- Conor Fitzpatrick, also known as
- Violation Forum, which held over 14 billion items and had 330,000 members, was repeatedly emerged despite law enforcement efforts
- The forum is now offline with its maintenance and other cyber criminal groups such as Lapsus $ and scattered spider who chooses to “go dark.”
Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, the person behind the notorious violation forum’s underground hacking forum, spends time in prison after his first sentence was scrapped.
In March 2023, Fitzpatrick (alias pompompurin) was arrested for the operation of the violation forum and was accused of access unity conspiracy, request for access to unity and possession of material for sexual abuse of children (CSAM).
In January 2024, Fitzpatrick pleaded guilty to all three accounts and was sentenced to 17 days in prison and 20 years of monitored release.
Going dark
However, prosecutors appealed, arguing that the verdict was far too mild in view of the extent of his crimes. The US appeal for the fourth circuit agreed that “a 17-day verdict does not meet the required penalties and was therefore significantly unreasonable”.
As a result, Fitzpatrick was twisted – his earlier criminal judgment overturned and replaced with three years in federal prison.
“Conor Fitzpatrick personally served on the sale of large quantities of stolen information, from private personal information to commercial data,” said US lawyer Erik S. Siebert of Eastern District Virginia.
The violation forum occurred in March 2022 from the rubble of the previously dismantled Raidforums, a similar marketplace closed by police. According to Hacker News, Breach Forums had approx. 330,000 members at its highest and held more than 14 billion individual items.
Police tried to shut it down on several occasions, but the forum continued to appear. The Baphomet, the administrator, who took over when Fitzpatrick was arrested, was also arrested in 2023, leaving the forum to Shinyhunters, a group of cyber criminals responsible for some of the most devastating data violations in recent history.
At the time of the press, Breach Forum’s offline, where its maintenance also says they would “get dark”. Other groups that were also dark in the last few weeks included lapsus $ and scattered spider.
Via Hacker the news
