Secret Agent Rat

[Ninjinister]

This is an article that my boss had sent around the company over the weekend:

http://www.csoonline.com/article/477...ith_ID_Thieves

For those who don't have time to read all four pages, or have low attention spans, I'll use quotes to summarize the good stuff:

Salesmen and parents know the technique well. It's called the takeaway, and as far as Keith Mularski is concerned, it's the reason he kept his job as administrator of online fraud site DarkMarket.

DarkMarket was what's known as a "carder" site. Like an eBay for criminals, it was where identity thieves could buy and sell stolen credit card numbers, online identities and the tools to make fake credit cards. In late 2006, Mularski, who had risen through the ranks using the name Master Splynter, had just been made administrator of the site.

In the end they would regret that decision. Iceman was right: Supervisory Special Agent J. Keith Mularski had gone deeper into the world of online computer fraud than any FBI agent before.

And the money shot...

Mularski's life as an undercover spammer began around July of 2005, when he created his handle Master Splynter in a tribute to the cartoon rat who plays sensei to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. His unit ran a project called Slam-Spam, and Mularski, a self-confessed computer nerd, said he had picked up a lot of spamming tricks before he started the operation. "I could talk shop," he said.