BreachForums broken up? French police arrest five members of notorious cybercrime site

Suspected high-ranking members of one of the world's largest online marketplaces for leaked data have been arrested by French police.

According to local media reports, French cybercrime cops detained four prominent members of the BreachForums site.

The suspects - who are said to go by the online handles of Depressed, Hollow, Noct, and Shiny Hunters - were arrested earlier this week by Franche's Cybercrime Brigade (BL2C).

A fifth suspect, a British national who used the online handle IntelBroker, was arrested in France in February according to a report by DataBreaches.net although not made public until now.

A US Department of Justice press release, has unsealed charges against this fifth suspect, naming him as 25-year-old Kai West.

The United States, which is seeking West's extradition, claims that between 2023 to 2025 he offered hacked data for sale on 41 occasions, and offered to help distribute hacked data for free 117 times. The US Department of Justice claims that West and his co-conspirators sought to collect at least two million dollars, and caused victim loses of at least US $25 million.

Meanwhile, French authorities have accused the arrested suspects of carrying out a spree of attack on French organisations, stealing data from the likes of telecoms firm SFR, the French football federation, and employment agency France Travail.

BreachForums, which openly operated as a marketplace for criminals to trade stolen login credentials, hacking tools, breached databases, and other illegal services, was seized by law enforcement agencies in May last year.

The seizure took place just days after a hacker offered for sale on the site data that they claimed to have stolen from a Europol web portal.

An earlier incarnation of the BreachForums website was seized by the authorities after the arrest of its creator and administrator, Conor Brian Fitzpatrick (also known as "pompompurin").

Fitzpatrick was later linked to the leak online of over 200,000 BreachForums members' personal information.

Investigators are thought to believe that the five men arrested in France are the same individuals who took over the running of BreachForums following the arrest of Fitzpatrick.

The most recent incarnation of BreachForums went offline in April 2025, after an alleged

BreachForums v2 went offline in April 2025 after announcing it had fallen victim to a zero-day vulnerability in its forum software.