A New York man accused of running the popular cybercrime forum BreachForums was arrested and charged last week. He is believed to be Pompompurin, an individual whose online moniker was mentioned in several high-profile hacking stories in the past years.
The suspect is 21-year-old Conor Brian Fitzpatrick of Peekskill, New York. According to court documents filed last week, he was arrested on March 15 on conspiracy to commit access device fraud (i.e. hacking) charges.
Testimony from an FBI agent revealed that when he was arrested, Fitzpatrick admitted using the Pompompurin moniker online and being the owner and administrator of BreachForums.
Bloomberg reported that Fitzpatrick was released on bail, with his next federal court appearance scheduled for March 24.
BreachForums, also known as Breached, was launched in 2022, just as the RaidForums cybercrime marketplace was taken down as part of a global law enforcement operation. Pompompurin created BreachForums as an alternative to RaidForums.
BreachForums was hosted on the surface web, with much of the information on the site being accessible to anyone.
At the time of writing, the website is inaccessible. Before it went offline, one of the forum’s other administrators posted a message saying that he had the access necessary to protect the site’s infrastructure and users. He claimed that he had restricted Pompompurin’s account to prevent unauthorized administrator actions and that he had been keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity.
Many BreachForums users expressed concerns that their information may have been obtained by law enforcement. Just before it was taken offline, the forum had more than 330,000 members, 47,000 threads, and nearly one million posts.
BreachForums was used in the past months to announce several high-profile cyberattacks, including the recent DC Health Link breach, which involved the sensitive personal data of members of the US House and Senate getting compromised.
As for Pompompurin, he often vouched for the data being sold on BreachForums and even offered data for sale himself.
In 2021, Pompompurin took credit for an attack where thousands of fake emails were sent from an FBI email address through the exploitation of a vulnerability in a law enforcement portal.
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