Nicholas Webber, Teenage Crime Lord

Nicolas Webber and Ryan Thomas are just a couple of teenagers that just so happen to run one of the largest fraud organizations online.  Webber is the mastermind of GhostMarket.net, a hacker website dedicated to teaching nascent online criminals the tricks of credit card theft, as well as exchanging stolen credit card numbers and other various crooked activities.  Prosecuting attorneys have dubbed Gh0stMarket “Crimebook,” and with good reason.  GhostMarket users accounted for a staggering $26.4 million dollars (16.2 million British pounds) worth of fraudulent credit card charges, and the whole thing was created and run by teenagers.

“There are professional hallmarks, a high level of profit, multiple victims, and the offending is over a significant period of time.  The administrator and the person in full control was Mr. Webber, who is an extremely experienced computer hacker.  Mr. Thomas was a mediator, responsible for the day-to-day running of the internet forum, and had the power to deal with the progress of the discussions,” said prosecuting attorney Matthew McCabe.  “The GhostMarket forum had approximately 8,000 members worldwide.  It existed simply to facilitate the criminal trade in compromised credit cards, access to online bank accounts and distribution of malicious software and computer hacking tricks.”

The two busted, Webber and Thomas, were only two of the many people arrested in the police operation to break up the ring, dubbed Pagode.  Most of the folks arrested were teenagers at the time of their arrests, or close enough to it.  It’s a real teenage credit card crime ring.

Tags: Crimebook,  GhostMarket.net, GhostMarket, gh0stmarket, internet crime forum busted, internet crime forum founders arrested, largest English language crime forum, Ryan Thomas,  Nicholas Webber, Pagode, internet crime ring busted, credit card fraud ring busted, credit card internet forum busted

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