Federal agents in the US have arrested a man from Peekskill, New York who is suspected of being the administrator of the stolen-data sharing website breachForums.
The administrator who uses the online tag “Pompompurin” was arrested at his home at 16:30 on Wednesday 15th March 2023.
The real name of the admin is Conor Brian Fitzpatrick and is charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit access device fraud.
BreachForums
BreachForums, as the name suggests hosted the stolen data of thousands of victims, and provided a platform for threat actors to share tips and advice on how to infiltrate and steal data and how to stay hidden from law enforcement.
The breachedForums domain is currently still active, but the webserver which acts as the front-end is returning a http 502 bad gateway error indicating that it cannot reach the data servers to build the content.
Historical views of the website are available from the Wayback machine, with the last snapshot dated 19th March 2023
Pompompurins account was last accessed shortly before his arrest, and is currently banned. The speculation is that the site has been taken over by another admin and has disabled Pompompurins account for fear that it has been compromised by the FBI.
This theory could also be why the site is currently offline – the new caretakers could be checking the security of the site and the users for fear that others may be identified and arrested.
Arrest, bail, and court appearance
After the arrest of Fitzpatrick, he was released on bail after a payment of USD $300,000. His court date is scheduled for Friday March 24, 2023 at the federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia.
A copy of the arrest affidavit is available for view at courtlistener.com
A Clip of the FBI raid at Fitzpatrick’s house has been shared on the twitter account vx-underground