DarkMarket_ Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You - Misha Glenny [113]
For his part, Keith Mularski was furious when Wired published his name – the trust that he had built up with so many carders was instantly lost. He had closed the DarkMarket board a couple of weeks earlier because JiLsi’s registration of the domain name was about to expire. Had Master Splyntr attempted to re-register it, a curious hacker might have used the opportunity to uncover his identity.
The DarkMarket operation was the opening phase in a long-term plan by law enforcement to infiltrate the world of cyber criminality. In fifteen months, prior to the publication of Mularski’s name in Wired magazine, the FBI, SOCA and the other police agencies involved had been careful to pick off individuals here and there. They had deliberately decided not to go for a large-scale sweep of DarkMarket members, in contrast to the tactics used by the Secret Service in 2004 with Shadowcrew. Master Splyntr fully intended to return with his reputation enhanced, armed with his large database of carders and their activities. That plan was now blown out of the water.
Not that Mularski’s efforts had been in vain – in a remarkable example of cross-border cooperation among disparate police forces, they had caught one of the biggest fish in the carding world, Cha0, and had arrested dozens of others, some of whom were already convicted, most of whom were awaiting trial.
But neither Agent Mularski nor anybody else was in a position to blame Dietmar Lingel. He had not allowed the identity of Master Splyntr to slip into the court papers for the Matrix case, as the officer from Dezernat 3.5 had alleged.
That distinction belonged to Detective Frank Eissmann, Lingel’s boss, who later confessed that he had ‘made a big mistake’ in submitting the document to the State Prosecutor as part of the police evidence against Matrix. It was Eissmann’s error that led to Kai Laufen identifying Mularski, which in turn triggered the collapse of the long-term operation against the carders.
Dietmar Lingel, however, remained suspended and heard nothing from his employers until Dezernat 3.5 informed him in September
2010 that he was to stand trial. The prosecutor had dropped the unsubstantiated claim that Lingel had intentionally leaked Mularski’s name. Instead, the original charge was resurrected: he was accused of having informed a suspect that he was under surveillance.
Lingel opted to contest the charges and later that month the longest trial anywhere related to the DarkMarket case began in Stuttgart. Ironically, it did not involve any actual cyber criminals (except that Matrix001 and Fake testified as witnesses), but pitted the Baden-Württemberg police against one of its own. It was a fascinating event played out in front of a handful of people in a clean, small, anonymous court in Bad Cannstatt, Stuttgart’s spa district. The testimony of almost a dozen actors in the drama was startling, revealing many of the errors and misfortunes that plagued the policing operation in both Europe and the United States.
*Massachusetts Institute of Technology, not to be confused with the acronym of Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency.
38
WHO ARE YOU?
Istanbul, October 2008
Çagatay Evyapan appeared relaxed in jail. Now and then a member of the Istanbul force would whisper something about a supercop flying in from Ankara to conduct the main interrogation of Çagatay. In Turkey the longest you can hold someone suspected of involvement in organised criminal activity is four days. The prisoner was intrigued to see if this Mr Big from the capital would turn up.
Finally, Inspector Sen arrived. He needed to know only one thing.
‘Who is the little bird? Who are you talking to inside? This is all I want to know from you.’
The prisoner hesitated and then looked desperate.
‘There is nobody.’
39
ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE