DarkMarket

by Misha Glenny

In April 2007 Cha0 had expelled Dron from DarkMarket, and with him went Dron’s ability to fix the microprocessors on his skimming machines. He asked Mert if he would be able to do this and Mert agreed. He was now becoming seriously involved with Cha0’s criminal business, which meant that he was garnering a most precious commodity – trust.

  Only Mert has claimed an intimacy between himself, Cha0 and Cyric. Of course, the latter two cannot say with any certainty whether they exchanged messages with Mert because he was masquerading as somebody else. Cha0 explicitly denied ever having met or communicated with him until the fateful day when he abducted him and placed his photograph, via Haber 7, on the Internet.

  More importantly, nobody else in Turkey or elsewhere has ever acknowledged the existence of the mysterious Şahin. Beyond Mert’s word, there is no evidence that Şahin exists, including when the two eventually met. But Mert did prove correct in one important fact: the friendship between Lord Cyric and Cha0 went back a very long way.

  Mert, of course, was also still working for Turkey’s Intelligence Agency. And so most evenings after he had spent much of the day pretending to work at Fox Turkey, playing around on DarkMarket or fashioning microprocessors for Cha0’s illegal skimming industry, Mert would report back to his handlers on his day’s findings. He told them about a Polish spammer called Master Splyntr, about the security genius Grendel, about Lord Cyric and Cha0, about the backup servers that the DarkMarket administrators managed in different European countries, and about the activities of the DHKP/C.

  What else was he up to? His boss at Fox Turkey began to grow very suspicious of him. He noted that Mert now almost never completed the tasks that were given to him, providing instead a litany of excuses as to why he was absent from his work station. He claimed he had a serious medical condition and repeatedly tried to borrow money from his colleagues. If he was so successful, his boss wondered, how come he was always short of cash?

  One day the boss discovered that Mert had asked for all his co-workers’ passwords. He allegedly needed them to install a major upgrade of the system. Just in time, the boss put a stop to this plan as he suspected that Mert wanted the passwords for less honourable reasons.

  On another day, while quietly keeping an eye on Mert, he spotted a stack of credit cards on his table. Later he came across two ID cards for Mert, neither of which had his correct name, date or place of birth on them. Finally, he noticed Mert surfing a website with detailed instructions on how to crack open an ATM machine. The longer Mert stayed, the greater his need for money – and large sums of money at that.

  Mert had met Sanem – a dream woman with whom he was besotted. Sanem is the one person in the world who can confirm whether or not Mert’s extraordinary story is true. And Sanem isn’t talking.

  32

  TURKISH DELIGHT

  The Sükrü Saracoğlu Stadium in the bustling Asian district of Kadıköy was packed to the rafters for Fenerbahçe’s final home game of the season. Fenerbahçe had already won the Süper Lig title and so this game on a gorgeous Sunday in late May was a noisy celebration for some of the most fanatical football supporters in the world.

  And into it stepped Mert Ortaç. Perhaps for real; perhaps just in his own mind.

  Up in the executive boxes there was an expectant and convivial atmosphere. Şahin and his trusted lieutenant, Çağatay Evyapan, were awaiting the kick off at 5 p.m. The football fans of Istanbul were regarded as among the most fanatical in Europe and they were divided into three camps. Two were on the European side of the city, Galatasaray and Beşiktaş, while the yellow and navy-blue shirts of Fenerbahçe lay across the straits in Asia. Şahin and Çağatay were both committed Fenerbahçe supporters and the former’s visits to his home city usually coincided with a game – indeed, he had an executive box at the stadium.

  Among the friends invited to this game was Mert, who, Şahin told Çağatay, was one of the new boys working on his skimming trade. Mert also introduced his new girlfriend, Sanem. She dazzled Mert, while the ostentatious wealth of his companions dazzled her.

  Sanem already knew the profiles of some of the people in the executive box. It was not difficult wheedling secrets out of Mert. Not only was he a chatterbox by nature, but he was desperate to impress his young paramour, whom he considered way out of his league. Seeing powerful men like Şahin and his well-built sidekick Çağatay strut around the executive box must have been confirmation for Sanem that little Mert really did have some impressive contacts. If, that is, the Fenerbahçe game was not an episode from Mert’s dream.

  Life had been good for Mert. He and Sadun were starting to make serious money from the Akbank scam. As an active informant for National Intelligence, he enjoyed wide-ranging protection and he was highly regarded by Cha0, the key player on DarkMarket. But above all else, he was spending every day and night with a fabulous, beautiful young woman who seemed to be similarly smitten.

  Summer had arrived and Mert decided to capitalise on his good fortune by taking a holiday in Antalya at the coveted Adam & Eve Hotel, where designers had successfully mated a high budget with singularly poor taste. Huge infinity pools lapped at an atrium with ever-changing light shows, while the rooms were known for the countless mirrors, conducive to much high-energy sex. None of this came cheaply. Rooms started at $400 a night, while visitors noted that one could quickly rack up huge bills with the extras. But for Turkey’s young, beautiful or rich, it was the holiday destination of the season.

  As soon as Mert and Sanem had checked in, they ran into Çağatay, who had also flown south for the summer. Çağatay explained to a tubby bespectacled gentleman accompanying him that Mert had been assisting the Cha0 team with ‘administrative matters’. The tubby gentleman squinted at Mert before exclaiming, ‘Wait a minute? I’ve known this guy since he was a kid in shorts! What the hell are you doing in this business?’ And Mert responded as he always did by giggling and smiling mischievously.

  As he and Sanem headed to their bedroom, Mert leaned over and said, ‘The second guy? That was Lord Cyric.’ Sanem wanted to know whether Cyric was more powerful than Cha0. Mert assured her that he wasn’t, but he remembered that she was interested in power first and money second.

  Mert was in heaven and in love. He was a moneyed man, respected by criminals and the intelligence service alike, and to the outside world he had an impressive job running the IT department at Fox Turkey. Furthermore, he was spending his summer lounging around the Adam & Eve Hotel with his hot new girlfriend. It couldn’t get any better.

  And it didn’t – in retrospect, August 2007 represented the brief golden age of Mert Ortaç’s dream world, in which his fantasy projections coincided for once with reality. Almost as soon as he returned to Istanbul, matters began slipping out of his control and, as summer turned to autumn, dark shadows started to spread. Sanem and Mert were wont to take expensive shopping trips to places like the island of Mykonos in neighbouring Greece. The pair would drop thousands of euros in a day, which placed a strain even on Mert’s well-stuffed treasure chest. His resentment at what he regarded as her profligacy was matched by her growing irritation with his secrets and lies.

  In a typically convoluted episode, Mert was detained for having allegedly stolen ¤5,000 from a friend of Sanem’s brother. His detention proved to be the last straw for Fox Turkey, which dismissed him. More ominously, National Intelligence finally decided that he had become a liability who was no longer worth protecting. Out of the blue, he felt suddenly very exposed, as well as being deprived of two important sources of income.

  On remand, he stepped up his carding activities with Sadun, thanks to the continuing vulnerability of the Akbank’s systems. Desperation translated into nervousness, compounded by the miserable discovery that Sanem was having an affair. The subsequent bust-up was a tempestuous business and bitter accusations were hurled back and forth. Mert believed that she had stolen large sums of money from him. She must have
thought he was quite simply insane.

  With his world suddenly falling apart, Mert travelled south for the New Year to consider his next move. On the road, he received further bad tidings – Sadun had been arrested and the police had already raided Mert’s flat, brandishing a warrant for his detention. Had he stayed in Istanbul he would already be under lock and key. As so often when faced with a tough situation, Mert’s decision was to keep digging until he was well and truly underground.

  Returning under an assumed name to Istanbul, he started to plot an escape strategy. Using one of his many false IDs, he applied for and received a new passport, before bribing a consular official at the French Embassy in order to secure a visa. He then embarked on a tortuous journey via the French Caribbean territory of Martinique and Paris to Alès, a sleepy town lying fifty miles north of France’s Mediterranean coast.

  Mert was isolated. He possessed limited funds, barely spoke a word of French and, even more unsettling, he had no ready access to the Internet. At least he was able to console himself with the knowledge that he was safe. And so, with nothing else to do, Mert sunk into an extended period of rest and relaxation.

  After the harum-scarum experience of being a fugitive from Turkish justice while feuding with his ex-lover, he soon regarded Alès as a welcome refuge. For the first time in months, maybe years, he could dispense with the half-truths, the deception, the thieving and the prevarications. He could cease the extreme compartmentalisation that his multiple online and offline personalities demanded and seek his real essence – provided, of course, he still had a recognisable essence. Perhaps the time had come to make a break from the madness: time to go straight, find a proper job and settle down with a decent woman. If he played his cards wisely, all this lay within his grasp.

  Then one morning at around eight o’clock there was the knock on the door.

  Mert was lying in bed sipping some coffee. He had never received visitors here in Alès and was not expecting them. Throwing on his dressing gown, he shuffled towards the door and opened it to two men who were carrying backpacks. ‘Hello, Mert! How are you?’ said the first one in Turkish. In return, Mert muttered feebly, ‘Je ne comprends pas . . .’ ‘Come on, Mert,’ said the second man in English, ‘we know who you are. It would be in your interest to invite us in.’

  As they sat with mugs of coffee around the kitchen table, one of the men pulled out a folder and put it on the table. Mert had the first man down as a second-generation immigrant to America from Turkey because he spoke colloquial Turkish, but with an accent and occasional grammatical errors. The second guy, who did most of the talking, was American.

  Mert was presented with alternatives: ‘Either you help us unconditionally or we are giving this folder to the Sécurité.’ Mert flicked through the pages of French credit cards, which he and Sadun had skimmed after they had wormed their way into the innards of the Akbank’s computer system. The two men reminded him that in France he could receive up to eight years for just one credit-card fraud.

  This was Hobson’s choice, but before he consented, Mert demanded to know who the two men represented. American law enforcement came the reply. ‘And what,’ Mert continued, ‘do you want from me?’

  ‘Go on, Mert, have a wild guess!’

  Mert, irritated and frightened, shook his head.

  ‘We want you to give us Cha0.’

  33

  RETURN TO HADES

  As the three men discussed Cha0 and his possible whereabouts, Mert could tell from their questions and comments that they knew neither Cha0’s identity nor Lord Cyric’s. The two agents told Mert that he would have to return to Turkey, re-establish himself on DarkMarket and flush out Cha0 and his colleagues. They surprised him even more by telling him that one of their people controlled the DarkMarket server. Thus they could easily help to get him back on the boards.

  As far as Mert could ascertain, the FBI now wanted to move in on all the remaining central players on DarkMarket: Cha0, Lord Cyric, Master Splyntr, Shtirlitz and Grendel. They had not told him how exactly, but he was evidently supposed to be instrumental in all this. It was not a prospect he relished, but then neither was a spell inside one of France’s prisons, which were rumoured to be among the most unforgiving in Western Europe.

  The American agents offered Mert some vague promises and armed him with a phone number and email address for Lucy Hoover, the Assistant Legal Attaché at the US Embassy in Istanbul. He was also given an email account, sadinsider@gmail.com (Mert chose the name), through which he could leave messages for her.

  Mert’s sojourn in the Languedoc is the second episode from his dream world that is not verifiable. But he did establish contact with Lucy Hoover of the FBI, who was in Turkey at the time.

  Mert had been away for two months when he arrived back on 2nd March 2008. The first thing he had to do was devise a plan of action. He decided to approach the news organisation and TV station, Haber 7, offering them an interview in which he promised to reveal the secrets of the carding world and DarkMarket. His aim, perhaps unwisely, was to put the frighteners on Cha0, to let him know that information about his operation was leaking out and that the police might well be investigating him.

  In his innocence – which, despite everything, was still an integral part of his character – Mert assumed that Cha0 would not be able to establish who this mystery hacker offering interviews to the press actually was. But Mert had not reckoned with Haber 7 taking a sneaky photograph of him at the McDonald’s in Kadıköy where he and their journalist met. Once that was published, Cha0 knew who had been blabbing. Mert was firmly in the big man’s sights.

  With a warrant out for his arrest and Sadun under lock and key, Cha0, Lord Cyric et al. would have known that Mert was vulnerable to pressure from law enforcement. The interview reinforced those suspicions. So instead of returning to the DarkMarket board directly, Mert made contact with a young hacker friend of his called Mustafa, who was also known to Cha0. Mustafa was, by all accounts, keen to develop his skills in the easy money culture of carding and cybercrime.

  Mustafa’s family came from Antalya, which also gave Mert an excuse to get out of Istanbul where he felt insecure. He stayed in the south for more than a month, back in his favourite part of the country.

  Mustafa worked on DarkMarket using the nickname MYD, and he developed a good working relationship with Cha0. What Mert did not know, however, was that Mustafa had warned Cha0 that Mert appeared to be stalking him.

  Mustafa arranged to meet Cha0 up in Istanbul, and so he and Mert headed back north. Mert had kept Lucy Hoover informed of his movements and alerted her that he was preparing to meet Cha0. The Americans needed to get a sighting of Cha0 and to establish both his coordinates and his communications infrastructure. Mert, for once, was keeping a promise – leading the Americans to their quarry. Cha0 had instructed Mustafa to meet his people outside a Burger King not far from Göztepe suburban rail station, which is on the Asian side of Istanbul, a couple of miles from Fenerbahçe’s stadium.

  When they reached Göztepe, they found Hakan Öztan, a big bull of man who had acted as Çağatay’s minder when the two were in prison together and now offered the same services to Şahin as well. The bodyguard took them both to a house named Sözdener Apartments in the wealthy middle-class district of Suadiye, some two miles away. The rooms were sparsely furnished and not especially welcoming. Hakan told the two men to stay put and that somebody would be in touch with them.

  No longer under the protection of open spaces, still less of National Intelligence, Mert was now worried that Çağatay was on his way to sort him out. Unbeknownst to him, Mustafa had placed a trojan virus on Mert’s laptop on the instructions of Cha0, and that infection was now revealing to Cha0 all of Mert’s secrets, a dense jungle of duplicity. Cha0 was not only a master criminal; he was also an unforgiving one. He now had solid evidence that Mert was working for the police. Mert assume
d (and certainly hoped) that Lucy Hoover had somehow organised surveillance of the apartment, but he could not see any signs of it. So if Çağatay, Şahin, Hakan or any combination of the three turned up, he was in serious trouble.

  At ten o’clock on Sunday morning, 18th May 2008, Mert was alone when the doorbell rang at Sözdener Apartments. He opened up to find Hakan standing in front of him. His visitor didn’t speak, but strode brusquely past Mert, closing the door behind him. Mert said cheerfully that he had been expecting him. Hakan glared at him. ‘One minute,’ he said. Then he opened the door and in walked Çağatay. Mert’s colour changed from red to purple to white.

  Çağatay pushed Mert into a chair and started slowly pacing up and down in front of him, ritually intoning, ‘Mert . . . Namert . . . Mert . . . Namert’ – a play on words in Turkish in which the antonym of the word mert (courageous) is namert (cowardly).

  Then Mert found himself on the floor being kicked in his stomach, chest and legs. Two more heavies walked in, threw a blanket over his head so that he could not recognise them and joined in the beating. Occasionally Mert caught a glimpse of a gun being pointed at his head.

  He blacked out. When he came to, he was still on the floor, but he noticed a video camera filming everything that was going on. By placing the trojan on Mert’s laptop, Cha0 had not only been able to access information about the relationship with Lucy Hoover, but would also have discovered that National Intelligence had been running Mert (albeit with only partial success).

  ‘Right,’ said Çağatay, who, acting as master of ceremonies, switched on the record button. ‘Now you are going to tell us the whole story from beginning to end.’ And so Mert went through his Looking Glass tale, finishing at about three o’clock in the morning. They wanted to know everything – about the spooks, the carding with Sadun, the DarkMarket exploration, the girlfriend – and not one detail was left out.