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MASTER SPLYNTR

background story. The best lies hew to the truth, so Mularski decided to make Splyntr a Polish spammer. Mularski was descended on his father's side from Polish immigrants—his bureau-issue button-down concealed a tattoo on his left arm of the Orzeł Biały, the white eagle with golden beak and talons that adorns Poland's coat of arms. Mularski would locate Master Splyntr in Warsaw; he'd visited Poland's capital and could roughly describe its landmarks if pressed.

In August, the ROKSO listing went live, for the first time stapling a "real" name to Mularski's cartoon-inspired alter ego.

Pavel Kaminski aka "Master Splyntr" runs a loosely organized spam and scam crew from Eastern Europe. Possibly a BadCow affiliate. He is linked to: proxy spam; phishing; pump'n'dump; javascript exploits; carder forums; botnets.

The profile included samples of scammy spam messages supposedly sent out by "Pavel Kaminski," handcrafted by Spamhaus, and an analysis of his hosting arrangements.

Now the carders who Googled Master Splyntr could see for themselves that he was the real deal, a bona fide Eastern European cybercrook with sticky fingers in a lot of pies. When Mularski logged on to Carder-Portal, he found business proposals waiting in his in-box from crooks hoping to partner with him. Still not allowed to engage any suspects, he blew them off sneeringly.

You're not much of a player, he'd write back. I don't want to deal with you because I'm a professional and you're obviously a newbie at this. To rebuff upper-echelon scammers, he challenged their pocketbooks: You don't have enough money to invest in what I'm doing.

Like an unattainable girl on prom night, Master Splyntr's aloofness only made him more attractive. When a new site called the International Association for the Advancement of Criminal Activity launched as a closed