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OPERATION FIREWALL

had been a strong innovation in hacker tracking, turning passive honeypots into digital wiretaps and opening a window into the underground's culture and motives.

Max could see the same wiretap tactic at play now in Cumbajohnny’s VPN offer. There was other evidence, too; while hacking random carders, he saw a message to a Shadowcrew administrative account that read like a federal agent giving orders to an informant. Max couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was turning Shadowcrew into the ultimate honeypot.

After talking it over with Chris, Max posted several messages to Shadowcrew summarizing his doubts. The posts disappeared at once.

Max’s suspicions were right on the money.

The NYPD had nabbed Albert “Cumbajohnny” Gonzalez nine months earlier pulling cash out of a Chase ATM on New York’s Upper West Side. Originally from Miami, Gonzalez was twenty-one years old and the son of two Cuban immigrants. He was also a longtime hacker who’d been dedicated enough to trek to Vegas for the 2001 Def Con.

The Secret Service interviewed Gonzalez in custody and quickly ascertained his worth. The hacker was living in a $700-a-month garden apartment in Kearny, New Jersey, had $12,000 in credit card debt, and was officially unemployed. But as “Cumbajohnny,” he was a trusted confidant and colleague of carders around the world and, most importantly, a moderator at Shadowcrew.

He was in the belly of the beast, and properly handled, he might strike a deathblow against the forum.

The Secret Service took over the case and sprang Gonzalez to use him as an informant. The VPN was the agency’s masterstroke. The equipment was bought and paid for by the feds, and they’d obtained wiretap warrants for all the users. Cumbajohnny’s carder-only VPN service was an invitation to an Internet panopticon.

Shadowcrew’s biggest players were drawn inexorably into the Secret