It is clear that the Telegram platform is occupying the Parisian justice system, from the company’s CEO to some of its lesser-known users. Coinciding with the judicial calendar, the day after the indictment of Pavel Durov, founder of the controversial application with 900 million users, two of its French users found themselves, on Thursday, August 29, in the dock of the 13th.my criminal chamber of the Paris judicial court.
Maxime L. and Mickaël M., barely thirty years old, are on trial for several crimes related to the theft of banking data and fraud. More precisely, the two partners are accused of having run three dubious Telegram groups around “carding”, i.e. the exploitation and resale of banking data.
An instructive case on how French justice can investigate small cybercrimes affecting Telegram. With its successes, such as the identification of the two accused. But also its difficulties, as demonstrated by its laborious judicial process: brought to court for the first time in December 2021, this case, which led to the identification of only seven victims, was only tried after numerous referrals and three summonses.
Open source research
The legal problems of Maxime L. and Mickaël M. began on November 19, 2020. That day, one of the brigade chiefs of the Central Office for the Fight against Information and Communication Technology Crime turns to the DFAS (Dark French Anti-System) forum to monitor. He discovers a new discussion thread on this French-speaking black market. A certain “ADN03M” promotes a Telegram group with the evocative name “Carding solidaire France”. The same internet user also reports the existence of a second Telegram group, “Carding shop France”. Two channels where a total of two hundred users exchange stolen bank details.
The investigation by the central office will be swift. Indeed, thanks to an open source investigation, the police discovered that an ADN03M already exists on a video game site. After an initial legal search, the investigators were sure they were on the right track and obtained an email address hosted on Gmail. A request from Google allowed them to obtain two phone numbers, those of the two accused: they were arrested in April 2021.
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