Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 07:27:49 -0700

Max “Vision” Butler was an awkward kid from Ada County, Idaho. His path was crossed with violence, betrayals, hacking, and ultimately carding. Carding is the practice of creating fake credit and debit cards for malicious use, and few can say they did, in that field than Butler. His tale is one of extremes, working for law enforcement one day, but preemptively creating “self healing” viruses the next when his handlers were slow to respond. He would use stole credit card data, but then buy food and work tools for a down-on-their-luck family with it. While most moral compasses tend to give strong deference to the law, Butler did not. While aware the law existed and the consequences for violating it, he seems to have not allowed it to steer his course.

Carding on Whaliams Wall

Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground