It's not that risky. Most people over-estimate both the criminals and law enforcement. In general, the FBI aren't looking for you. Somebody has to lose a lot o

It's not that risky. Most people over-estimate both the criminals and law enforcement. In general, the FBI aren't looking for you. Somebody has to lose a lot of money and report you, or rat you out, or make up some bullshit about terrorism (like SWATing for black hats). It's also not hard to hide your connections from them. The people who get caught are ratted out by their friends and are very predictable. In terms of "crossing someone"... these are script kiddies who paid for some malware on a forum, or paid for someone to build them a botnet. Most takeovers happen via social engineering... these people aren't very smart. Even if a criminal gang wanted to track someone down, it would be pretty hard if you did the least amount of covering yourself and didn't tell anyone. But hackers can be lazy and have big mouths, so...