![]() The bulk of those who have been rounded up are rank-and-file fraudsters, some of whom face outsized penalties under the mob-busting RICO act. Most of the operation’s biggest targets are still at large – many out of reach in Eastern European countries where U.S. Open Market isn’t an unsullied win for the agency. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada declined to discuss the investigation. Attorney General Eric Holder was personally briefed on the operation. law enforcement,” the report continues, adding that U.S. “The prosecutorial strategy centers on disrupting and dismantling the Carder.su organization while at the same time acting as a deterrent to similar organizations that may be operating under the belief that because they are outside U.S. “By selling the counterfeit identifications, it allowed the UCA potential to identify individuals operating on the carding portals and develop an understanding of the internal workings of the organization,” reads an August 2011 memorandum produced by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, which supported the Secret Service in the operation. In the process, the agency built dossiers on identity thieves around the world and discovered the underground’s extensive use of the online payment service Liberty Reserve, which spawned a parallel Secret Service and Treasury Department investigation with its own round of arrests in May. ![]() It’s the story of how the Secret Service, in an operation as ironic as it was bold, stole the identity of a low-ranking member of the underground in May 2007, and, with top-level Justice Department approval, used it for years afterward to produce and sell some of the best fake IDs available anywhere. That story is told in internal agency documents seen by WIRED, correlated with archival posts from Carder.su and court records. But the agency hasn’t publicly disclosed how it made the busts. The Secret Service announced Operation Open Market in a press release in March of last year when the first set of indictments dropped. ![]() What many of those alleged scammers, carders, thieves, and racketeers have in common is one simple mistake: They bought their high-quality fake IDs from a sophisticated driver’s license counterfeiting factory secretly established, owned, and operated by the United States Secret Service. The government calls it “Operation Open Market,” a four-year investigation resulting, so far, in four federal grand jury indictments against 55 defendants in 10 countries, facing a cumulative millennium of prison time.
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