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Script’s Twenty-Dollar Dumps

n the spring of 2001, some 150 Russian-speaking computer criminals convened a summit at a restaurant in the Ukraine port city of Odessa to brainstorm the launch of a revolutionary website. Present were Roman Vega, a thirty-seven-year-old man who sold counterfeit credit cards to the underground through his online storefront BOA Factory; a cybercrook known as "King Arthur"; and the man who would emerge as their leader, a Ukrainian credit card seller known by the handle "Script."

The discussion was sparked by the success of a UK-hosted website erected in 2000 called Counterfeit Library, which solved one of the fundamental weaknesses of conducting criminal business in IRC chat rooms, where the wisdom and experience of years of crime vanished into the air as soon as the chat was over. Founded by a handful of Western cybercrooks, Counterfeit Library collected underground tutorials onto a single website and attached an online discussion forum where identity thieves could gather to swap tips and buy and sell "novelty" identification cards—a euphemism distilled from the same spirit in which hookers go on "dates."

Counterfeit Library had more in common with the electronic bulletin board systems of the pre-Web days than with IRC. Members could post in permanent discussion threads and build personal reputations and brands. As criminals around the globe discovered this patch of dry land in the murky ephemeral sea of underground commerce, the site collected