Well hello everyone. Seems like a lot has happened on the sub as of late and I have been demodded by the people in originally instated.
So I guess I'll tell you the story I am now allowed to tell, due to recent circumstances.
Back in January of 2014, I took over this sub as head mod. Through my hard work and dedication to the art of fake IDs, I have brought this once dead sub to a thriving, huge community.
That being said, nearly a year later, things were very different. News article had been made by some of the internet's biggest media sources about our little forum, and we came under the public eye. Soon after a lot of things began to change, for myself, and potentially other mods as well.
On December 31st, 2014, while at a New Years party, I received a message from Reddit admins that my account had been subpoena'd by some government organization, I forget which one and the message is way too long ago to check, for my IP address logs etc. This is where things started rolling.
About 3 weeks later, I called by the dean of students at my university to attend a meeting with him. I was advised to seek legal council.
So I went to the meeting, with just a friend of mine in law school, since I obviously can't afford a real lawyer. Inside were two agents and the dean. I was asked to take a seat and the agents introduced themselves as agents for the secret service and that they were investigating me and a few other entities for things from money laundering to bank fraud. One guy had hand cuffs in his back pocket. Obviously, I felt pretty safe since, well, I'm not guilty of doing that.
My legal council did some talking for me and yada yada, and the gist of it was that I needed to meet with one of the agents again at our city courthouse with police present because they claimed I was at high risk for fleeing the country. My friend countered that I obviously don't have the money to do such a thing, but they still were pretty deadset on me money laundering or whatever.
I was pretty nervous but obliged and went to the second meeting at the court house. Then it got a lot more interesting. I was greeted by a guy in pretty normal clothes, slacks and a button down and he lead me to an office where a police officer sat in front of and the agent with the cuffs in his pockets sat inside.
He offered me a drink which I turned down. In there, we sat in silence for about 5 minute before he spoke. He asked me if I knew anything about the construction of fake ids. To not lie, I said yes. I figured I may as well be honest and I'm not about to tell my parents that I need to get a lawyer. The questions go on and on, and he asks about /r/fakeid and about a couple of the vendors on it. Specifically people like Florida Fakes, RGF, and a few others. They didn't seem interested in non-domestic vendors. I told them I didn't have any information to give, which was true.
He then told me about the legality of moderating this forum. He talking about it's potential of "aiding and abetting criminal activities" and "conspiracy to commit fraud" and talking a lot about how things like accomplices work for resellers/group buy organizers. Obviously, I felt pretty threatened.
"Would you like to go to Prison, Mr. AVA?" he asked. I said no, I wouldn't want that. He said, well then you may want to help us.
So that's how I became a government informant.
Unfortunately, I wasn't very good at my job. Given the nature of this business, secrecy and OPSEC are extremely high. I didn't have much info to offer them, but they liked my position as head mod and the power I had. They were not interested in the other mods, from what I could tell.
A week went by and I gave them what info I could, which wasn't much. I was still so nervous, so nobody, even my best friend knew what was going on. I printed them out things and logs from what I could, just so I didn't see the inside of a prison cell. They seemed dissatisfied, I guess they thought vendors would just pour their personal information into my hands once they knew I was head mod of a subreddit. Idk, they seem pretty inept on internet communities.
So after this week had passed (this is around 2/11, if yall are wondering) I was called in yet again (literally at this point a secret service agent texts me and asks me about my day and shit and causally asks me to come see him, it was so weird) with a different task. They wanted me to figure out how to catch a big time vendor. They wanted Florida Fakes or RGF.
I told them it was probably close to impossible unless they fucked up big time. They told me about strategies they had used in the past to catch similar people, like those at FakePlastic.net. I listened but those tactics didn't really apply. FF or RGF wasn't lazy about their strategies.
After awhile in this meeting, it was a long one (they seriously had a powerpoint pulled up for me), I asked why they wanted RGF and FF. They said that they had information that both of them were helping people leave the country, like big name people (im talking big names here), to alter the stock market prices of businesses affected by CEO's and such leaving the country before stock prices crash. As such, they would (idk about stocks or anything) manipulate their money in the stock market and make of with huge amounts of money.
How they knew this, I will never know, they wouldn't tell me. But they did give me some "proof" I guess. It was 3 fake IDs. Colorado IDs, that I could tell by looking were definitely RGF, with the space an all. There was a guy who looked like he was in his late 30's, a woman who looked similar aged, and a girl who was clearly a teenager even though it was a O21 CO.
I asked who those people were and he said "Well the male is the current CEO of [I'm not gunna say because he hasn't fled the country yet LOL]. The rest are his family." He said they intercepted these IDs in the mail after a tip from someone, idk how. (I actually just google'd this company's stock price and its on it's way down rn haha)
Shocked, I asked how they felt about vendors that only sell to kids for alcohol purposes and they said they don't care whatsoever.
So after a few more talks, I was asked to figure out a way to find these guys and was let go for the evening. That night I was thinking about what they said and I hatched a plan.
I texted them the next day and met again, out lining my plan. I'll give you a TL;DR
1.	Gain access to their database.
2.	Find addresses of people purchasing IDs
3.	Intercept the package
4.	Track locations it was sent from
5.	Rinse and repeat
6.	Find patterns, common drop times, etc to catch someone in the act.
And it worked.
They hacked FF that night, apparently, and they started the process. Apparently FF was less than honest about shipping times, and had a "secret forum" where higher-up resellers could discuss with the admins behind FF and just bullshit around. They would give these resellers the actual ship times, while ship times posted to their website were completely made up. Not only that, they offered them tracking numbers, info, etc about the packages, even going so far as to include "tenure" gifts for resellers that sold thousands of IDs. The agent told me once that a reseller was gifted a new mac book in the shipment of IDs he recieved.
Eventually, they caught one of the resellers, who agreed to work with them as well and the plan went on.
I'm getting really bored of typing, so I'm just gunna let you finish they story. A few weeks ago, they lead on operation to catch two guys before the Florida fakes operation and it was successful, yada yada yada. I have no idea why it hasn't been in the news and I can't find any arrest records for fake ids, so maybe they just got caught on money fraud, idk.
My theory is that they were never fake id produces themselves and exclusively outsourced their shit to other people. Idk.
So a week ago, they said I was let of the hook and told me all my "charges" would not be filed and that I could live on as who I was before this mess. I actually got a lawyer with some of my money and made sure this actually went away, and he confirmed that it was all good.
So uh, yea, AMA I guess. I'll probably delete this post after a day, because while my lawyer says that none of the info I am posting is illegal to say (I didn't sign an NDA or anything like that) I don't want all this shit floating around.
Oh also, I never took bribes. Idk who said I did, but their wrong. Someone offered to buy the sub from me once and I was like yea, with the intents of scamming them, but it never happened so :/