I Worked for a Criminal Organization • Hacker News Board

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#11

Post by busterarm » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 12:54 AM UTC

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #6

ikeboy wrote: post #4

> They insisted I never talk to any LEO Nothing wrong with this ... >PTR records, Enabling Spam Doesn't say why that's illegal. At best it says they had customers that broke the law. >Often both the CEO and Vice President would talk openly about how one of our clients was violating the TOS of several companies. Not criminal even for the client, at least assuming the HiQ v Linkedin case is upheld. And not illegal for…

>At best it says they had customers that broke the law. Did you see the part at the top where the CEO admitted to being all of those "customers"? They were playing a shell game, and while this guy didn't do the criminal activities he definitely was working for the "legitimate front end" of a larger criminal organization.

Even if you take the OP at face value, they're an unreliable narrator at best.

They have questionable character and moral standards by their own admission. That's before even considering the effects of their mental illness.

I would never hire this "perpetually unemployed" person. Everything they say points to something being off.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#12

Post by ajross » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 12:54 AM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #10

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Within a week I was convinced Micfo encompassed more than just Micfo, but a handful of shell companies: This was later proved to be true when the CEO(Amir), admitted in the ARIN(American Registry for Internet Numbers) trial, he was really behind these entities."

As far as I can tell, those shell companies were to get additional IP addresses out of ARIN. It's not been alleged that they were customers of Micfo running spamming etc services, by anyone except you.

And the author.

But your claim was that this was unrelated to the trial. The response was that, no, it actually corroborated the core allegation in the Micfo case.

It's true that it alleges other stuff. That doesn't make the IP fraud point somehow not corroboration.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#13

Post by hackermailman » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 12:57 AM UTC

Not uncommon in some cities in Canada to find out you're working for a criminal outfit if writing point of sale/restaurant software where they want you to produce one receipt for the customer and a different one for the restaurant or salon or shady car mechanic that then pockets the unreported tax aka a 'zapper'. Profitek was busted once, InfoSpec Systems, zappers are in high demand

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#14

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 1:06 AM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #11

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At best it says they had customers that broke the law. Did you see the part at the top where the CEO admitted to being all of those "customers"? They were playing a shell game, and while this guy didn't do the criminal activities he definitely was working for the "legitimate front end" of a larger criminal organization.

Even if you take the OP at face value, they're an unreliable narrator at best. They have questionable character and moral standards by their own admission. That's before even considering the effects of their mental illness. I would never hire this "perpetually unemployed" person. Everything they say points to something being off.

[deleted]

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#15

Post by Koremat6666 » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 1:06 AM UTC

May be I missed it but can someone tell me what was the crime the company was committing ? Almost any company will have defensive strategies such as stalling LEOs and Warrants in whatever way they can. A lot of this is not really "crime" as in kidnapping people or shooting people dead in some alley.

Is having shell companies a crime ? I know a ton of bay area "startups" than engage in these sort of tricks to maximize the brand damage. Ask.com and other toolbar companies are great examples where they will just rebrand the same toolbar as X and sell it to 10 companies which were owned by same entity. Half the companies with "explosive" growth were using mass mailing techniques than involved spamming. Many used foreign companies to skirt US law related to spamming.

I think author is overthinking.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#16

Post by ikeboy » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 1:12 AM UTC

ajross wrote: post #12

ikeboy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, those shell companies were to get additional IP addresses out of ARIN. It's not been alleged that they were customers of Micfo running spamming etc services, by anyone except you.

And the author. But your claim was that this was unrelated to the trial. The response was that, no, it actually corroborated the core allegation in the Micfo case. It's true that it alleges other stuff. That doesn't make the IP fraud point somehow not corroboration.

The author does not allege that.

>But your claim was that this was unrelated to the trial. The response was that, no, it actually corroborated the core allegation in the Micfo case.

Now you're misreading both OP and the response to my comment. ghostbrainalpha claimed that the OP says the CEO was the same as the customers that were allegedly committing crimes like spamming. The OP does not say this.

>That doesn't make the IP fraud point somehow not corroboration.

OP never mentions this as one of the crimes he's listing. He lists:

1. Mishandling of warrants

2. Child endangerment

3. Enabling spamming

4. Enabling ToS violations

None of the things OP says are crimes are actually illegal, and none of them were at issue during the trial. That's what I pointed out.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#17

Post by ikeboy » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

Koremat6666 wrote: post #15

May be I missed it but can someone tell me what was the crime the company was committing ? Almost any company will have defensive strategies such as stalling LEOs and Warrants in whatever way they can. A lot of this is not really "crime" as in kidnapping people or shooting people dead in some alley. Is having shell companies a crime ? I know a ton of bay area "startups" than engage in these sort of tricks to maximize…

See my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22361670

None of the things mentioned here are crimes, as far as I can tell. The crime they were actually charged with was using these shell companies to get more IP addresses than they were "entitled" to get. See the indictment at https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.scd.250342/...

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#18

Post by saber6 » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 1:20 AM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #11

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At best it says they had customers that broke the law. Did you see the part at the top where the CEO admitted to being all of those "customers"? They were playing a shell game, and while this guy didn't do the criminal activities he definitely was working for the "legitimate front end" of a larger criminal organization.

Even if you take the OP at face value, they're an unreliable narrator at best. They have questionable character and moral standards by their own admission. That's before even considering the effects of their mental illness. I would never hire this "perpetually unemployed" person. Everything they say points to something being off.

Flipside: This criminal enterprise spotted those same exact attributes, but the mitigating factor was technical competence and submissiveness. And if it came to be where they thought it would never end up (the situation today), someone would discredit them as crazy, given their background.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#19

Post by saber6 » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 1:28 AM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #17

Koremat6666 wrote: post #15

May be I missed it but can someone tell me what was the crime the company was committing ? Almost any company will have defensive strategies such as stalling LEOs and Warrants in whatever way they can. A lot of this is not really "crime" as in kidnapping people or shooting people dead in some alley. Is having shell companies a crime ? I know a ton of bay area "startups" than engage in these sort of tricks to maximize…

See my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22361670 None of the things mentioned here are crimes, as far as I can tell. The crime they were actually charged with was using these shell companies to get more IP addresses than they were "entitled" to get. See the indictment at https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.scd.250342/...

> [...] as far as I can tell.

It appears the law in this case feels differently.

The owners claimed under legal penalty that they had certain assets (paying customers, needs for IP addressing, etc). These statements appear to have been completely false. Thus, the trial.

And yes, lying to ARIN (or any RIR) about your customer base (need for IPv4 addressing) is just plain crappy. IPv4 addressing is a common resource - a 32-bit fixed address space - similar in concept to physical frequency allocation by the FCC.

There are 4.2B IPv4 addresses (minus some for RFC1918 and MCAST, etc). To lay illegitimate claim to them is really wrong, and more importantly, legally risky now.

Re: I Worked for a Criminal Organization

#20

Post by ajross » Wed, Feb 19, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

ikeboy wrote: post #16

ajross wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the author. But your claim was that this was unrelated to the trial. The response was that, no, it actually corroborated the core allegation in the Micfo case. It's true that it alleges other stuff. That doesn't make the IP fraud point somehow not corroboration.

The author does not allege that. >But your claim was that this was unrelated to the trial. The response was that, no, it actually corroborated the core allegation in the Micfo case. Now you're misreading both OP and the response to my comment. ghostbrainalpha claimed that the OP says the CEO was the same as the customers that were allegedly committing crimes like spamming. The OP does not say this. >That doesn't make…

I'm sorry, you've completely lost me. The core allegation in the Micfo case is that the company fraudulently obtained 800k IP addresses from ARIN using fake companies. The author of this post corroborates handling large quantities of the the PTR record changes for these companies in exactly the manner described at trial. I mean, this is quite clearly related behavior.

And yet you're all like "I can't believe anyone thinks this is related!" based on the fact that some other stuff alleged (which seems reasonably credible to me, and also plausibly illegal if you infer some context) wasn't part of the trial. But... so what?

(Also: I don't understand why you're saying Child Endangerment isn't "actually illegal", it's literally a term of art in the field used in statutes all across the US! Obviously that's not proof of a crime here, but... no, you're wrong, "child endangerment" is an actual crime.)