The Tor Carding Forum (TCF) was a

Tor Tor, TOR or ToR may refer to: Places * Tor, Pallars, a village in Spain * Tor, former name of Sloviansk, Ukraine, a city * Mount Tor, Tasmania, Australia, an extinct volcano * Tor Bay, Devon, England * Tor River, Western New Guinea, Indonesia Sc ...

-based

forum Forum or The Forum (plural forums or fora) may refer to: Common uses * Forum (legal), designated space for public expression in the United States *Forum (Roman), open public space within a Roman city **Roman Forum, most famous example *Internet ...

specializing in the trade of stolen credit card details,

identity theft Identity theft occurs when someone uses another person's personal identifying information, like their name, identifying number, or credit card number, without their permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. The term ''identity theft'' was c ...

and currency counterfeiting. The site was founded by an individual known as 'Verto' who also founded the now defunct

Evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

darknet market. The site required $50 for registration. A 2013 investigation into counterfeit banknotes in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

led to a source of

Uganda }), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The sou ...

n fakes being identified as having been purchased via the Tor Carding Forums. By December 2014 Ryan Andrew Gustafson a.k.a. "Jack Farrel" and "Willy Clock", a US citizen living in Uganda was arrested for large scale sale of counterfeit

United States currency The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

by the U.S. Secret Service which was being sold through the Tor Carding Forums as well as other

crime forum A crime forum is a generic term for an Internet forum specialising in computer crime and Internet fraud activities such as hacking, Online Identity Theft, Phishing, Pharming, Malware Attacks or spamming. During the early days of the Internet publ ...

s. In December 2014 the site closed following a hack, directing users to Evolution's forums. In June 2015 a dark web researcher identified the clearnet IP address of a similar hidden service branded 'The Tor Carding Forum V2' which was subsequently shut down.

References

Internet forums Carding Crime forums Carding (fraud) Defunct darknet markets {{Tor-Network-Stub