The U.S. Division of Justice (DoJ) on Tuesday resentenced the previous administrator of BreachForums to 3 years in jail in connection together with his position in working the cybercrime discussion board and possessing youngster sexual abuse materials (CSAM).
Conor Brian Fitzpatrick (aka Pompompurin), 22, of Peekskill, New York, pleaded responsible to at least one depend of entry gadget conspiracy, one depend of entry gadget solicitation, and one depend of possession of kid sexual abuse materials. Fitzpatrick was initially arrested in March 2023 and pleaded responsible later that July.
As a part of the plea settlement, Fitzpatrick can be stated to have agreed to forfeit over 100 domains used within the operation of BreachForums, over a dozen digital gadgets used to execute the scheme, and cryptocurrency that represented the illicit proceeds of the operation.
“Conor Fitzpatrick personally profited from the sale of huge portions of stolen data, starting from personal private data to industrial knowledge,” stated U.S. Legal professional Erik S. Siebert for the Jap District of Virginia.
“These crimes had been so intensive that the harm is troublesome to quantify, and the human value of his assortment of kid sexual abuse materials is incalculable. We won’t permit criminals to cover within the darkest corners of the web and can use all authorized means to carry them to justice.”
The resentencing comes after the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued an opinion on January 21, 2025, vacating Fitzpatrick’s prior sentence of 17-day time served and remanding the case for resentencing. Fitzpatrick was beforehand sentenced to time served and 20 years of supervised launch for his position because the creator and administrator of BreachForums in January 2024.
BreachForums, launched in March 2022 following the dismantlement of RaidForums by regulation enforcement, is a felony market that permits unhealthy actors to purchase, promote, and commerce stolen knowledge related to high-profile firms the world over. The discussion board is estimated to have had 330,000 members at its peak and held greater than 14 billion particular person information.
The hacker market has since been relaunched a variety of instances regardless of quite a few efforts to close it down, cropping up underneath a revolving door of latest domains. In July 2024, the entire database of the unique BreachForums was leaked on-line, exposing members’ data.
Then final month, ShinyHunters, which took over the reins after Baphomet’s arrest in 2023, claimed that the infamous cybercrime market had been compromised and was underneath the management of worldwide regulation enforcement companies. As of writing, the copycat discussion board has gone offline on its newest area, stating they’ve “determined to go darkish” together with 14 different e-crime teams, together with LAPSUS$ and Scattered Spider.
