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KINGPIN

He moved two of his cashers, and Marcos, his pot connection, into the Archstone Mission Viejo, a labyrinth of McMansion-style apartments painted the colors of a sunset and clinging to a hill dotted with palm trees and high-tension lines alongside Interstate 5, ten minutes from his house. He was also looking to expand his crew. One girl had dropped out and moved to Toledo after her second in-store bust, and two others had quit in disgust when Chris impregnated his teenage girlfriend—he was now paying for an apartment for the young woman and their son, whose existence he kept secret even from his mother.

At the NCFTA office in Pittsburgh, Keith Mularski, in his Master Splyntr guise, got a private message from Iceman himself two days after the hostile takeover. The hacker wanted to apologize for some of his hasty words on his forum.

Anticipating the next stage in the DarkMarket–Carders Market conflict, Iceman had boasted that he would easily defuse any DDoS attacks leveled against his site. But afterward, he Googled Master Splyntr and learned he was a world-class spammer with a botnet army. Iceman seemed loath to turn a mere critic into a full-blown enemy.

Don't take offense to my smartass comments. It is true that if someone attacks me I will just track the botnet and try to jack it or shut it down, but it's not something I want to taunt people with. No one needs to waste their time with such activity, really DDoS is no fun and so don't get the wrong idea plz. :-)

Mularski was beginning to see an opportunity in the upheaval gripping the underground. Nobody knew who to trust anymore; everyone was angry at everyone else. If he were to play both sides, he might make