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DARKMARK 227

was picked up at the same time; police found a credit card counterfeiting factory in the senior citizen's home.

In Turkey, six members of Cha0's organization were charged along with Cha0. With Mularski's help, the police also swooped in on Erkan "Seagate" Findikoglu, a DarkMarket member who ran a massive King Arthur-style cash-out operation responsible for at least two million dollars in thefts from U.S. banks and credit unions—they recovered one million of it in cash at his arrest. Twenty-seven members of Seagate's organization were charged in Turkey, and the FBI rounded up six of his cashers in the United States.

With Cha0 and Seagate in jail, Mularski's work was done—his two years running DarkMarket had now resulted in fifty-six arrests in four countries. On Tuesday, September 16, 2008, he drafted a post formally announcing the closure of the site. As an homage to the carding world's history and culture, the FBI agent borrowed from King Arthur's legendary message closing Carder Planet years before. "Good day, respected and dear forum members," he began.

It is time to tell you the bad news—the forum should be closed. Yes, I really mean closed.

Over the last year we have lost a lot of the admins of the forums: Iceman on Carders Market; JiLsi and Matrix001 disappeared, and now, Cha0 on DM. It is apparent that this forum, which has been around almost three years, is attracting too much attention from a lot of the world services. . . .

I myself would rather go out like King Arthur than Iceman. Whereas Iceman decided that all he would do was change his nick to Aphex,