It US Federal Bureau of Investigation (The FBI) arrested a New York man this week on suspicion of running for office BreachForums:, a popular English-language cybercrime forum where some of the world’s largest hacked databases usually appear for sale for the first time. Forum Administrator “Pompompuri“A thorn in the side of the FBI for years, and BreachForums is widely considered a reincarnation. RaidForums:a remarkably similar criminal forum that the FBI infiltrated and dismantled in 2022.
FBI agents remove items from Fitzpatrick’s home on March 15. Image: News 12 Westchester.
In an affidavit filed in the District Court for the Southern District of New York, an FBI special agent John Langmire said that on March 15, 2023, around 4:30 p.m., he led a group of law enforcement agencies that arrested A. Conor Brian Fitzpatrick in Peekskill, New York.
“When I arrested the defendant on March 15, 2023, he stated to me in substance and in part that: (a) his name was Conor Brian Fitzpatrick; (b) he used the alias “pompompurin/” and (c) he was “the owner and administrator of the BreachForums data breach website named in the Complaint,” Langmire wrote.
Pompompurin has been an enemy of the FBI for several years. In November 2021, KrebsOnSecurity reported that thousands of fake emails about cybercrime investigations had been blasted from FBI email systems and Internet addresses.
Pompompurin took the trick and said he was able to send an email to the FBI. The FBI later admitted that a software misconfiguration allowed someone to send the fake emails.
In December 2022, KrebsOnSecurity reported that hackers active on BreachForums had infiltrated the FBI’s InfraGard program, an FBI-vetted program designed to partner with private sector experts to share information about cyber and physical threats. Hackers impersonated the CEO of a major financial company, applied for InfraGard membership under the CEO’s name, and gained access to the community.
From there, the hackers hacked into InfraGard’s member database and began selling the contact information of more than 80,000 InfraGard members in an auction on BreachForums. The FBI responded by shutting down the portal for a time before eventually forcing all InfraGard members to reapply for membership.
More recently, BreachForums was the selling forum for stolen data DC Health Link:, a Washington, D.C.-based health insurance exchange that suffered a data breach this month. The sales pitch originally said the data included names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, health plan and enrollee information on more than 170,000 individuals, though the official breach notification said 56,415 people were affected by DC Health Link. from violation.
In April 2022, the US Department of Justice seized the servers and domains of RaidForums, an extremely popular English-language anti-cybercrime forum that sold access to more than 10 billion consumer records stolen in the world’s largest data breach since 2015. As part of that action. , the feds also charged the alleged administrator, 21-year-old Diogo Santos Coelho of Portugal, with six felony counts.
Coelho was arrested in the United Kingdom on January 31, 2022. At the time, the new BreachForums had only been live for less than a week, but they looked familiar.
BreachForums remains available online, and watching the live chat stream on the site’s homepage shows that active forum users are just learning that their admin and site database may now be in the hands of the FBI.
Members of BreachForums are discussing the arrest of the alleged owner of the forum.
“Wait, if they arrested Pom, then the FBI doesn’t have all of our information that we registered with?” asked one concerned BreachForums member.
“But we all have good VPNs I guess, right…right guys?” another citizen suggested.
“Like pom will probably make a plea deal and cooperate with the feds as much as possible,” replied another.
Fitzpatrick could not immediately be reached for comment. The FBI declined to comment for this story.
There is only one page of the criminal complaint against Fitzpatrick (PDF), which charges him with conspiracy to commit access device fraud. His arrest affidavit is available here (PDF).