Case Analysis of the Shadowcrew Carding Gang

Identity Theft

The mainstream and IT trade press is replete with references to "organized crime" getting into cybercrime. Is this designation correct? And how significant are the successes of law enforcement in this area?

US prosecutors yanked a major ring of online ID thieves, the Shadowcrew, from the shadiness of the web into an American court spotlight that achieved guilty pleas in November 2005. The round up of the leaders of the Shadowcrew, which trafficked more than 1.7 million credit cards online, is a sign that authorities are cracking Internet fraud. But experts believe that the police are mostly missing the culprits. Graeme Burnett, a security architecture engineer at Enhyper said that the perpetrators are not who you would expect. The description would be "14-30, middle class, good education, predominately white," he said.

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