Part 3 of Dave Thomas' story of working as a cybercriminal for the FBI story is up on Wired, Parts 2 and 3 of the Dave Thomas Cybercrook story are up on Wired. The excellent report by Kim Zeter, two years in the making, offers a fascinating insight into the world of identity thieves, credit card scammers, phishers and all sorts of electronic fraud. Follow along as Dave transitions from petty thief, to cyber-crime master under the name ""El Mariachi" and with a James Cagney online avatar, to informant on the noose for the feds.

Part 1: Shopping at the Dollar Tree could end up costing you a lot. Hundreds of California patrons of the discount store report having money jacked from their debit accounts, SmallWorldPodcast interviewed El Mariachi, a man who commits online fraud and identity theft. The interview reveals details about another scammer, Dillinger, who was involved with the ATM hacks of the ill-fabled "Russian Connection" scandal.

Allegedly, after the previous podcast broke out, Dillinger caught a lot of flack from his fellow thieves, as well as from blogs and sites like this. He also lapsed into drug abuse, principally meth. Paranoia overtook Dillinger. He started hallucinating, thinking that the neighbors were bugging his house. He called the cops to stop the imagined harassment. When the police arrived, they found drugs all around, as well as all his debit card smithing equipment. Now he's in jail on $800,000 bail as law enforcement is trying to make each debit card count as a separate charge.

El Mariachi also talks about the need to proactively secure your identity. He advises against posting your identity online, visiting porn or "illicit" sites, and using separate banking mechanisms for your offline vs. online transactions.

"If you're not willing to protect yourself from people like me, you will get screwed, " says El Mariachi. "It's not a question of if, it's when."

"• The street price of Cialis is on the rise. "You would think that after Chase goes through the trouble of reissuing new Visa debit cards to replace its MasterCards, they might also take the precaution of deactivating the old card when the new one is activated. Not so, Disappointed in NYC writes. When our reader tried to cancel Vonage, they wanted to charge a cancellation fee. He refused but they still charged his old Chase Mastercard. Chase CSR said the Vonage charge went through but nothing else would.

Is this a security issue? We think not. We just received our new gold WaMu Mastercard to replace the WaMu Visa, and the letter informed as that as a courtesy, they will let recurring payments and the like be charged for one month on the old card.

Are you reading, John Dillinger? This kind of annoying crap is the fallout from your supposedly victimless crime.

Disappointed's full letter, after the jump...

So Visa bribed Chase away from using MasterCard and the net result was that all the existing Chase debit cards have been replaced with these shiny gold cards with the Visa logo that look more important than they probably are. I activated mine yesterday - one assumes that since the new debit card with the brand new account number and expiration date are now in play, the old card would be no good. I even called Chase customer service to confirm that.
When cancelling my lousy Vonage service they tried to charge me the cancellation fee. I refused and they charged my Chase MasterCard, which I was reassured couldn't be used. Guess what? It went through! I had to call Chase who