ShadowCrew

[1] The concept of the ShadowCrew was developed in early 2002 during a series of chat sessions between Brett Johnson (GOllumfun), Seth Sanders (Kidd), and Kim Marvin Taylor (MacGayver).

The ShadowCrew website also contained a number of sub-forums on the latest information on hacking tricks, social engineering, credit card fraud, virus development, scams, and phishing.

[citation needed] During its early years, the site was hosted in Hong Kong, but shortly before CumbaJohnny (Albert Gonzalez)'s arrest, the server was in his possession somewhere in New Jersey.

[5] CumbaJohnny was a long term police informant who was responsible for teaching the US Secret Service how to monitor, trap and arrest the ShadowCrew.

[9] ShadowCrew admin Brett Johnson managed to avoid being arrested following the 2004 raids, but was picked up in 2005 on separate charges, in which he then turned informant for the Secret Service.

Continuing to commit tax fraud as an informant, 'Operation Anglerphish' embedded him, then dubbed by Secret Service agents as "The Original Internet Godfather", as admins on both ScandinavianCarding and CardersMarket.

When his continued carding activities were exposed as a part of a separate investigation in 2006, he briefly went on the run and made the United States Most Wanted List before being caught in August of that year.