DARKMARK

bulletin boards and, as a twenty-four-year-old, signed up to Shadowcrew, DarkMarket's most successful predecessor, in the spring of 2004.

But his greatest skill lay in an innate engineering ability. From scratch, he taught himself how to design and build skimmers that fitted the two most popular ATMs around the world. These were complicated and intricate devices and worth every penny of the $5,000 he charged for each one (discounts offered on bulk sales, naturally). Not only would he respond to queries from customers, but he dispatched each product with an instruction manual, the appropriate software and a free USB cable.

His library also revealed how seriously he took his job. Alongside Document Fraud and Other Crimes of Deception stood Holograms and Holography and Secrets of a Back Alley ID Man. But perhaps his most important volume was Methods of Disguise. When dropping into one of his home town's many Internet cafés in order to manage his sales and marketing over the Web, Dron would generally wear a black baseball cap and black jacket. But for his forays into the post office, or when he was cashing out a credit card as payment for one of his skimmers, would prefer a red cap and blue windcheater.

The United States Secret Service had first spotted Dron as a significant presence on Shadowcrew. Of course, the administrator on Shadowcrew, Cumbajohnny, was an informant for the Secret Service. But Dron did not belong to Cumbajohnny's Virtual Private Network, the chief means by which the Secret Service monitored members' activity. He was not in the United States, nor was he an easy target. Hence he was not a priority. But the Secret Service did not forget Dron. Instead, they started to build a relationship with him.

Although a youngster compared to the US Postal Inspection Service, the Secret Service has the longest history in fighting cybercrime. The US SS was formed in 1865, not to provide armed protection for the President – that was one of Congress's central responses to the assassination of President McKinley in 1901. The original and abiding purpose of the agency was to detect, investigate and then seek the prosecution of anybody found manufacturing or dealing in counterfeit currency. Soon after it was established, Congress also charged the agency with investigating financial fraud.

In the wake of the Second World War, the Bretton Woods agreements established the United States as the undisputed leader of Western