Last week, a New Yorker was arrested for running a notorious cybercriminal site known as BreachForums.
Peekskill’s Connor Brian Fitzpatrick was arrested the day after an FBI investigation and charged with conspiracy to commit access device fraud, according to court documents filed last Wednesday. Bloomberg reported that Fitzpatrick was released on bail after being arrested and is expected to appear in federal court on Friday.
FBI agent John Longmire said he identified Fitzpatrick as the owner and administrator of BreachForum during the operation. He also admitted that he hides online behind the alias “pom pom purin” often used on BreachForums to ensure the legitimacy of data posted on the site.
“I was personally involved in the defendant’s investigation and was involved in determining whether the defendant was the same person I accused in the complaint,” the attorney said in a deposition. Longmire said, as shown in
The Pompompurin nickname was also used in 2021 to exploit law enforcement portals and send thousands of fraudulent emails from FBI email addresses.
The arrests came nearly a year after cross-border law enforcement teams shut down the RaidForums hacker website. Around the same time he created BreachForums, which filled a gap for many threat actors. Attackers used the site to retrieve stolen data during a data breach.
At the time of this writing, the site is estimated to contain a database of about 1000 stolen websites. Last October, a BreachForums user claimed responsibility for his Optus attack.
You can read more about the Optus breach here: Optus confirms the data of approximately 2.1 million Australians was hacked.
After Fitzpatrick’s arrest, BreachForums was taken offline (presumably by another admin) and remains so today, Monday March 20th. Before going offline, a message from the site administrator said that necessary steps were taken to protect the site’s infrastructure and users. Administrators also said they restricted Pompompurin’s account to monitor suspicious activity, thus preventing unauthorized administrators from operating it.
A Sophos investigation found that cybercriminals were arrested months after it was suggested they lost at least $2.5 million to scammers on three underground sites, including BreachForums, in 2022.
