U.S. law enforcement arrested on March 15 a New Yorker believed to be a pompompurin, owner of the hacker forum BreachForums. According to court documents, he was charged with conspiring to induce individuals to sell unauthorized access devices on the dark web.
According to the FBI, at the time of his arrest, the defendant admitted that his real name was Conor Brian Fitzpatrick and that he was Pompompurin, the owner of the cybercrime forum BreachForums.
On March 16, Fitzpatrick was released on $300,000 bail. He will appear in District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on March 24. Pompompurin surrendered his paperwork and is now only allowed to travel within the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the Eastern District of Virginia. He is also prohibited from contacting witnesses, co-defendants or accomplices.
One of the administrators of BreachForums has already stated that the site will continue to operate as usual despite the Pompompurin situation. According to him, not only the site owner has full access to the site infrastructure, but other administrators as well.
Pompompurin was a well-known player in the cybercriminal underground, hacking into companies and leaking and selling stolen data through forums and social media. He was also a prominent member of the cybercrime forum RaidForums, seized by the FBI in 2022.
It was after the deactivation of RaidForums that Fitzpatrick created the BreachForums portal, which very quickly became the largest data breach forum of its kind. The portal is actively used by hackers and ransomware gangs to leak and sell stolen data.
It is unlikely that Pompompurin will "get off" with a suspended sentence, even if he actively cooperates with the investigation. The list of his crimes is very extensive, and all the evidence in one form or another is stored on the aforementioned hacker forums.