An international intelligence operation has shut down one of the world’s most notorious criminal websites where thousands of invited fraudsters traded stolen credit card details, PIN numbers and held tutorials in deception.

The online criminal community, based partly in Britain, bought and sold virtually anything so long as it was illegal in a black market worth millions of pounds. DarkMarket’s speciality was the buying and selling of fraudulently obtained personal details – one persistent customer purchased £250,000 pounds worth of stolen data in just six weeks.

Sixty people around the world were arrested in a series of coordinated swoops, including arrests this week by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) in Leicester, Manchester, Humberside, South Yorkshire and London.

One 19-year-old was arrested in North London by officers who burst into the teenager’s bedroom during a dawn raid and seized his computers, laptops, mobile phones and PDAs while his parents looked on.

Sharon Lemon, the Soca deputy director, said: “Darkmarket is a one-stop shop for the online criminal. You can go to the forum and engage in criminal activity quite freely. You can buy any product you want, you can sell any product you want.

“These aren’t geeks we’re talking about and they can vary. You can be the beginner who can go onto the site, get a tutorial and start your life of crime.

"Or you can get people who are fed up. [They think] Actually, Class A drugs are a bit hands-on, why do that when I can make hundreds of thousands online?"

The shadowy forum operated for three years at www.darkmarket.ws with undercover FBI agents tracking members since 2006. This week’s arrests in the UK, US, Germany and Turkey were the culmination of that two year investigation.

The website could be accessed by invitation only and allowed around 2,000 of the criminal elite to exchange techniques and tips as well as trading in illicit data.

The most valuable asset bought and sold on the forum was the stolen data held on the magnetic strips of corporate credit cards. Those owned by frequent business travellers can often be tapped for large sums of money in a wide range of countries without arousing suspicion.

Personal credit card details of an ordinary account holder were available for as little as £1 each.

Shawn Henry, assistant director of the FBI cyber division, said: “In today’s world of rapidly expanding technology, where cyber crimes are perpetrated instantly from anywhere in the world, law enforcement needs to be flexible and creative in our efforts to target these criminals.

“The arrests this week in the UK are a good demonstration of the coordination taking place today between the FBI, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), and other law enforcement agencies around the globe.”

The infiltration of the site by intelligence officers led to it being gradually wound up in recent weeks as it became apparent that the criminals could no longer operate with impunity. It was too late for around 60 fraudsters using this forum, but more are likely to spring up to replace it.

Lord Cyric, an administrator on the DarkMarket, suggested in an instant messenger interview with the technology website Wired that the death of this message board would not mark the end of an era.

"That's what is said about every big board that closes," he said. "That is, until the next one."

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