Top-Tier Mafia Arrested, Turns Out a 20-Year-Old

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia - Law enforcement officers have arrested four people suspected of involvement in criminal activities on the dark web marketplace BreachForums. Shockingly, the suspects are said to be around 20 years old.

BreachForums itself is known as one of the world’s most notorious cybercrime forums. Since 2022, the platform has been used by criminals to showcase data stolen in hacks and to recruit new members into the criminal network.

Within the forum, a variety of hacking tools are freely traded. Those tools are then used to breach target security systems, often causing substantial financial losses to victims.

Not only a place to share information, BreachForums also evolved into a dark marketplace for digital criminals. There, participants could conduct transactions of stolen data or hacking services.

BreachForums was closed in May 2024. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) said ShinyHunters, an alias of one of the suspects, ran the site from June until its closure.

The arrests were carried out by the Paris cybercrime brigade (BL2C) of the police from Hauts-de-Seine to Seine-Maritime on the northern coast. Additionally, arrests were also made on Réunion Island, located between Madagascar and Mauritius.

All those arrested were associated with aliases such as Hollow, Noct, Depressed, and ShinyHunters. In particular for the latter name, that individual is linked to attacks on Snowflake, Ticketmaster and AT&T.

Although they appeared to be individuals, cybersecurity analysts say ShinyHunters is a mafia-like criminal group. One member, Sebastien Raoult, a French national, had previously been arrested in the U.S., according to The Register, on Saturday (7/3/2026).

All suspects are accused of participating in group attacks on the retailer Boulanger, the government department France Travail, and the French Football Federation.

Earlier in February, law enforcement also arrested IntelBroker. In addition, another arrest involved an American named Conor Brian Fitzpatrick, also known as Pompompurin, a former BreachForums administrator.

Pompompurin was arrested in March 2023 and sentenced to 20 years with parole in January 2024. He had not yet served two years of house detention but had been granted internet access again.