RaidForum hacking site seized as founder arrested with six criminal counts

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The popular RaidForum hacking site, on which delinquents would share data collected from breaches, leaks, and scrapes has, as of yesterday, been taken down. It comes alongside news that the site's 21-year-old Portuguese founder has been arrested and charged with six criminal counts.

The site temporarily went down in February, sparking suspicions of a seize by authorities. It later appeared back online, only every page showed just the login page, and entering credentials only refreshed the page over and over, according to Hot Hardware.

Diogo Santos Coelho was found in Croydon, UK and identified as the site's founder and main administrator, known as 'Omnipotent.' Despite the name, he wasn't able to do much about his current predicament, and has now been charged with a count of Conspiracy to Commit Access Device Fraud, one count of Aggravated Identity Theft, along with four counts of Access Device Fraud.

He's even been accused of offering an "official middleman service" in order to facilitate illicit transactions, and of selling off his victims stolen data personally.

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Texts found on his mobile phone at that age, along with files and emails, linked him to the site, and to the Omnipotent handle. And when the kid tried to get his devices back, he used the same email address used to register two domain names for RaidForums to contact the lead FBI case agent.

Not the most forward thinking move, and one that's now landed Coelho with a pretty nasty stain on his criminal record. The moral of the story? Don't do hacks, kids.

Katie Wickens
Hardware Writer

Having been obsessed with game mechanics, computers and graphics for three decades, Katie took Game Art and Design up to Masters level at uni and has been writing about digital games, tabletop games and gaming technology for over five years since. She can be found facilitating board game design workshops and optimising everything in her path.