📸 Photo

KINGPIN

“This is for real dude,” said Silo.

Matrix was unconvinced. He ran his own Whois on the Pembrooke Associates domain name and got back an anonymous listing through Domains by Proxy: no street address, no phone number. “Blah,” Matrix typed. “You did not even verify the whois info and the company, did you? Who passed you that stuff?”

“That’s not my stuff,” wrote Silo. “That’s Iceman.”

“So you believe every shit which is pasted to you? Without even verifying it?”

Silo’s evidence was no more convincing to Matrix: The NCFTA templates contained spelling and formatting errors—would the FBI, or a nonprofit security group, really do such shoddy work? Moreover, Iceman’s contempt for DarkMarket was well-known, and Silo was a constant annoyance on the board.

The conversation grew heated. C0rrupted dropped out, and the others fell silent while Silo and Matrix began exchanging insults. “What in the whole world should make me trust you?” asked Matrix.

“Don’t,” Silo finally said. “Don’t trust me. Get the fuck off my IM . . . Go get busted.”

Mularski was excluded from the meeting, but when it concluded, Matrix sent Master Spyntr a transcript. The agent was pleased to see his last-minute cleanup had worked: As soon as he’d learned about Iceman’s plans to expose him, he’d contacted the domain registrar and got the company to scrub the Pembrooke Associates name and phone number from the records. Then he asked Anywho to take out its listing for the undercover phone line. The cover-up was sure to convince Iceman all the more that Master Spyntr was a fed, but nobody else was able to independently verify his findings.

Now Mularski went into spin control over ICQ. He told Matrix and anyone else who’d listen that he was innocent. He directed the carders’ attention to the logs, highlighting all the occasions he’d logged in from