While criminals thought it was based in Eastern Europe, the internet's top English-speaking cybercrime forum was secretly run by the FBI from this building on the banks of the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh.

Photo: John Monroe Butler/ Wired.comThe FBI on Friday boasted that its two-year long undercover operation against users of the crime forum DarkMarket netted 56 arrests worldwide and prevented $70 million in economic losses, publicly acknowledging the sting for the first time.

"In today's world of rapidly expanding technology, where cybercrimes are perpetrated instantly from anywhere in the world, law enforcement needs to be flexible and creative in our efforts to target these criminals," said FBI Cyber Division Assistant Director Shawn Henry in a statement. "By joining forces with our international law enforcement counterparts, we have been, and will continue to be, successful in arresting those individuals and dismantling these forums."

British police say they've arrested five DarkMarket users in recent days, and 11 since the sting began in late 2006. The other arrests have been in Turkey, Germany and the United States, according to the FBI. Spokesman Brian Hale said the feds won't be going into more detail. "We have released all the information in that release that we're publicly going to discuss at this point in time," said Hale.

DarkMarket allowed buyers and sellers of stolen identities and credit card data to meet and do business in an entrepreneurial, peer-reviewed environment. It had 2,500 users at its peak, according to the FBI.

Documents uncovered by a German radio network on Monday first revealed that DarkMarket had been secretly run by an FBI cybercrime agent for the last two years, until its voluntary shutdown earlier this month. The leader of the site, know online as Master Splynter, was in fact FBI cybercrime agent J. Keith Mularski, part of an elite seven-agent cybercrime unit based at the National Cyber Forensics Training Alliance in Pittsburgh.

DarkMarket members believed the site was operated from Eastern Europe, despite a 2006 warning from uber-hacker Max Ray Butler, known then as Iceman and Aphex. Butler cracked the site's server and announced that he'd caught Master Splynter logging in from the NCFTA's office on the banks of the Monongahela River. Butler ran a site of his own, and the warning was generally dismissed as inter-forum rivalry. " even when Butler was arrested in San Francisco last year on credit card fraud charges, and shipped to Pittsburgh for prosecution.

It remains unclear whether Mularski took over the identity of a real cyberscammer, or if Master Splynter was his invention from the start. Either way, the agent created a convincing persona for his undercover identity, sometimes publicly bemoaning arrests for which he was secretly responsible. When he announced the site's closure last month, he blamed increasing law enforcement attention.

To convey the flavor of Mularsi's performance, the full text of his September 16 DarkMarket closure announcement follows.

Good day, respected and dear forum members. It is time to tell you the bad news - the forum should be closed. Yes, I really mean close..... there are lots of reasons for it, and I have given this a lot of hard thought. First of all, recent events have proven that even in our best efforts to expel and deactivate the accounts of suspected LE, reporters, and security agents, it is obvious that we haven't been entirely successful. Over the last year we have lost a lot of the Admins of the forums: Iceman on Cardersmarket; JiLsi and Matrix001 disappeared, and now, ChaO on DM. It is apparent that this forum, which has been around almost three years, is attracting too much attention from a lot of the world services (agents of FBI, SS, and Interpol.) I guess it was only time before this would happen. It is very unfortunate that we have come to this situation, because I think we've done a great job in eliminating the rippers of the world, and we have established DM as the premier English speaking forum for conducting business. Such is life..... when you are on top.... people try to bring you down. Although we have eliminated the rippers, it obvious that the Special Services and Security fucks are still here lurking in our ranks. They continue to gather evidence on us. They read our posts, they talk with our vendors, they look to see who are the active members of the forum. These Special Services are gathering evidence on us and sending requests to our native countries to find out information on us. It would be too long and cumbersome, not to mention fruitless, to try to keep the forum up and try to do a complete purge of suspected people. For we have been attempting this for the last year. Obviously, the effort is futile. It is time to start fresh. To quote and paraphrase King Arthur of Carder Planet; How clever can we be? We use many proxies and socks, however Special Services can find our VPN even in the most darkest corners of the world. All of us are just people and all of us can make mistakes. Iceman, ChaO and Maksik are prime examples. We can forget to switch on the VPN, get frustrated with inconsistent proxies, or accidently give out Identifying informaiton. It is not a secret that FBI employees go to the ISPs and get logs and history logs. Because of it they can catch anyone, it is just the matter of time and will. We don’t hold the logs on our site but who knows, maybe cops are taking IPs of all people who connect to forum on the area where our server with site is located. They can start processing of the most often occurring IPs (sub-nets of the C class) and the following scenario all of us know. I myself would rather go out like King Arthur than Iceman. Whereas Iceman decided that all he would do was change his nick to Aphex, and continue to run CM, King Arthur closed Carder Planet and faded into the night. History has shown that Iceman made a fatal mistake, I will not make the same. Because of this, I've discussed the situation with the Admins. Should we keep the forum up longer, or should we close it? This has not been an easy decision for me, because I have spent many long hours working on this forum and trying to make it the best it could be. I've thought about selling the forum. However DM has been my soul. How do you sell your soul? I have weighed the pros and cons, and it has to be closed. It is what it is. All good things come to an end. Hosting is paid through Oct 4th, so the forum will function until then, and after that it will close. I send out my regards all members And for all the police and security fucktards..... well... fuck you all..... MS.

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