had to be registered with the Treasury under anti-money-laundering rules. Shit, he thought, who would have known how difficult it could be to get rid of money!

He was preparing another cash-out of $77,000. It would have been a simple stroll for a few blocks from his apartment, and then he thought, ‘I’ve got so much money here, I can’t be arsed.’ He knew there was something very wrong with the whole picture. But the only thing that kept going through his mind was: ‘CarderPlanet was one thing, but who would ever believe this Shadowcrew shit? Who would believe that I can walk into banks, day in, day out, and exit with fifty grand in my pocket? It’s insane!’

When CarderPlanet finally closed down in 2004, it boasted not just the Russian- and English-language forums, but had added Korean, Chinese and even Arabic sections. ‘CarderPlanet was a game-changer,’ said E.J. Hilbert, a former FBI Special Investigator who spent several years on the investigation into the website, ‘all the successors to CarderPlanet took the site as their model. It is no exaggeration to say that it spread the practice of criminal hacking to all four corners of the globe.’