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ENEMIES

Giannone finally took radical measures to try to keep Iceman out of his stuff: He bought an Apple. Iceman could penetrate just about anything. But Giannone was pretty sure he couldn’t hack Macs.

While Max kept up surveillance of his crime partners, Carders Market began slowly generating buzz, intensified by the mysterious swagger of its founders. As Iceman and Easylivin’, Max and Chris were unknown quantities among their fellow crooks, but experienced carders could practically smell the confidence and street smarts in their posts.

In Seattle, word of the new site reached Dave “El Mariachi” Thomas, the former FBI asset who, like Max, had tried to blow the whistle on Operation Firewall. Thomas had been feeling adrift since the feds pulled the plug on his intelligence-gathering operation, and he was looking for a new online home.

Wary at first, Thomas registered under a fake handle. But when Iceman invited a public discussion of Carders Market’s philosophy and charter, Thomas dove in, opining in detail on the course the site should follow to nurture successful ops while avoiding Shadowcrew’s fate.

At first, Chris and Max thought Thomas might be a valuable contributor. But they soon detected that he had a beef with one of their handpicked admins, Brett “Gollumfun” Johnson.

Rumors had been swirling about Johnson since his return to the scene—you don’t just disappear for two years and then come back onto the carder forums as though nothing has happened. In August, a hacker called “Manus Dei”—the Hand of God—added fuel to the fire when he cracked Johnson’s e-mail account and posted a blistering profile of the carder on a Google Group called FEDwatch. The write-up gave Johnson’s real name, his current address in Ohio, and a slew of personal details stolen from his in-box. Among the revelations: Johnson had been corresponding with a New York Times reporter about the carding scene and had registered