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Service’s surveillance net. The tapped VPN laid bare all the wheeling and dealing the carders kept off the public website—the hard negotiating that unfolded mostly in e-mail and over IM.

There were deals every day and every night, with a weekly surge in trading Sunday evenings. The transactions ranged from the petty to the gargantuan. On May 19, agents watched Scarface transfer 115,695 credit card numbers to another member; in July, APK moved a counterfeit UK passport; in August, Mintfloss sold a fake New York driver’s license, an Empire Blue Cross health insurance card, and a City University of New York student ID card to a member in need of a full identification portfolio. A few days later, another sale by Scarface, just two cards this time; then MALpadre bought nine. In September, Deck sold off eighteen million hacked e-mail accounts with user names, passwords, and dates of birth.

The Secret Service had fifteen full-time agents combing through the activity—every purchase would be another “underlying offense” in a grand jury indictment. And the best part was, many of Shadowcrew’s denizens were unwittingly paying the Secret Service for the privilege of being monitored.

But running a game against hackers was never cut-and-dried, as the agency learned on July 28, 2004. That was when Gonzalez informed his handlers that a carder named Myth, one of King Arthur’s cashers, had somehow obtained one of the agency’s confidential documents about Operation Firewall. Myth had been boasting about it in an IRC chat room.

The feds told Gonzalez to find the source of the leak, and fast. As Cumbajohnny, Gonzalez made contact with Myth and learned that the documents represented just a few droplets in a full-blown Secret Service data spill. Myth knew about subpoenas issued in the Shadowcrew probe and had even discovered that the agency was monitoring his own ICQ account. Fortunately, the documents didn’t mention an informant.

Myth refused to tell Gonzalez who his source was but agreed to arrange an introduction. The next day, Gonzalez, Myth, and a mystery hacker using the temporary handle “Anonyman” met on IRC. Gonzalez worked