I was on the run for four months, stole $600,000.
I was in Las Vegas, Nevada one day.
I had stolen the night before I had stolen 160 K out of ATMs.
Went in the next, the next morning I woke up signed on to cartersmarket.com,
which was ran by max butler, the ice man.
Um, and there's my name, us most wanted on it.
And, uh, that gets your attention.
It was my real name with us most wanted beside of it.
Nobody knew my real name in that environment at all, but then they did.
And it was talking about me being part of the secret service,
operation, anglerfish, everything else.
So of course they're all, they're all like, everybody's after you.
Oh yeah, we're going to get this son of a bitch.
The following is a conversation with Brett Johnson, a former cyber criminal who
built the first organized cyber crime community called shadow crew.
That is the precursor to today's dark net and dark net markets.
He's referred to by the United States secret service as quote,
the original internet godfather.
He has been the central figure in a cyber crime world for almost 20 years.
Placed on the U S most wanted list in 2006, before being convicted of 39
felonies for cyber crime, escaped from prison and then eventually being locked
up, served his time, and now is helping people understand and fight cyber crime.
This was a raw, honest, emotional, and real episode.
Brett has caused a lot of pain to a lot of people.
And yet his own story is full of trauma and pain and also redemption and love.
This is a good time to say that I have, and I will talk to people who have
served time in prison and perhaps people who currently are in prison.
I will try to do my best to both empathize with the person across from
me and not let them sugarcoat, explain away or dismiss the crimes they committed.
This is a tough line to walk because if you close your heart to the other person,
you'll never fully understand their mind and their story.
But if you open the heart too much, you can be manipulated to where the
conversation reveals nothing honest or real.
This requires skill and willingness to take the risk.
I don't know about the skill part, but I'd like to take the risk.
I always wear my heart on my sleeve.
If I get hurt for it, that's life.
As I've said, I want to understand what makes a person do these crimes,
the particular characteristics of their temporary or permanent madness,
their justifications, but also their humanity.
I believe each of us have the capacity to become both the criminal and the victim,
the predator and the prey.
It's up to us to avoid these paths or to find the path to redemption.
It's on each of us.
It's our responsibility and burden of being human in a complicated and dangerous world.
This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, dear friends, here's Brett Johnson.
You were convicted of 39 felonies for cybercrime placed on the US Most Wanted List
in 2006, escaped from prison.
You built the first organized cybercrime community called Shadow Crew.
That is the precursor to today's darknet and darknet markets.
And for all this, the US intelligence service called you the US intelligence
service called you the original internet godfather.
The first question, how did your career as a cybercrime criminal begin?
My life of crime begins when I'm 10 years old.
10 years old, man.
Think about that.
I mean, you were probably playing the robots when you were 10.
You know, usually kids are doing the Lego bit, getting involved with sports,
everything else.
And with me, it wasn't like that.
With me, I'm from Eastern Kentucky.
Eastern Kentucky is one of these, it's like parts of Texas, parts of Louisiana
that if you're not fortunate enough, have a job, you may be involved in a scam,
hustle, fraud, whatever you want to call it, man.
I was, my parents, my mom was basically the captain of the entire fraud industry.
So this is a, this is a woman that at one point she's stealing a 108,000
pound Caterpillar D9 bulldozer, tramming it down the road.
You know, at another point, she's taking a slip and falling to a convenient store,
trying to sue the owner.
We had a neighbor, she acted as a pimp for at one point.
That's my mom, my dad, wait, wait, the neighbor acted as a pimp.
My mom prostituted, I mean, she, she acted as a pimp for a neighbor.
Her name was Debbie and my mom used to sell her out.
You know, Debbie needed money and my mom would find men for her to sleep with
for cash and she'd take a part of the cash.
So Son is like, she diversified the methodologies by which she hustled.
Very bad, that entrepreneurial spirit.
Okay.
You know, we, we see that a lot with, with cyber criminals, you know,
that, that sense of being that entrepreneur.
So what was the motivation you think for her?
Is it, is it money?
Is it basically the, the rush of playing with the system or being able to,
um, know the rules and break the rules and get away with it?
My mom's a complex character.
She is.
There's no one single motivation.
So my mom was the individual, she's still alive.
My mom was the individual who tested people, but she wanted to know how far she
could abuse you and you come back and still love her.
So, and that was with every relationship she's ever had.
Um, she would cheat on the man she was involved with.
She would abuse the, uh, her children, me and Denise.
She would, uh, um, psychological, physical.
Oh, it was mental, emotional, physical, um, everything, everything.
I mean, she, uh, she used to beat me and Denise with, uh, with belt buckles, you know,
and that ended when, uh, she was, I forgot what we had done.
It wasn't much.
I think that, uh, um, it may have been the part where she, she accused me of
stealing her marijuana, but, uh, she was hitting me and Denise.
We were living in a single wide trailer at that point.
She was hitting me and Denise.
We were, we were on the bed trying to get away from it.
And Denise kicks her through a closet is what happens.
And, uh, Denise stands up and she said, uh, you're through hitting me.
And that was the last time that mom hit us at that point.
But, um,
So sorry to take us there.
You're, uh, for people who know you and people should definitely watch some of
your lectures online.
You're extremely charismatic and fun and, uh, jolly and whatever word you want to
use, but you know, if we look at that kind of life, it's, there's darkness there.
There's, uh, struggle there.
There's a lot of darkness.
So if you, if you, how did you feel if you go back to the mind of the kid you
were with your mom, was, um, was there sadness?
Was there things like depression, self-doubt, all those kinds of things?
Or did you see this crime, this chaos is ultimately exciting?
You know, I don't think, uh, back then I didn't do it as exciting.
Now it becomes exciting when I start being involved in cyber crime,
cyber crime, all right.
But back then it was simply a means to an end was all it was.
So you take a 10 year old kid and the way I get involved in crime,
is like I said, my, my mom was the fraudster.
My dad was, my dad was a good guy.
He just forgot he was this good guy and he was always, he always had these
principles, but his issue was, is he loved my mom so much.
He was scared of the, of her leaving.
So if she wanted to do something, commit crime, cheat on him, whatever, he
would pretty much just put up with it.
Um, the, the one instant.
So I mean, this woman used to, she used to bring men home and
bring men home in front of him, tell him that, Hey, I'm leaving you.
I don't love you anymore.
I want you to die, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
This was my mom.
Um, there were two instances where the man, where he can't take it anymore.
And the first instance, I was, I guess I was seven or eight, my sister,
Denise's a year younger than I am.
My dad actually files for divorce, files for divorce at that point.
My mom, um, kind of goes crazy.
Uh, my dad, I was with my dad.
My, my sister was with my mother because that's that Easter in Kentucky mentality.
You know, men stay with men, women stay with women.
So, um, he was filing for divorce.
Me and my dad, we were living in an apartment.
My mom was living with, uh, with her grandparents and with her parents
bouncing back and forth between the two.
And I remember I was sleeping in the bed.
We had a single wide bed.
My dad slept on the, on the sofa.
I woke up one night and there was some sort of ruckus.
There was some sort of ruckus in the living room.
So I wake up and I walk into the living room and my mom has a knife to my dad's throat.
And basically you're not going to steal my son from me.
My mom was this individual that when she knew she went so far, like I said,
she was always this person that tested, well, can I do this to you?
And you'll still come back.
She knew she was always also this person that if she went too far, she knew it.
And she would always try to divert that into something else.
All right.
So she knew at that point she'd went too far.
So what does she do?
She gets up crying, goes to the bathroom and pretends to slit her wrists so that
my dad Ray will respond to that, not respond to what she's just done to him.
That was my mom in a nutshell.
She had a history of doing this kind of stuff.
Motivations as far as fraud with her.
I think with her it was, she was an LPN, she had a very good nurse, but she didn't
want to work was a lot of it.
So with her, it was easier for her to commit fraud.
And when I say commit fraud, it was against businesses, against people.
I remember at one point she's buying over-the-counter capsules and emptying
the capsules out and putting some other crap in there and selling it at a speed
and people are buying it.
She did anything she could for money and of course, I get involved with that.
What happens is, we were in Panama City at that point and my mom leaves my dad.
And the way she left my dad, my great-grandfather had died.
My mom tells all three of us, hey, I'm taking the kids and we're going back
to Eastern Kentucky to attend the funeral.
Well, that was her leaving.
Me and Denise didn't know she didn't pack in any of our clothes at all.
She stows her clothes in the trunk of the car and she leaves my dad.
And I don't get to see my dad again for, I think, five, six years or something like that.
My mom, like I said, she used to bring men home in front of my dad.
She would sit there and cry and beg her not to do it.
She'd do it anyway.
When she leaves them, she kept up that.
So we were, we were living at my grandparents' house, my grandfather.
He had converted the house.
He had raised the house up and built apartments underneath of it.
So me and my sister and my mom lived in one of the apartments underneath.
And that whole side of the family was just nuts, was nuts.
My granddad, Paul, he would, this, this is a man that he didn't want you to eat
any of his food.
So, you know, there was no such thing as me and Denise going upstairs to eat.
If he found out me and Denise were, was taking a bath, we were allowed to bath
and bath in two inches of water one time a week because he didn't want to pay the
water bill.
There's rules.
There are rules.
You know, if you couldn't have the TV on, when he went to bed at night, you had
to have the television, the volume, you could watch it, but without volume.
Because if he heard it, he would, he would get up in the middle of the night and he
would kick the power breaker, turn off all the power on you.
This is my, this is my, the family, right?
So, my mom, she used to leave me and Denise at home for days, man, for days.
She'd go out and, you know, party and, I mean, sometimes she'd take me to Denise
with her.
We'd wait in the car.
Sometimes we'd wait in the living room as she went and partied and everything else.
Most of the time she left, left us at home and my entry into crime.
Denise walks in one day.
She's, she's nine years old, man.
She walks in one day and she's got a pack of pork chops in her hand and looked at her
and I said, where'd you get that?
And she's like, I stole it.
And, you know, it's like, show me how you did that.
So she takes me over and she shows me how she steals food, how she's stuffing it down
her pants.
So we start stealing food.
I'm like, hell yeah, let's do that shit.
So start stealing food and we get to the point where we're wanting a sandwich.
Well, you can't stuff a loaf of bread down your pants.
So there was a Kmart in the shopping center.
I go over to, to the Kmart, get a hoodie off the, off the rack, take the tags off of it,
wear it out, work just fine.
And the way you steal bread is you put the hoodie over your shoulder, stuff a loaf of
bread down the sleeve and you walk out with it.
So we started doing that.
How'd you figure that out?
Just thought pattern.
So you, so there's, there's like strategic thinking here.
Yeah.
You know, you can't wear the hoodie and put the bread down here because you might mash
the bread when you zip it up or they might notice.
Yeah, we have to think through that.
You got to think through it.
But, but you got to realize by, by this point, I'm, hell, I'm already seeing what my parents
are doing.
You know, I'm already seeing.
So that, so that kind of puzzle solving was something you already developed.
Oh yeah.
Because you're pretty young.
Yeah.
Ten years old, pretty young.
But, but seeing how they act, how they respond to things and, and my mom, I guess you could
call it a good thing.
She, they never kept any of that hidden from the kids.
Yeah.
You know, there was no, no discussions behind closed doors.
All that happened in front of everybody.
And from your young minds perspective, seeing that kind of crime, you basically, you know,
a lot of us kind of grow up thinking there's rules you're not supposed to break.
If you see other humans breaking those rules, then you realize those rules are just human
made.
But it gets worse than that.
I was in an environment where there were no decent people.
I didn't really meet my first decent person until I was 16 years old.
Who's that?
I was a high school teacher.
So what happens is, is, you know, we start shoplifting food.
My mom finds out that we've been stealing stuff and, you know, she joins us.
What's that?
She joins us.
Yeah.
She comes in.
You know, I've got the television.
I've got the Atari 2600 playing the hell out of it.
Oh my God.
She starts seeing this shit.
She's like, where'd this come from?
And I'm like, well, we found it.
She's like, you need to find that Denise.
Denise stands up.
We stole it.
My mom showed me how you did that and she gets her mom to, to join in.
And she used to run me and Denise as these little shoplifters.
We'd take, you know, we'd steal stuff for her.
We would distract security and her and my grandmother would steal stuff.
They got caught doing that.
But that's, that's the entry into crime.
And Denise, you know, I'm adamant and I, I kind of mean it.
But the truth is, I say, and I do, I do mean it that I'm responsible for my choices as
an adult.
All right.
I believe that when you're a child, you can't control that the adults in your environment
control what you do.
All right.
Once you're an adult though, your choices are yours.
Now that being said, there, there's some, you can't dismiss that childhood influencing
what I did as an adult.
You can't do that.
I mean, it was kind of written on, on slate that, hey, this guy's going to beat this guy
when he grows up.
That's like, sometimes that one person you meet, that decent person can turn the tide
into life.
Absolutely.
So what happens is, you know, the abuse, everything continues on.
When I'm 15, my dad was in, was in Panama City, Florida.
My mom was in, you know, we were in hazard, Kentucky.
She, she was dating this guy.
She, and my mom was this woman that the abuse would, it was, it was crazy abuse, man.
Just crazy stuff.
You, she would tell me and my sister, you know, that she gave up her life for us, that she
was going to leave one day and never come back, that we'd find her dead in a ditch someplace.
She'd go out and date these men and she'd come back and she'd talk about how these men
were abusing her.
You know, so she'd be dating this guy and she'd come back and then she'd, you know, start
talking about how he had tried to rape her, you know, trying to get me to respond to that.
And I would respond to that.
Make no doubt.
I would respond to that.
Well, what happens is, and I knew that, I don't know if I knew it was abuse at that
age.
All right.
But I knew things were fucked up.
And I was talking to my dad in Panama City and I really had it in my head that, that I
was going to go down and live with my dad and I called my dad one day.
I was set to go to, me and my cousins were going to go see a return of the Jedi that
had came out again in the theaters.
So I called my dad.
It was a Sunday.
I called my dad and he told me he had either gotten married or he was about to get married
to this woman.
And basically Brett Johnson wasn't going to go down to Florida, you know, I was going
to, I was going to stay in a hazard, I had to call my dad from payphone.
But the result of that was, I walked into a, into a hospital, got in an elevator and
a woman got in the elevator at the same time and I snapped and beat the hell out of her
right there.
And I was 15, didn't really know what the fuck happened, didn't really know, but just
anger came from someone.
Yeah.
And, you know, the elevator, beat the hell out of this lady.
Turned out she looked a shitload like my mom, but the elevator doors open.
One of the security guards, I played basketball with with his son.
So he saw me immediately, I knocked the hell out of him, took off running, made it back
to the house where my grand, grandparents were, they didn't know what had happened.
So I didn't say anything.
About an hour later, Kentucky State Police, they pull up in the front yard and two of
them get out and I'm sitting on the front porch and me and my cousins are and they start
walking up, everybody starts walking out of the house and I'm like, I just remember saying,
what do you want?
What do you want?
Well, you knew what they wanted.
They wanted to arrest Brett Johnson and then they arrested me.
I went in and I told them everything.
Spent three months in a county jail.
They didn't have juvenile facilities in that county.
So I spent three months in solitary, went to trial, pled guilty to assault the first degree.
The judge sentenced me to time served and a psychological evaluation where they sent
me to Louisville, Kentucky and spent 30 days up there and they cut me loose.
They wanted me to have counseling after that and never went to counseling.
You know, I wanted to but mom was like, don't need it.
So never went to counseling and I became this pariah in the county.
It's crazy man.
I mean, not a day goes by that I don't think about that, that moment in the elevator.
And what happens is, you know, you're 15, fuck man, you're 15.
So I go back to the high school that I was in and I'm this piece of shit.
So everybody, you're not the outcast.
Everybody knows.
So I move.
We move.
We were in Weizberg at that point.
I finished up the year there and moved to back to Perry County, which is where Hazard
is.
So we move there and they've got three high schools there.
They've got MC Napier.
They've got Hazard High School and they've got Dills Combs High School.
So I was within, me and Denise were within half mile of MC Napier.
Show up there the first day of school and I met me and my mom and my sister were walking
into the school and the kids won't let me in.
The kids stand out there.
He's not coming in.
So my mom starts raising hell and I'm like, no, let's just go.
Let's go.
So from there it was, we went down to the city school, Hazard.
And the principal tells my mom, Denise can come.
He can't.
So my mom wants to raise hell and I'm like, no, let's just take me to this other school.
So this other school was like 15 miles away and you know, country, country high school.
So I go there and they accept me and I walked in the first day and this English teacher
names Carol Combs.
I walked in and handed her the paper.
She was my homeroom teacher and she heard this voice as his way.
She explains it to me.
She heard this voice and she looks up and she was like, son, have you ever done any drama
before?
I'm like, no, ma'am, but I'm interested in the academic team.
I was this quick recall guy, right?
And she's like, no, she's like, drama, like, no, I'm not interested in theater.
I'm interested in academics.
She was the head of the drama department and head of the academics department.
So the deal was, tell you what, you can get on the academics team if you start with theater
too.
And I was like, okay.
So what happens is she was the only, she was the first decent person I met in my life
and she became this kind of surrogate mother to me.
So under her tutelage, I become the one of the top academic team guys in the state.
When I was captain of the team, I was just scourge across all the counties in that part
of Kentucky.
If we had a meet, it was like, Jesus Christ, that's Brett Johnson.
She used to tell people they would, the high school that I came from was Whitesburg and
the first time that Whitesburg came against us, she told me and I was talking to her about
a year ago and she told me, she's like, Brett, she said that first meet against Whitesburg
and she said, the captain came in, looked at you and said, oh, you've got that Johnson
boy on your team.
And she said, my response was that Johnson boy is our team.
So, but I did that and then with theater, I ended up my senior year, I won best actor
and actress in the state, only got to ever do that in the state.
So did pretty well, man.
Did pretty well.
Had scholarships coming out of high school and everything else and I'm the idiot that
turned them down.
That's a good, funny question.
You'd make a hell of a, I mean, of all the many things you could probably do, you'd
make a hell of an actor.
I'm very good on stage.
I'm very good on stage.
Have you acted professionally anywhere or not?
Not professionally.
We've done the college circuit and stuff like that.
What happened was is, so I turned down the, turned down the scholarships, you know, scared
of leaving, I guess it's what it was, starting community college and the community college
there hires a new theater director out of California.
Well, he knew the guy that ran the San Jose State Theater Program, got him Edward Emanuel
was his name, his claim to fame.
He had written the three ninjas movie.
Remember that the three little ninja kids back in the eighties?
He had written this damn film and it had made a shitload of money.
So he invites Ed Emanuel to come down and see the play and Ed had written this civil
war piece.
So we put that on.
I was doing like, it was a multiple role thing.
I was doing like 18 different roles in the show.
So Ed sees the show and he was like, scholarship.
He said, look, he said, right now you're a big fish in a small pond.
We'll make you a big fish in a big pond.
And I was like, deal.
I took the scholarship, man, and he was like, I'll be back in two weeks.
So he flies out two weeks later.
This guy flies back in, he drives down to where, where I'm living.
I'm out shooting ball with, with my cousins and friends.
He pulls up and he gets out of the car and I was like, I'm walking over to him.
I was like, Hey, man, I'll walk in.
You can meet my parents.
He's like, nah, I got it.
I was like, okay.
So I keep shooting ball.
He walks in the house, stays about 15 minutes, walks out.
White as a sheet, doesn't say a word to me, gets in the car, leaves.
I don't hear from him again.
Had no idea what went on.
It takes me a couple of weeks.
What happened is my mom, he walks in and introduces himself.
My mom pulls a knife on the guy.
I will kill you.
You are not going to steal my goddamn son from me.
Scares the guy to death.
He bugs out and kind of broke my spirit at that point.
You know, I was like, okay.
So went into just full fledged into scams, crimes, everything else.
I had already been, when I was a minor, I'd already been kind of brought up on that side
of the family with the crimes that they were doing.
My mom was, you know, drug trafficking, the pimp stuff, illegally mining coal, charity
fraud.
Illegally mining coal.
Yeah, wild petting coal.
So you can explain that.
To properly mine coal, you have to get a permit, all right?
Eastern Kentucky, a lot of people don't, they can't afford the permits.
You know, they can, they can get them a piece of equipment.
You know, you get a dozer or a loader or whatever you're going to get or an auger or what have
you.
So you start mining, but you don't get the permit.
So you don't have to find, do the, you don't have to pay.
Back then it was like $3,500 for a two acre permit or $5,000 for a two acre permit.
Once you strip behind the, the, the coal on that, then you have to pay for the reclamation
on top of that.
So once you uncover the pit, take the coal out, you have to cover back up the pit.
Sow grass, make sure everything is environmentally friendly.
Got a silt pond, everything else at that point.
So the whole idea is you buy an acre of land or some area of land and then you can, there's
a whole process you're supposed to go through to find.
Tire process.
How many people involved in a mining, the smallest number of people required for mining
operation?
You can do it through four people.
Okay.
So you've got your loader operator.
You've got your doger operator.
You need, you can, you can farm out the trucking to someone if you need that or trucking company,
if you need to do that, then you've got your, whoever owns the business as well.
So very few people can run an operation like that and profit fairly well as long as you
don't have to do the reclamation, all that crap on top of it.
All right.
The reclamation gets pretty expensive.
So if you're uncovering a pit of coal, you know, a pit, so a ton of coal is basically
about 36 cubic inches is what, what a 2,000 pounds of coal weighs if you're an Easter
Kentucky because it's that the weight of the bi-two minutes coal and everything.
The fact that you know this is awesome.
The fact that you know exactly the volume of a ton of coal, I mean, yeah, you learn
this shit, right?
Can you rattle this shit off?
So, so you uncover the pit and you've got to sell the pit.
Well, the thing is, is that where are you going to sell the coal?
Well, you sell it to one of these other coal tipples that knows that they're buying the
shit illegally.
So back then a ton of coal was, that'd give you like 36 bucks per ton is what that is.
And you'd have to go out and you'd, you'd test the BTUs on it, you'd take a sample
to the lab, test the BTUs, you'd take that into the company, British thermal unit.
So you'd test how, what the BTU on the coal was, how pure the coal is, how pure the coal
is, what, what, what BTU it burns at.
Back then a good, a good BTU was around 12, nine was what you'd get, all right?
So 12, nine coal, $36 a ton, you'd take that sample over to the, to the coal tipple.
They'd say, okay, we'll buy this for you, how many trucks you got or how many tons you
got.
And you say, this is what we've got.
Then you'd hire the trucking company.
And where you get it out, because, you know, you've got the agents that are, that are looking
for you by this point, because the people that, you know, you've, you've, you've bought
the rights to whoever the landowner is, you said you're going to give them, you know, $2
a ton or whatever this is.
Well, the other people there, are you paying them off?
Or are you not?
Well, if you're not paying them off, guess what?
They know your ass is mining it illegally.
They're going to report you.
Well, all of a sudden you've got all these inspectors that are coming around and everything
that, hey, we know what you're doing.
So they're looking for you to get the pit out.
So when do you get the pit out?
Right in dead of night.
So, you know, you're loaded up two o'clock in the morning, hauling this ass out is what
you're doing.
You sell it out from there.
So.
And your mom ran operations like this?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you said you worked the mine too?
Yeah.
You were younger?
Learned how to run a loader, run a dozer, learned how to clean off a pit, everything
like that.
So this is, this is the lifestyle you, you grow up in.
You know, you learn how to do this stuff and so knew how to do charity fraud as well, insurance
fraud.
So.
Charity fraud.
Can we, can we break down some of these?
Yeah, charity fraud, it's, it's much more romantic than what it sounds.
It was basically, it was basically standing beside the road with a sign and a bucket.
Taking up collections for homeless shelters, for abused women, for children, stuff like
that.
Um, then later on I branched off, I, when I started off on my own, I would set up my
own charity company and do some telemarketing and go on by and collect checks and things
like that.
I'm going to talk about that, but actually can we just step back and talk about your
mom and your dad, given all of that, given all the abuse, the complex ways that she
played with love, to see how far she can push you and the people around her and they still
love her today.
Do you love her?
You know, I, I called my dad yesterday, uh, my dad, he's, uh, he's dying now.
He's got a heart condition.
He's not going to get the operation to fix it.
So he's like, fuck it.
I'm ready to go.
And I'm like, I looked at it because hell, I'm 52 now and prior to 52, I'd have been
like, no, you need to do this.
But I looked at him and I was like, I understand, I understand.
You're done.
And, uh, so he's not going to get the operation.
I was talking to him yesterday and he asked me, he's like, have you, have you seen your
mom?
And I was like that.
I'm not talking to her for about two years.
And, uh, I told him, I was like, um, I love my mom, but my mom is not a good person.
She's not.
And, uh, he told me, I was talking to him on the phone yesterday and he told me that it
took him several years to really understand that, you know, he loved her too, but it takes,
when you're, when you're getting an abuse like that, especially my dad, my dad came
from a good family, everything else and, um, you know, upstanding family and, uh, I think
that when you're that victim of abuse, you know, you've never seen it before.
You've never encountered it.
And then it happens when you're like that frog and water all of a sudden, you know,
you get to the point where gradually increases until how do you get out of it?
Everybody else sees what's happening, but you don't, um, I grew up in that environment
though.
You know, so it took me a long time to, uh, to come to terms with that.
My sister came to terms with it long before I did, you know, my sister, she, she's been
a decade without talking to my mom, like she had tried to commit suicide.
I didn't know that.
What got me so bad is she said at one point that she always thought someone was going
to come in and save us and my response and just immediate response, not even thinking
about it.
My response was, well, Denise, I knew no one ever was.
And looking at things now, I think that's the, that's where our paths diverged.
Me it was, if you want to do it, if anybody's going to take care of you, you got to take
care of yourself.
You're on your own.
You know, it's up to you.
And Denise has always been that, that, that child that has expected someone to come in
and save her.
Well, and almost like it's all going to be okay.
Somebody.
Yeah.
And I knew it wasn't.
And now you go, unless you, unless you make it okay, it ain't going to be okay.
So, you know, I, are you able to forgive her, your mom?
My boundary with my mom, the reason I've not spoken with her over two years ago, I started
this, this legal career of mine.
I've been the guy who has, I spent a lot of time thinking about my past and those choices
and what brought, brought those choices around.
So I'm, I'm big about taking responsibility for my actions.
I truly am.
I think it's really important you have to do that.
Well, my mom, not so much.
So I was talking to her, you know, and I, I would start saying, you know, she was,
she would start the conversation talking about, she didn't understand why Denise wouldn't
speak to her anymore.
That was one of her tropes.
So in my response, started to become, well, because you were the abuser and you spent
your life doing that to her.
So it's more healthy for her not to talk to you.
So she's still not able to see the flaws in, in her ways of the past.
No, not at all.
So my, my ultimatum to my mom was, look, when you're able to admit that you abuse the people
in your life, accept that responsibility and be able to discuss it with me, we'll have
a talk.
Other than that, I don't want to talk to you anymore.
So for the first year, it was, you know, calling, cussing my wife out, cussing me out.
You know, I don't need you out of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then finally it started to taper off and she's never really contacted me after that
point.
Your dad is dying.
What do you take from the way he's taken on death?
Just saying, fuck it.
You know, it's the man.
And what have you learned from your dad?
What do you love about your dad?
He's one of these guys that, you know, like I told him, I told my dad about the, about
the abuse and everything else and there was a point.
So you know, I told you about the elevator stuff.
But before that, man, it was, it took me 40 years to talk about that, but it also took
me 40 years to, to talk about, there was a point that my mom and dad would leave the
house and I would urinate in the floor, all right?
And there's a, like out of anger, no, no idea why, all right, but I would piss on the carpet.
Carpet business like the little Bowsky, right?
It really tied the room together.
It really tied the room together.
I was talking about that and this lady comes up to me after the, after the presentation
and she had, she had a career previous to that where she dealt with abused kids and
she told me, she was like, Brett, she's like, it's a control mechanism.
The only control you had was that and she's like, kids do that.
And I was like, so I'm not unique.
She's like, no, you're not unique in that.
So that, you know, this whole history of abuse, Denise dealt with it by drinking, by trying
to commit suicide, things like that.
And then finally she escapes.
I'm the kid that didn't.
And not only that, my wife pointed out to me that it's again, it's that Eastern Kentucky
mentality stuff, you know, the males expected to do things.
So with, with me, it was, it was almost like I stepped up to, to take part in those crimes
so that Denise didn't, didn't have to.
And she, she was able to avoid all that other than that one shoplifting stuff, Denise doesn't
break the law anymore.
She goes off to be a, she's a, she's a good parent.
She's an angry parent.
She's a good parent.
She's a teacher, a good citizen overall.
I was just the guy that kept right on going with it.
kept on going.
So let me ask you about that.
So your life of cyber crime and describing some of the things you did or knew about,
you said, quote, I once stole several thousand dollars worth of coins from a family trying
to sell them to put a new roof on their home.
Another time I sent a counterfeit cashier's check to a victim and he ended up being arrested.
I trusted for it.
I lied to family, friends, everyone I knew I was a truly despicable person.
One of my Ukrainian associates script had someone who owed him money, kidnapped and
tortured.
He posted pictures of it online.
Another member, Iceman, used to flood his enemy's email addresses with child pornography,
then called the police on them.
That's some stories.
Can you tell some of these stories that stand out to you that are particularly despicable
or representative or interesting when you look back at that, that defined your approach
and who you were at that time?
Let me say that I did not care about my victim.
All right.
I cared about me is what I cared about.
It's rough to admit that.
You don't give a shit what you're doing anybody else, you don't care about you, but that's
the truth of the matter.
I didn't care about the victims.
The lady, that wasn't even at the beginning of my career as a cyber criminal.
That was right at the last of it.
Which lady?
The coin lady.
I was, by that point, Shadow Crew had made the front cover of Forbes, August of 04, October
2006 of 04, Secret Service had shut us down, 33 people arrested, six countries in six hours.
I was the guy that was publicly mentioned as getting away.
What happened was is I was the guy who was, I had kind of invented this crime called tax
return identity theft and was stealing a lot of money.
I went through all my state-side savings and Shadow Crew gets shut down.
I don't have any way to come in with any money.
So I start running counterfeit cashiers checks, defrauding people with that, having them send
products or bullion collections, what have you, by COD, collect on delivery and I would
pay with it with a counterfeit cashiers check.
This lady was on eBay.
She had been collecting these silver coins all of her life, you know, the US currency
used to be, the coins used to be silver.
So she had a whole collection of these things, like I don't know, 80, 90 pounds of this stuff.
And I'm a very good social engineer.
So convinced her that I was a legitimate person that, you know, hey, send it to COD.
You can use my FedEx account to do that, or my UPS account to do that.
I'll pay with a cashiers check, you can take it in, same as cash.
She believed that.
She was even on the ad and we talked on the phone or everything else.
She had told me that she would, she was a single parent and it was the only money that
she had to put a roof on the house for her and her kids.
But I didn't give a damn.
I didn't give a damn.
What was more important was me at that point.
Can I ask you a question about the social engineering aspect?
So maybe specifics like the methodology, email, you said phone, maybe you could discuss this
process from a bigger philosophical perspective of what is it about human beings that makes
impossible to be social engineer, to be victims of fraud.
So first let me say that I became a social engineer as a child, all right, because the
adults in my environment as a child, I had to know exactly what they were thinking and
be able to try to manipulate that for survival.
So I became a social engineer for survival initially, all right.
And one of the things that I've seen with a lot of cyber criminals is the exact same
thing, the really expert ones.
They become a social engineer as a child, then later on they use those tools to victimize
others, all right.
Which is fascinating because you're, in order to understand what others are thinking, you
have to be extremely good at empathy.
So you have to like really put yourself in the shoes of the other person, and yet in
order to do cyber crime, you have to not care about the pain that might cause them once
you manipulate them.
So you have to empathize and yet not care.
Exactly.
And I would argue, I would argue that that is not a sociopath because a cyber criminal,
and I was no different, most cyber criminals justify those actions.
So the justification becomes what's important.
With me, the justification was why I did it for my family, did it for my wife, did it
for my stripper girlfriend.
So and I believe those just because I care about love a lot.
So the big picture of that is trust.
How do you establish trust with a potential victim, all right?
Now I would argue online that that trust is established through a combination of technology,
tools, social engineering, all right.
So we trust our tech, you know, we trust our cell phones, we trust our laptops.
A lot of times we don't understand how they operate, but we trust the news that comes
across the line.
We trust the phone numbers that show up.
We trust IP addresses if we're advanced enough to look at an IP address or a domain or anything
else like that.
Criminals use tools to manipulate that, spoofed phone numbers, spoofed browser fingerprints,
whatever that may be, whatever the tool may be.
Then that lays a base level of trust.
At that point, you shoot in with the social engineering and lay whatever story that is
in order to manipulate that victim to act not out of reason, but out of a motion all
of a sudden.
This is fascinating about the way humans interact with the world, which is you're almost too
afraid to not trust the world.
You have to find a balance.
Right.
You have a lot of conspiracy theories now about distrusting institutions and thinking
like everything around us.
It's like, I've been listening to people who believe the earth is flat and, you know,
that conspiracy theory is fascinating to me because it basically says that you can't
trust anybody, like everything you hear is a lie.
That's one, you can live that life or you can live a life where you're just naively trusting
everything and we assume it's have to, because that life is full of happiness if nobody screws
you over because you meet people with the joyful heart and you get excited and all that
kind of stuff, but if you do that too much, you're going to get burned.
So you have to find some kind of balance in terms of optimizing happiness where you trust,
I mean, but verify and on the internet that becomes really tricky.
You're almost too afraid to distrust everything because you'll never get anything done on
the internet, but then if you trust too much, you can get screwed over.
And so the social engineering comes in where you're like, I'm not sure if I should trust
this, you kind of help them build the narrative was like, it's good.
It's good.
It's good.
So in a lot of the times that social engineering is just feeding into what the victim wants
to believe.
Yeah.
All right.
It's not really coming up with a brand new story at all.
It's just knowing what that victim is, what the motivations of that victim is, feeding
into it at that point.
So you have to, again, that social engineer has to almost immediately know what's driving
that person that they're talking about.
If I'm so, if I'm working on a phone, talking to someone over the phone, I have to know
within seconds what I need to say, how I need to act to interact with that customer service
agent or whoever I'm talking to on the other end of the line.
So fascinating because you truly are empathizing with the other person.
Absolutely.
Who is it?
This business man, Stephen Schwarzman, I've talked to a few times, he mentioned this
thing that, the way you build deep relationships is you really kind of notice the things that
people are telling you, like what they want and what they're bothered by, what are their
big problems in their lives.
Because everybody's saying that all the time and most of us are just ignoring it.
Right.
But if you take the time to listen, you know somebody at that point.
Absolutely you do.
Then you have to be able to dismiss it.
You dismiss it after.
You know, you're looking for that just to see how I can manipulate that is what you're
trying to do.
So the lady was one story, another truly despicable story.
We'll get to script in a second.
But another truly despicable story, we had, we were one of the really first groups that
started phishing attacks.
What's phishing?
So that is a social engineering attack.
PH, by the way.
Yeah, PH.
That's another social engineering attack.
It's sending that fake email out that looks like it's coming from a website or your financial
organization or whatever and saying, Hey, we've got a security problem.
We need you to update your account information.
Well, back then no one had ever seen a phishing attack.
So you could ask for all the information.
You were getting just complete identity profiles on a phishing email.
Nowadays you can't do that.
Nowadays you look for basically credentials because everyone is aware of phishing.
But back then it was complete information.
We had phished out, I don't know, 200,000 e-trade accounts.
That's what we had the login.
Login password.
Yeah.
Login password, complete, you know, social, date of birth, mother's maiden, account information,
everything else.
So we had access to those e-trade accounts, e-trade initially had no security in place.
So you could cash out the account, ACH the money out to whoever, to whatever account
you wanted to went through just fine.
Ain't I'm alive on that for four to six months.
E-trade got to the point where they, you couldn't do any ACH coming out, you know, they locked
everything down.
Well, you're still sitting on thousands of e-trade accounts.
How do you make money on that?
Hmm.
That's a good question.
Yeah.
So what you do is you find some fat cat that's got his retirement, you know, invested in
blue chips.
At the same time, you find a penny stock, you open up a brand new account, buy into that
penny stock, cash the fat cat out, buy into that same penny stock, pump and dump schemes
all of a sudden.
So you're destroying people's retirement accounts for just a few thousand dollars.
Bam, bam, bam.
And of course, e-trades response is not our problem.
It's your problem.
You shouldn't give up your password or what have you at that point.
And you still see that issue today with Zell scams and things like that.
Which scam?
No.
So, you know, the instant payment that...
Oh, so it's the same kind of operation.
Same type of...
Same type of difference.
With the same payment mechanism.
You find an easy way to exploit a system.
And typically the financial organization, not our problem.
Our system's secure.
It's the humans.
It's their errors.
Well, not really.
You know, you've got some culpability in that and you're just trying to avoid paying
the part of the bill is what's going on.
One of the things just to stand fishing for a bit is it really makes me sad because there's
been people on all kinds of platforms like including YouTube comments, but emails too.
They figured out emails somehow.
So people are now seeing the followers of this particular podcast where fans, they're
finding them on platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube and so on.
And they are figuring out ways to get to those people by another channel.
Which I suppose is, it seems more authentic to those people.
So they send them an email from what looks like me and with this kind, like loving...
The interesting thing, the email sound like something I would write.
So these aren't even...
At this stage, it's not even...
It doesn't feel automated.
Or if it's automated, there's a human in the loop that's really fine-tuning to a specific
...
Or maybe I'm very predictable, but it's very loving in the way I would write that message.
So think about that.
All right?
So when fishing first comes out, you could look at the language of the text or the website
and say, yeah, if you were paying attention to that, that's so okay.
So that's not an English speaker who wrote that typically, all right?
But as time has went on, as the awareness of what a fishing attack looks like, we have
people that are sitting down now and making sure that the language is proper.
It gets worse than that though.
If you look at business email compromise, all right?
So the way a business email compromise typically works is the attacker will find a payroll
person, find a CEO.
He will fashion a spearfishing email, which is that's a fishing attack that's targeting
one specific individual, all right?
So he'll fashion a spearfishing email.
And the way he does that is he pulls all the information he possibly can on that person,
all right, that CEO.
Maybe he'll spear that CEO just to get their login credentials to their email, just to
read the emails.
And he'll go in there and he'll start reading all these emails.
He'll specifically read the emails to the payroll department, see what that relationship
is.
Are they talking about their kids?
Talking about relationships?
Talking about vacation?
Talking about how are they talking?
Are they friendly?
Are they sterile?
What are they doing?
All right.
So then he decides, well, I'm going to go ahead and spearfish the payroll department as
well.
So then he spearfishes them, gets those credentials.
At the same time, he creates a Unicode domain in whatever the company name is, all right?
So instead of that English alphabet I, he's got that Russian letter that looks like an
I, but without the dot on top, all right?
Goes back into the email, into the payroll email, blocks the real CEO's email, replaces
that with the Unicode email that he's got, and then sends out a message using the correct
language, the correct relationships, everything else and says, hey, you know, we're updating
our account status.
I need you to send this payment instead of over here.
They've set up a new account, send all payments over here now.
And that is business email compromise and a nutshell, all right?
Works great.
The larger the organization, the more susceptible to that kind of attack because there's a,
like a distribution of responsibility to where you're more likely to believe that, okay,
this other person is responsible, I'm sure they, they secured everything.
Absolutely.
I'm okay listening to this.
So that's business email compromise.
And it's, it, those crimes, and it's one of the things you see about cybercrimes, cybercrime
is not really sophisticated.
It's not.
The attacks are not sophisticated.
The stat is 90% of every single attack uses a known exploit.
It's not the stuff, it's not zero day attacks.
They're out there, but if you're a criminal waiting on a zero day to profit, you're going
to starve to death.
The meat and potatoes are at 90%, known exploits.
And the rest is, well, you're saying it's, maybe you mean it's not technically sophisticated,
but it's social engineering sophisticated.
Very sophisticated on that end.
Very sophisticated.
Fascinating study of.
That, that establishment of trust and then using that trust to defraud that victim.
That is something.
I wish, obviously all of these folks are really good at hiding.
I wish you could tell their stories in the way, which is why you're fascinating is you're
able to tell these stories now because it is studying human nature by exploiting it.
But you get to understand like our weak points, our hope, our desire to trust others.
Also sort of the weak points and the failures of digital systems and at scale humans have
to connect.
Right.
It's fascinating.
It's a weird question, asking for a friend.
Is spearfishing itself illegal?
What's the legality here?
Oh, it's all illegal.
Absolutely.
It is.
Is it absolute?
So here's what, okay.
Let me, let me construct an example.
So if my friend were to spearfish like a CEO, right, and get their information and after
they get control, save their Twitter account, they tweet something loving and positive.
What's the crime?
Unauthorized access of advice.
What will be the punishment?
What do you think?
That becomes questionable.
So, so no monetary loss or was there a monetary loss?
Probably not.
All right.
So you have to figure out who the victim is before charges are pressed.
Now the crime would be unauthorized access, all right.
But no real victim on that unless, you know, the, the person whose account you took over
takes, you know, exception to that.
No monetary loss.
So there's not really standard like fines probably because when I have it, right, right.
So I mean that, that's kind of interesting because it's, so when I got the ransomware,
when I got with the zero day attack on the QNAP mask, you know, they, they basically
say the, the criminal is QNAP, the company for having so many security vulnerabilities.
They're like, you are the victim of QNAP's incompetence.
That's the way they kind of phrase it.
And see, I don't agree with that.
I don't agree with that at all.
So SolarWinds.
So I've got a 130 page class action lawsuit printed out at the house.
I've been going through it.
That catalogs how SolarWinds lied for years about their vulnerabilities and they lied
to investors, the people who came in, the auditors would, they would hire, would, you
know, they would not pay attention to them when they said, you know, you've got these
issues, they would say, go away, shit like that for years until SolarWinds, you know,
the attacks become apparent.
My view on that is that the only person responsible for the crime are the criminals who did the
attacking, the actual criminals, not, not SolarWinds.
Now, does that mean that SolarWinds isn't, isn't all fucked up?
They are.
And there needs to be some accounting in place.
But the, the, the only individual, the only people responsible for crime are the criminals.
And that's either online in the physical world, what have you.
You could be, it's, being an idiot is not a crime, you know, being, being, being criminally
negligent is, and I think that, that SolarWinds is certainly responsible, not, not responsible.
They're culpable for what happened.
Can you actually tell folks about SolarWinds?
What is it?
What, what, what was, what are some interesting things that you're aware of?
SolarWinds was very, it was, it, it provided a backbone of security for hundreds, thousands
of different companies.
If you looked at a lot of security companies were using SolarWinds, that would, that would
allow you to get a snapshot of the entire system that they were working on.
So what happens is, is you get a Russian group that comes in and they basically, they hack
into SolarWinds and get access to it and it allows them to view every single thing.
I mean, every single thing about every single client that SolarWinds had at that point.
So entire snapshots of all the IP that were, that was going on, all the emails, all the
communications, every single secret that was going on with those companies.
If a company had software like Microsoft, it allowed them to look at the source code
of everything that was going on.
I mean, it's just a complete and total nightmare, all right?
It's something that you are not going to recover from.
You're not.
I mean, it's done at that point.
You know, there's not been a lot of news lately about it.
But the fact of the matter is, is that's the type of attack that's a catastrophic attack.
So there's a huge amount of information that was read, saved elsewhere probably.
And so now there's people sitting on information.
Absolutely.
I think about one of the attack vectors has been Microsoft Outlook 365, things like that.
This allowed the attackers to look at the source codes of that.
So they have the source code now.
So they go through it line by line, or other vulnerabilities, let's find new vulnerabilities,
new zero days.
You know, I said zero days aren't common, but this opens up an entire new threat surface
all of a sudden.
So it's a completely catastrophic attack.
Once all the chips are down, everything's tallied up, people are going to be like, yeah,
we're done.
Yeah.
All right, this whole computer thing, we're trying it, we're walking away.
We're done.
That's terrifying.
So you're saying that there's not been obvious, big negative impact from that yet.
So, but like-
I mean, there's been a lot of negative impact, but we're just starting.
Right.
So the capacity for destruction is huge here.
How much involvement from nation states do you think there is on this?
You know, it's interesting.
So you've got Iran, you've got North Korea, China, Russia, you've got the big four.
You also got Brazil.
You've got all these other countries that are interested in the United States as well.
Nation states are interesting depending on who the nation state is.
All right.
So Russia is very good about working with the type of criminal that I used to be.
You know, they'll enlist these guys and steal information or what have you, then Russia
will take the information they want to, and they'll basically go off and sell whatever
you want to and make some money.
China is all about IP.
North Korea is about stealing money because they really don't know what the hell else
to do right now.
But-
So North Korea is actively involved in cybercrime?
Absolutely.
They've stolen a shitload of Bitcoin and everything else.
So absolutely they're actively involved with that.
Very skilled attackers, very skilled.
But even if you look at, you know, I told you that stat about 90%, all right?
So even though SolarWinds is going to be the number one attack, the follow-up to that
is this not-pedia attack that happened.
And so that was the most sophisticated attack launched by the Russian Sandworm Group using
all known exploits throughout.
So it's not, again, it's not, you're right in the sophistication is typically not technical
sophistication, but it's a social engineering sophistication.
How do you get these things put together in line to attack and succeed?
But when you get access to the source code, that's where technical sophistication could
really do a lot of damage.
And that's when you find out real quick, that's what separates the men from the boys in this
game, all right?
Because all of a sudden it's not, I don't have to worry about social engineering.
I've got source codes and I've got professionals that are looking at that and that's your ass.
Which then enables probably even more powerful social engineering methods too.
I mean, it's just the cascade of, is this terrifying to you, by the way, that this world
that we're living in, as we put more and more of ourselves on the internet, into the metaverse,
that there's so many more attack vectors on our well-being.
What's terrifying to me, I used to preach it on Shadow Crew, is the idea that the perception
of truth is more important than the truth itself.
It doesn't matter what the facts are, it matters what I can convince you of.
That's what's terrifying to me.
So you look at deep fakes, you look at fake news, all the stuff that's going out, that
becomes truly terrifying.
Maybe there's an angle where it's freeing, if nothing is true and you can't trust anything.
But you see, we as human beings, we want to trust.
We do, we need human interaction and for that human interaction, you have to have a degree
of trust.
But it's more like you let go of an idea of absolute truth and it more becomes like
a blockchain style consensus.
So you let go of like, you know what, there's this human dream, you get this on the internet,
you get like facts as if there's at the bottom, at the bottom, there's one turtle that's holding
this like scroll that says, these are the truths of the world.
The problem is, I mean, maybe believing that is counterproductive.
Maybe human civilization is an ongoing process of consensus.
And so it's always going to be, everything is shrouded and you can call them lies or
you can call them inaccuracies or you can call them delusions.
It's constantly going to be, it's going to be a sea of lies and delusions.
But our hope is to over time develop bigger and bigger islands of consensus that allows
us to live a stable and happy society.
Don't call it true.
Call it a stable consensus that creates a high quality of life for the inhabitants of
the island.
I like it.
I mean, I like it.
We're going to agree on this.
And then don't use Outlook.
No, I'm just kidding.
So maybe a step back, you mentioned, I'd love to talk about Shadow Crew.
Maybe this is the right time to actually, yeah, let's go to Shadow Crew because it's
such a fascinating story.
So tell me the story of building Shadow Crew, the precursor to today's dark net and dark
net markets.
This is why you're the original godfather.
This is it.
This is it.
So I get married.
I faked a car accident to get married, got the money from that.
You're romantic.
I'm romantic.
It's like my dad, man.
I'm the guy that, you know, I get, from mom, I get the criminal mindset.
From dad, I get that, don't want him to leave.
So, you know, so.
To get married.
I met this girl.
What's that story?
That's dude.
I was, how did you fall in love there?
My first girlfriend was a preacher's daughter.
And crazy over her dated her for five years and she figured out pretty quickly that, well,
not quickly.
It took her five years to figure out that Brett Johnson is not the man of God.
You know, I, I could, I could talk it, but you know, more of that agnostic than anything.
She breaks up with me.
So I was, I was at the community college.
You'd make one hell of a preacher by the best.
Yeah.
But, you know, I've got that Langston Hughes problem.
You know, I'm looking for Jesus to show up and he just doesn't.
So I was, I was at the community college and I was, I was a straight asshole.
I was arrogant, conceited, everything else.
And I had posted an advertisement on one of the billboards looking for an adult babysitter
hot blonde, you know, come, come visit me in the library.
Buddymind shows up and he's like, Brett, I was like, yeah, he's like hottest girl in
the school right down the hall.
And I was like, serious?
He's like, yeah.
And I was like, let's go see.
Walk over and there's, there's these two guys that are hitting on her.
So I'm, I just walk up and me and Todd, that was my buddy, walk up and I'm just sitting
there and listening and they're, you know, they're giving the spill and everything.
And she's just kind of taking it in.
Finally, I looked over and I was like, you want to get out of here.
And one of the guys looks at me and he's like, Hey, we're talking to her.
And I was like, well, you're talking at her.
You're not talking to her.
I'm about to save her ass from you.
Yeah.
This is a smooth pickup line, by the way.
If I ever heard one, that's good.
You want to get out of here?
So start dating and she was the girl that screwed my brains out.
And I felt, I had over heels.
We got married six months later.
Six months.
That's what love does.
That's what it does.
And I had, I was, she didn't know I was a crook.
She had no idea.
You know, she knew I was very bright.
She knew I did a lot of theater, stuff like that.
Got a job at, I was in hazard.
There was no jobs to be had.
So I got a job in Lexington because we were going to be moving to, to UK.
Got a job in Lexington at Lexmark testing printer boards, circuit boards.
So I would leave on a Thursday night, work three 18 hour shifts at Lexmark, come back
home on Monday, got married, faked a car accident to get that, the other, the rest of the money
that I needed to, to get married.
And the, the faking on that man, I had bought a Chevy Spectrum at a car auction, gave like
500 bucks for it.
My aunt had previously defrauded USA insurance on a car accident.
And she was telling me all about, she's like, look, go down to this chiropractor, make sure
you get the insurance where they'll pay for a rental car, they'll pay lost wages.
And I was like, they pay lost wages?
She's like, yeah, they pay lost wages.
I was like, hmm.
She's like, by the way, you work for me.
And I was like, I work for you.
So, so.
And you get to define the, with the wage and you can also define how long you are unable
to work.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And the chiropractor will sign off on any damn thing.
All right.
So, my cousin Ronnie, he figures out that I'm going, he finds out I'm going to fake this
car accident.
And he comes to me and he's like, hey, man, can I get in on that?
I was like, yeah, man, you get on that.
So this kid, he's five days younger than I am.
This kid, he goes to the dentist the day that we're faking it, has a tooth pulled, tells
the dentist not to numb it, not to stitch it, just pull it.
So he shows up, he shows up the day that we're driving out to fake the accident.
He's got blood all over his shirt.
He's still bleeding out of the mouth and everything else.
I'm like, are you okay?
And he's like, yeah, man, it's going to be good.
It's going to be good.
I'm like, okay.
So my mom, by this point, I'm living with my grandparents.
My mom is up in the head of a hollow.
So we're like, we'll just do it up there.
It will go back like we're visiting my mom on the way back out, ran over a mountain.
Okay.
So we go visit and everything, come back out that night, run over the side of the hill,
me and Ronnie walk back up.
Of course it totals the car, walk back to my mom's acting like we've wrecked.
She knows what time it is and everything else and follow the claims.
So that gets the money to, uh, to get married and me and my wife move from hazard to Lexington.
And I'm the kid that, uh, my crime, usually if I was a single guy, wouldn't break the
law.
What?
And I would be all right, you know, but females involved, oh yeah, oh yeah, I got to spend
the money.
Got to show them gifts.
Everything else was never enough to show loved in some sort of healthy way.
Always had to go overboard.
Typically it was buying some or stealing some sort of expensive crap.
So that was the thing, that was the way you show love is by buying expensive gifts.
Right.
Or something overboard.
Back then with, with Susan initially, it was, don't worry about working.
I got it.
You just worry about going to school.
She was a music major.
I was like, you just worry about going to school.
So don't worry about cooking and cleaning.
I got it.
I got it.
So not only was I this, this guy that was going overboard, but it's kind of a control
freak too.
Right.
So now I got it.
I got it.
I got it.
So here I am, you know, 60 hour a week job, 18 hour class load, cooking and cleaning.
Something had to give.
I quit the job.
I couldn't do it.
Quit the job and start back in fraud and trying to hide that from her at the same time.
So it was initially telemarketing fraud started.
I was working at the first job I had was a telemarketer at a cemetery selling grave sites.
And then that ended, went over to work for the Shriners circus Shriners hospital.
And there was a third party company that was doing all the telemarketing made really good
money doing that.
That job ended and then they pivoted over to working with Kiwanis clubs, selling food
baskets to the food banks and everything.
So I stole the phone list and started at my own Kiwanis club and would do the telemarketing
go out twice a week and pick up checks.
Well, what happened was is I'm going out picking up checks, go knock on a door.
Turns out one of the persons that I had called was a law enforcement officer.
So he was like, who are you?
I'm like, I'm with the Kiwanis club.
He's like, no, you're not.
So got arrested, spent three months in a county jail for theft by deception, got out and we
had to move from, from Lexington back to hazard and live with Susan's parents.
They had gotten a desktop computer HP and I started surfing around online, found eBay
and didn't really know how to make money on eBay.
About the same time, I'm committing low level frauds online and I don't really talk about
that in the past.
The first time I've really talked about that, but I would pay for it with bad checks.
So some more person, so not using a platform like eBay and more.
I would find somebody that had like a stereo system on eBay, something like that and I'd
pay for it with bad check and would rely on them not to chase me because they were out
of state at that point and the dollar amounts were very low.
So got the money to move to finally did those schemes enough to get the money to move back
to Lexington, got to Lexington and by this point, I'm doing these, like I said, these
schemes on eBay and I'm like, there's got to be a better way to make money on eBay.
Got to be.
So didn't really know how one night I'm watching Inside Edition with Bill Riley and their
profiling Beanie Babies.
So I'm sitting there watching the one they're profiling is this one called Peanut the Royal
Blue Elephant selling for $1,500 on eBay.
I'm sitting there going like, shit, I need to find me a peanut.
So my initial thought was, well, there's got to be one in one of these Hallmark stores
in Kentucky someplace.
So I skipped class the next day went out around all the Hallmark stores looking for peanut.
No idiot.
He's on eBay for $1,500.
So after a few hours of that, I'm like, hmm, turns out they had a little gray Beanie Baby
Elephants for $8, picked up one of those for $8, stopped by Kroger on the way home, picked
up a pack of blue, red dye, went home, tried to dye the little guy.
So that was a nightmare.
Turns out they're made out of polyester.
Get them out of the bath.
Looks like they've got the mange.
And what happens is I saw, I'm trying to die the damn thing and I'm like, well, that's
not going to work.
That's just not going to work.
So I got online, found a picture of a real one posted it on eBay and I was like, well,
what I can do is I can claim that's the one I've got.
And then maybe claim that it got messed up in the mail and work out like that.
So posted a picture of a real one online.
Woman thought I had the real thing.
She wins the bid that social engineering kicks in immediately.
I didn't want to, I didn't want to be on the defensive.
I wanted to put her on the defensive.
So as soon as she wins the bid, I send her a message, hey, we've not done any business
before.
I don't even know if I can trust you.
What I need you to do protects us both go down the US Postal Service, get two money
orders totaling $1,500, send them to me issued by the US government.
That way we're both protected.
Soon as I get the money orders, I'll send you your animal.
She believed that didn't ask any questions at all.
She believed that sent me the money orders.
I cashed them out, send her the creature immediately got a phone call.
I didn't order this.
My response lady, you ordered a blue elephant.
I sent you a blue fish elephant and she got pissed and she kept calling.
What I found out, and that's really the first lesson of cyber crime that most of these criminals,
including self-learns, if you delay a victim long enough, just keep putting them off.
A lot of them, they get exasperated, throw their hands in the air, walk away.
You don't hear from them.
And none of them, to this day, none of them complained law enforcement.
They eat it.
So it's a mixture of like you were exhausted by the process, so it's just easier to walk
away and second, almost like an embarrassment.
So there's a whole slew of reasons, all right?
There's the exhaustion, certainly.
There's the embarrassment.
So if you figure out, if you look at it today, where does the embarrassment come from?
Well, the media, family members, we're all very good about blaming the victim for crimes.
Why would you click on the link?
Why would you send money to somebody you don't know, blah, blah, blah.
So you've got that's going on.
You've got the issue of who do you complain to?
Back then you didn't know.
Do you complain to local police?
Because she's in another state.
So which local police do you complain to?
Do you complain to the feds?
Well, the dollar amounts aren't high enough to complain to feds.
Feds, you're going to tell you to go local.
Local's going to tell you, hey, it happened in Kentucky.
Complain to them.
Kentucky's going to tell you, well, shit, you're over there.
We need you to come in.
So there's this whole issue, the jurisdiction of the blame factor, everything else.
So I got away with that crime and did it under my own name at that point.
I kept going and got better at it, started to understand how to hide identities, things
like that.
Started selling pirated software.
Pirated software led into installing modchips.
It was for the initial pirated software was Sega Saturn, PlayStation 1.
We had to have a modchip in those to play the pirated discs.
So I started selling and installing modchips.
That led into installing modchips into cable television boxes so you could watch all the
pay-per-view, which in turn led into programming satellite DSS cards.
Those 18-inch RCA satellite systems pull the card out of it, program it, turns on all the
channels.
Started doing that.
Can we just pause?
That is very entrepreneurial.
So technically, so there's laws and rules that you're breaking nonstop.
So there's also legitimate ways of doing that, which is break the rules of the conventions
of the past.
That's the first principles thing.
That's what Elon Musk and his ilk do all the time.
That is guts and brilliance.
But when it's crossing the lines of the law, actually sometimes the law is outdated.
The thing is, as a human being, you have to then compute the ethical damage you're doing,
like ethically the damage you're doing about other human beings.
That is fundamentally the thing that you're breaking is you're adding to the suffering
in the world in a way where another and you're justifying it.
But in terms of me sort of as an engineer, that is some gutsy thinking.
That's how WAS and Steve Jobs thought.
That's innovation.
And maybe just think, if you can introspect your thinking process here, I like how you
remember that it's an HP, this is a totally new thing to you.
Computers is yet another domain.
How are you figuring these puzzles out, presumably mostly alone when you were thinking through
these problems?
Is there, this is a strange question to ask, but what is your thinking process?
What is your approach to solving these problems?
So the approach is, is you do something and you fuck it up and you're like, you think
back, okay, how do I fix that?
If you fix that aspect, you commit the crime again and it goes a little bit further and
it screws up.
Okay.
How do I fix that?
What's the issue on that?
How do I fix that?
So there's not a deep design thinking like later on, it becomes that once, once you, once
you lay that groundwork of the way these schemes are working, all right, it becomes that and
you can apply that to other things in, in cyber crime as a whole.
All right.
But initially it's, it's basically trial and error, you know, you've got a problem.
How do you solve that problem?
All right.
So how do I, I'm committing these crimes under my name.
How do I solve that?
Well, one of the first principles that we started to teach on shadow crew is all crimes should
begin with identity theft.
That's one of the main first principles that a lot of people to this day still don't really
get.
All right.
Why would I commit a crime under my name if I can do it under your name?
So that's, that's one of the big buffers and that takes trial and error to get to that
point where you start to understand.
That's the way crimes should operate if you're a criminal.
All right.
But with me, it was, I mean, it's, it's trial and error.
It's, it's that childhood where that mindset is kind of ingrained in you, where you're,
you're looking for ways non-tradit, let's say non-traditional ways of getting around things
or getting through things.
Yeah.
I mean, one of the questions probably asked this later is there's also a unique aspect
to the outcome of what you were doing, which is you weren't, you know, you didn't get caught
for a very long time.
Right.
We'll talk about why that is.
And the thing is, it's so interesting.
All crime probably should, to be effective, should start with identity theft.
Right.
I like the identity theft because identity theft can take so many forms.
Right.
Right.
So, yeah.
So shadow crew.
So what's, so as we're, you started with love.
So now we're, we're, we're, you know, doing these schemes online, I'm selling, I'm selling
to these, I'm programming these satellite DSS cards and you, one of the interesting things,
and you still see that to this day is something will happen that will create an industry for
criminals.
All right.
So what happened is Canada, Canadian judge rules about the same time that I'm doing these
satellite, satellite cards, Canadian judge comes out and says, Hey, it's legal for my
citizens to pirate those signals.
And his reasoning was, is since RCA doesn't sell the systems up here, my citizens can
pirate it.
Okay.
So what happens is overnight, about the same time PayPal comes into play.
So PayPal is coming right online at about the same time.
Overnight little cottage industry pops up in the United States.
Go down to best buy by the system for a hundred dollars, take it out in the parking lot, open
system up, pull it open box up, pull the system out, pull the card out, throw the system away,
program the card, ship it's ass to Canada, $500 a pop, started doing that.
Business is good, making, you know, $3,000, $4,000 a week doing that.
I'm like, yeah, that's good.
Have so many orders, I can't fill all the orders and quickly think to myself, why do
I need to fill any of them?
They're in Canada.
I'm down here, you know, who are they going to complain to?
Because I already found out people don't complain.
All right.
They're not going to complain to anybody.
So I start not, especially in Canada, and I'm, I'm, I'm having them send money.
That's when PayPal's first into play and it amazes me that everybody is using PayPal.
It's like, you don't even have to really ask.
They're like, can we pay about, yeah, you can pay all day long by PayPal and PayPal had
no clue what they were doing with security.
So it's like, okay.
So they're sending money to PayPal.
I'm having the PayPal cashed out to, uh, to bank accounts in my name at that point and
I get scared because by that point I'm still in four to $6,000 a week and I'm like, somebody's
going to be looking at money laundering.
So get it in my head.
I'm like, best thing that I can do is get a fake driver's license, open up a bank account
using that driver's license, cash out of the ATF.
Good.
No idea where to get a fake ID, not a clue.
So I get online, looked around, spent a couple of weeks looking around, thought I found a
guy.
He went by the screen name of fake ID man, thought I found a guy, sent him $200, sent
him my picture.
Dude rips me off.
I'm like, what the hell?
Oh, I got played.
He had a, he had a little website set up with reviews and I'm like, oh, it's all legitimate.
He's building that trust that I talked about.
So the end result, I got pissed and there was no site that dealt with anything criminal
or really cyber crime related.
The only real avenue you had was an IRC chat session, internet relay chat.
And that, I'm sure you've been on that this, it's this rolling chat board.
You don't know who the hell you're talking to.
Most of them are full of shit.
You can't trust anybody and you're sitting there trying to conduct business.
So you know, if somebody claims they've got a product or service, do they have it?
Does it work?
Are they just going to rip you off?
Because in those channels, they remind us of criminal.
I kept looking around and I've happened upon a website called counterfeit library and counterfeit
library only dealt with counterfeit degrees and certificates as a degree mail type stuff.
But they had a forum and no one was using the forum.
So I basically get on there and bitch every day.
I got ripped off, don't want to do, bam, bam, bam, bam.
About the same time I started doing that, two other guys show up.
One's named Mr. X.
He's out of Los Angeles.
Other guys named BL's above.
He's out of Moose Jaws, Saskatchewan and we all become buddies.
So you know, a few weeks of me bitching, a few weeks of them responding, BL's above gets
me on ICQ and he sends me a message.
He's like, I went by the screen name of Gollum at that point, Gollum Fun.
And he's like, Gollum, I can make you a fake driver's license.
And I was like, well, motherfucker, do it.
And he's like, well, I'm going to charge you for it.
I'm like, yeah, you are.
He's like, I am.
I was like, no, you're not.
And he's like, look, man, he said, this business, if you're going to do this, you have to trust
people or you're going to fail.
He said, so I want to charge you $200, but I'm going to send you a driver's license.
Well, by this point, I'm friends with the people who own counterfeit library.
They're emailing, chatting, everything else, and I tell him, I'm like, okay, I'm going
to send you $200.
That way when you rip me off, I'll have them ban you and I don't have to deal with you
anymore.
And he's like, bet.
I'm like, okay.
So I sent him $200, sent him my picture.
Two weeks later, I get a driver's license.
Name is Stephen Shwecky out of Ohio and a real guy worked at ADP payroll to this day, works
at ADP is where the guy works, got the driver's license.
And to me, at that point in time, it was the prettiest thing that I'd ever seen.
I'd never seen a fake ID before.
I thought it was great, turns out, looking back, it was like, eh, so, but it was a kind
of a strong first step in creating a fake identity.
Very strong.
Very strong.
So that was like, can I ask you just on the point he made that if you're going to be
successful in this, you should have people you trust.
Is he right on that?
Always absolutely right.
He's absolute.
So you have to have, this is like mob.
You have to, you have to have an inner circle that you trust.
You know, I'm sure you've probably heard me say this before.
Successful cyber crime.
All right.
There are three necessities to be successful online if you're a criminal.
Three necessities are gathering data, committing the crime, and then cashing it out.
All three of those necessities have to work in conjunction if they don't, the crime fails.
The problem, and it's a huge problem, is that one guy can't do all three things.
You know, you've got, you've got the people who gather the data.
Basically the, the general store sells people who sell PII credit card logins, data tools.
They'll sell the spoofed phone numbers and the RDPs, stuff like that.
A lot of the times those people don't know how to commit the crime.
And those people certainly don't know how to launder the money out, put cash in pocket.
So you've got either because of a skill level, sometimes a geographic location limits what
that individual can do.
All right.
So you have to rely on people who are good in areas where you are not in order for that
crime to succeed.
And that means you have to trust those people.
So what happens with shadow crew?
All right.
The counterfeit library is the start, all right?
Counterfeit library transitions over to shadow crew.
Right before that transition, there's a Ukrainian guy by the name of Dmitry Golobov.
He was a spammer at that point in time.
He saw what we were doing with, with counterfeit library and he liked it.
He was getting all these credit card details and this kid, I mean, he's a kid, this kid
has an idea.
And his idea was, I wonder if people would buy stolen credit card details.
It's pretty good.
So he picks up the phone, he calls his buddies, they call their buddies, they have a physical
conference in Odessa, 150 of these cyber criminals show up and they launched this idea.
This launches a website called Carter Planet, which is the genesis of all modern credit
card theft as we know it.
All right.
And so remember, I mentioned those three necessities of cyber crime.
Dmitry had all the credit data in the world and he partnered with all these other Ukrainians
who had all this data as well.
The problem was that so much fraud had been committed on that Eastern side of Europe that
every card had been shut down.
Even if you were a legitimate card holder and tried to cash it out, you weren't doing
it at that point.
So again, those three necessities, gathering data, committing crime, cashing out.
Dmitry had the data.
They could commit the crime.
They could not put cash in pocket.
So we were running counterfeit library.
One day I get this message or not a message.
One day, script shows up and he posts just on the general forum.
He posts, Hey, I've got credit card data.
Give me an address.
Give me a burner phone number, wait five business days, order whatever you want to.
We had never seen anything like that.
We were a PayPal fraud and eBay fraud site is what we were and fake driver's licenses.
So then, and we had, I guess we had two, 3000 members at that point.
So the response from the members was that can't be real.
You've got to be law enforcement.
It's got to be in trying to get us arrested and everything else.
What it, let me backtrack a little bit.
So the driver's license that I had got, BL's above had an idea.
What he wanted to do is he wanted to sell driver's licenses.
Mr. X wanted to sell social security cards.
He made a very passable social security card.
Me, I didn't, I had no skill level on that.
I knew PayPal fraud and eBay fraud.
So BL's above was like, tell you what, you be the reviewer.
That way you get every product or service that comes in, they'll have to send it to
you or let you have access to it.
You can learn the entire game and because you're not selling anything, it gives you
legitimacy on the reviews.
All right.
So I started out as a reviewer, the only reviewer on counterfeit library.
So over the next year, BL's above turns out he was a pot grower.
He goes back to growing pot because he wasn't making shit selling driver's licenses.
Mr. X, about a year and a half in, he gets arrested, cashing out drivers, credit card,
not credit cards, cashing out to casinos, doing some shit with that.
So I'm the only guy left standing and I'm at the top of the heap.
So and it becomes this thing where if I review somebody, they make a lot of money.
If I don't, you don't do business here.
So script shows up saying he's got this.
I'm the only reviewer on site.
People think he's a law enforcement.
First week it goes like that.
After a while, I'm like, okay, I got to do something and I'm scared, man, because I'm
like, he may be law enforcement.
So I get him on ICQ and I'm like, Hey, you have to be reviewed.
And he's like, what the hell is that?
So I tell him what it is.
He's like, you reviewed me.
I was like, yeah, that's the idea.
So give him a drop address, give him a burner phone number.
Wait five business days.
And I try to hit Dell for $5,000.
The order fails.
I get back on ICQ.
Hey, man, it didn't work.
He's like, give me one more chance.
I was like, look, I'll give you one more chance, but it's your ass after that.
And he's like, one more chance, like, okay, give him another address, another phone number.
Wait another five business days.
Hit Thompson's computer warehouse for $4,000, Dell for $5,000.
Order goes through, get the products in.
I post that review on counterfeit library and literally overnight we turned from an
eBay PayPal fraud site to a credit theft site and that becomes a lot of money really quickly
for members.
So we were doing, now it's called CMP fraud card, not present fraud.
So you hit, you use, hit an online merchant with stolen credit card data.
Back then a, a fairly experienced fraudster could profit $30,000 to $40,000 a month.
Okay.
Just buying, you know, laptops, what have you and cashing out, you know, put them on
eBay for sale and sell them like that and 30 to 40 a month was the profit on that script
had a lot of buddies.
He had people like Roman Vega, these other guys that would sell not just credit card
data, but counterfeit physical credit cards as well.
We had counterfeit not stolen.
So counterfeit counterfeit that that must be tough to do.
So the connections must be harder than driver's license crazy.
So, you know, in your back, so what's, what Boa initially had and I became the, the United
States salesperson for Boa, but what he had was, is he was the first dumps provider in
the United States.
So on the back of your credit or debit card, there's a magnetic stripe, three data tracks
on the stripe.
There was the first data track is customers name.
Second data track is the card number forward slash 16 digit algorithm outside of that.
That's important.
We'll get back to that in a few minutes.
Second data track is called indiscriminate data.
No one uses it.
All right.
So what's bought and sold is the second data track.
It's called the dump.
And the reason that's sold is when you go into a shop, you insert the card or you swipe
the card.
The only information that's sent out for verification is the second data track.
All right.
That goes to the processor bank for verification.
The first data track that customers name shows up on the screen of the cashier in front
of you.
And what happens is, is you buy 10 of these dumps, you get 10 counterfeit cards, encode
track two on all 10 cards, track one, you create one fake driver's license.
Track one is just the name of that one fake driver's license.
That way when you go in the shop, swipe the card, track two is sent off for verification.
Track one shows up on the screen in front of the cashier.
If you're a raspberry ID, you pull out the fake ID, everyone's an ice warm fuzzy.
You walk out with the cameras, Rolex.
Track one could be eight.
It doesn't have to be connected.
It's not connected to track two.
It's not connected at all.
All right.
That's, that's one of the big problems.
All right.
Yeah.
So, Scripps brought a host of technical people into that type of environment, all committing
credit card theft.
We had proxy providers.
We had all these people that were doing this stuff.
We start making a lot of money, a lot.
And the reason that happens is, again, Scripps did not have the ability to cash out.
So he was reduced to selling things.
And at the same time, he's looking for how do I make more money?
All right.
The Ukrainians happened upon this thing called the CVV one breach or hack is what it's what
they call it.
So what happens is, remember, I told you to track two card number forward slash 16 digit
algorithm.
You got to know the algorithm to encode it so you can swipe the card or take it to the
ATM machine.
All right.
ATM.
You got to know it.
Now we were fishing data from hell.
I mean, we were, we were doing a lot of fishing, a lot.
We were getting pins, we were getting card numbers, but you can't get that algorithm.
So the Ukrainians start testing stuff.
What they found out was no bank had implemented the hash on track two.
So you take the card number forward slash any 16 digits, it would encode, take it to
the ATM, pull cash out, because you got the pin, all right?
Started doing that.
Well, wait, sorry, I'm trying to understand.
So that means, so if there's no, are they generating random numbers or do they have
valid numbers for track two?
No numbers needed at all.
As long as just the track two was a complete track two.
So it's a valid track two that doesn't match.
So the pin is the thing that gets you in.
So back then, all right, back then what we're talking about is you needed typically today
you need a whole track two, you need that valid track two, all right?
You need the, you need the 16 digit card number, forward slash and then whatever that algorithm
is, they all decide of it, all right?
Back then none of the banks had implemented that algorithm.
So while the algorithm was there, you didn't need it to encode.
Interesting.
Interesting.
You can make a lot of money with physical of fake credit cards, card not present fraud.
Card not present fraud, remember I told you was $30,000 to $40,000 a month, all right?
That turned into $30,000 to $40,000 a day.
The Ukrainians, again, they can't cash it out.
They've got all the data on the planet, but they can't cash it out.
Those three necessities of cybercrime.
So the deal became you have to rely on the Americans.
Tell you what, we'll give you 40%.
So you had all these cashiers that were 40% of $40,000 a day.
Yeah, we'll take that, all right?
Send the rest of it over to by Western Union or what have you to your Ukrainian contact.
That's before cryptocurrency came into play.
Now you had a couple of forerunners with Egold and Liberty Reserve, things like that.
But back then it starts out with Western Union, then it becomes prepaid cards, sending track
information over, loading the card up like that, and then finally you get to Egold, Liberty
Reserve, and today it's with crypto, that's used.
Started stealing a lot of money, a lot, and that got law enforcement attention.
So we started to see, I mean, it's a crazy ass story.
We started to see IPs coming in from law enforcement agencies, government agencies.
Because back then they didn't know how to shield their identity either.
So you saw Secret Service, you saw DoD, you saw all these, and you're like, that's interesting.
At the same time, we had, it was called a hack, but it wasn't a hack.
We had a guy that worked at T-Mobile in Los Angeles.
This is the same guy that back then published Paris Hilton's phone contact list that made
a lot of news.
Not only did he do that, but it turned out that the Los Angeles Secret Service Agency
was using T-Mobile phones.
So he's getting text messages of the Secret Service investigating Shadow Crew, and he
posts those damn things on Shadow Crew.
So I'm sitting there going, head of the pile, I'm sitting there going, this is not going
to end well.
This is not going to end well.
So at the same time, I had access, I started out with access to the Indiana State Sex Offenders
Registry, and I was using that to create bank accounts, a lot of money out, and I would
sell the bank accounts and stuff like that.
They shut that down.
The next database I had access to was the Texas Driver's License Database, and started
using that to create fake driver's licenses, what have you.
And then finally, we happened upon the California Death Index, complete information, Mothers
Main, Socials, DOBs, all that, and it's like, got to be a use for that.
Well, you can use it to create identities all day long.
My idea was, I wonder if you could take somebody that's died and then file for Social Security
Death Benefits, not death benefits, but Social Security Benefits for that individual and
get that recurring paycheck in.
So that takes a lot of research to start seeing if you can do that.
How does the federal government know if you're dead?
You can do federal indexes, reference state indexes, you got all these questions that
pop up.
Well, it turns out, federal indexes don't reference state indexes, it's against the
law.
So it also turns out, the only way the federal government knows you're dead, is prior to
1998, the family had to file a Social Security Death Benefit for that person, all right?
Prior to 1998.
Of course, most people don't.
Right.
Prior to 1998, it took the family.
Prior to 1998, the hospital can do it, funeral home can do it, or the family can do it.
So a lot more people have it filed after, if they've died.
But it's still, there's a lot of people, a lot of people don't.
Because that death benefits only like $219.
Yeah.
Okay.
Nobody's thinking about that shit.
So I started to apply for Social Security Benefits, nope, numbers dormant.
So they want you to come in for a physical interview.
Here I am, you know, 32, you're not going to pass as a 65-year-old.
So no.
So the next idea I had was, wonder if you could file income tax returns on these people.
Turns out you can.
All day long.
So I started doing that.
And I started to steal.
Once I got ramped up, because you test everything, you know, you're testing to make sure you
got to figure out what the deposit instrument is and everything else.
And once you get all that lined out, I started to steal $160,000 a week, every week for 10
months out of the year.
By paying taxes.
By filing fake returns.
So you find a business, and the way the system worked is the IRS will issue a refund on
somebody before they're able to verify that that person worked for an employer.
Still works like that today.
All right.
So.
And you keep in the amounts relatively low.
Keep them at $3,000.
All right.
Mounds are very low.
And you're still able to achieve scale because this is a large index of real people.
All right.
I got to where, and I was manual.
Later on, a couple of buddies of mine went automated with it.
Wait, you were doing this by hand, so there's no code involved?
All manual.
Wow.
I'd file a return once every six minutes, work 10 hours a day, three days a week.
So clicking on, so typing fast and clicking.
One return every six minutes.
That's changing IP.
That's changing address, everything else.
One return every six minutes.
For three days a week, fourth day, I would take a road trip, plot out a map of ATMs.
And then the next two days, cash out, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
All right.
Come back home, rinse and repeat.
Turns out that a backpack, I don't see anything sitting around here, but a backpack will hold
$150,000 of 20s is what it'll hold.
So I put 150K in 20s in a backpack.
I had a spare bedroom, I'd come in, toss the backpack in the bedroom.
This is very, very important information, and the fact that you know it is also very
important.
First, we started with the volume of cold that weighs a ton, and now a backpack holds
$150,000 of 20s, and then you can multiply that by five for hundreds.
Yeah.
I like this.
Where's the 20s?
Most of the time it's 20, it's coming out at ATM, right?
Each 20-way is a gram.
Each 20-way is a gram.
So you can actually go by weight, which is what federal authorities do when they get
a pallet of cash.
So you just weigh it.
No.
They just weigh it.
So 150K is seven and a half keys of cash.
A half feet, 15.
That's pretty light.
Not bad.
Not bad.
Do you get big backpack?
Do you get Ron and David Goggins with it?
I like it.
The fact that you know this is great.
So wait, where does that come in with the backpack?
So what happens is, I didn't know how to launder money, all right?
So I'm throwing cash in the spare bedroom.
One day you open up the bedroom and you're like, got to do something with those backpacks.
That's when you start learning how to launder money, you know, cash-based businesses, things
like that.
I had a production company, had a couple of detailing company.
I was thinking about going to the food trucks, things like that in Charleston.
Actually, can you pause on that to take a tangent there?
How does money laundering work?
I mean, at that time, and what years are we talking about?
This is by the time the tax return schemes go into play.
We're talking 2002, 2003 is when tax returns start.
And so what, at that time, and what you're aware of now, how it evolved, how does money
laundering work?
You know, it's not that much different.
It's really not.
You get a cash-based business, start laundering the money or putting the money through that,
saying the transactions are legal, you then start depositing into bank accounts.
And bank accounts, my thing was is have bank accounts in the United States, Mexico, Canada,
and then finally bounce over to Estonia was the final destination of all this stuff.
And the idea is to try to move them to so many places that by the end of the day it
looks legal and you can't trace it all, if you're ever caught, which you ultimately are.
But so cash-based businesses, you know, when you say, sorry to interrupt, the cash-based
businesses, so you have money that needs to be moved to other people.
So how does that work?
What's the business?
Are people providing you a service and you're giving them money?
Right.
So you do the Ozark thing if you want to do that, so you can gamble, cash out some life
house over trips to whatever casinos you've got.
You've got your production company or your detail company.
So how many cars you're cleaning today?
How many companies have you got to do that?
All right, whatever that company is, it's got to be cash-based.
Somebody's paying you in cash is what you're doing.
You have to have enough of those cash-based businesses where it doesn't look funny.
All right, because if you're a detail company, make $100,000 a month, that's a problem.
Yeah.
Okay.
So then you start depositing into that.
Well, because of the Patriot Act, a suspicious activity report, SARS came in at $2,500 instead
of the 10K that it used to be.
So all of a sudden, you've got multiple bank accounts that you've got to set up, all right?
Fortunately, what you also had is you had a bunch of prepaid debit cards that were coming
into play at the same time.
So a combination of bank accounts, prepaid debits that had ACH abilities attached to
those as well, and you start running them all together, then once it's out of the United
States, you don't have to worry as much.
You can start funneling that into fewer bank accounts until finally you've got the one
main account that's over at Mancletico and Estonia at that point is what you've got.
So a bunch of hops that end up at a place that you can't trace.
And to give you an idea, I was arrested February 8th, 2005.
My last seizure was 2010, got the last seizure notice.
So they got it, but it took them that long to get to it.
So how do the stories like with script that come into play here where he had someone who
owed him money kidnapped and tortured?
So when does it turn darker?
It turns darker when the more money you make.
Script was a kid that he was stealing enough money that he was able to buy whatever estate
he wanted to.
And he would brag about touring the countryside.
And if he saw property that he liked, he would buy it and that was not just a brag.
He was doing that.
So this kid is stealing a lot of money at the same time.
He's got connections politically because of his family.
He's got connections and that family's got connections with the Ukrainian mob.
All right.
So he's got these inroads and people are looking out for him and he's stealing a lot of money
at the same time.
Somebody doesn't pay him a decent amount of money.
Somebody doesn't pay him.
He had never with Shadow Crew, with Carter Planet, with Counterfeit Library.
We were basically the geeks.
All right.
We were just the fraudsters, the social engineers.
We had never really considered violence.
The rules that I had in play were, hey, we're not, we don't do child pornography.
We don't do counterfeit currency.
We don't do drugs.
And the only thing we ended up really obeying was the child porn stuff, except for Max Butler,
you mentioned earlier, script, someone rips the guy off and he comes online on Shadow
Crew at that point and he posts these pictures one day.
And I mean, it was a detailed narrative through the pictures.
Had the guy that rammed in the van, had the door open, rammed in, rammed in the van, had
the guy tied up, had the guy being tortured.
And the response was, this is what happens when you steal from me.
And that's the first time that violence came into play at that point.
That's when things got, you start realizing things are getting a little serious.
How did that make you feel?
The first response is, can't be real.
He's just, that's, he's just doing that.
You know, he's wanting to send a message.
And you're like, no, that's real.
That's real.
And.
Were you afraid in your own heart that you might descend to that too?
Like if you see that, or was it pretty clear to you that that's, that's a line that some
people can cross and some can't and you're not one of those that can cross it?
You know, I gotta tell you, I joke with my wife.
The joke I give, the joke I tell my wife is, you know, but I knew some guy that had
8,000 bitcoins.
I might be persuaded to ask him for access to that.
And she was like, how?
And I was like, well, hammer and toes.
And I say that as a joke, but there's that line where you're like, I remember who I used
to be.
And if you're looking at that kind of money, I might be persuaded to do that back then.
You know, that's, that's.
And I think that's what was Scripps issue is he, it was a lot of money to him.
It's the money.
And then there's, you know, violence can also be gradual.
So over time, you do a little more, a little more, a little more, a little more.
You get used to what's going on and then I get desensitized and you figure, you take
somebody like, like Ross Ulbrich, the silk road guy, all right?
Ross was not a violent guy.
He was not.
But at that point in time, you know, he was sitting on 24, 24 million in Bitcoin.
He was the only game in town.
And that 24 now is like, I don't know, 20 to 24 billion, some crap like that.
But he felt in danger.
This guy was going to turn him in, you know, it was a black mountain and everything.
So Ross thinks he hires a couple of hit men to kill the guy.
So it's, it's, it becomes that thing.
And I saw that over and over again.
And I'd like to say I wasn't like that, but given the same circumstances, I would have
probably done the same thing.
And also when you're, it's not just about money.
There's a lot of other forces, like if you're threatened for your wellbeing or for your wealth
or for your power, all, all of us are under different motivations.
Plus that, that, that online aspect where those communities like that, if you're the
head guy, you really feel like you're the parent of these guys.
So somebody's starting to threaten them, it's like, all right, what do I need to do?
So what do you make of Silk Road?
See the shadow crew started something that today you can call dark net and dark net markets.
So these markets that operate that trade, trade things, everything from child pornography
to drugs to, I mean, what else, what are the dark things that humans want to do that they
don't want anyone to know about all of those things.
So can you maybe tell me, you know what, let's just even step back.
What is the dark net?
How big is it?
What happens there?
Well, let's, let's backtrack a little bit more before we get to that, all right.
What shadow crew did other than, you know, dealing in all these stolen wares, what shadow
crew did that's really important, remember those three necessities that I talked about.
But the important thing is, is it established trust among criminals, all right, because
that's a necessity.
You have to be able to trust who you're dealing with, because you have to deal with somebody,
you have to, all right.
So how do you know you're not dealing with a cop?
How do you know you're dealing with somebody that's skilled?
How do you know you're going to deal with somebody that's not going to rip you off?
You have to be able to trust that individual.
Shadow crew provided that trust mechanism for criminals.
You had that communication channel, the forums, where you could reference conversations weeks,
months old, take part, learn from those conversations.
You had vouching systems and review systems in place, escrow systems in place.
You had, you could, knew by looking at someone's screen name, if you could trust the individual,
network with the individual, all right.
And that community of just humans provided that backbone of trust.
And that's really interesting when you think about it.
You had the trust that was there, but you also had this, almost this instantaneous information
that was available about the community or about cybercrime at large, and that's still
in play today, all right.
So when that, that was the way things were until a couple of things happened.
And one was cryptocurrency.
The other one was the tour browser, the dark web.
Now I was working with the secret service, ripping the secret service off when tour comes
into play.
All right.
So we got a, we got a memo in one day and it was talking about the tour browser and
it was like, we really need to be careful with this.
This is going to be problem.
And so we all fired up the tour browser.
And it turns out it was, this was 2005, early six.
Turns out it was completely unusable, could not use it at all, simply because no one was
using it and it was extremely slow.
So for people that don't know tour browser is the way to be completely anonymous.
As long as you properly know how to use it, right.
Huge caveat.
Yeah.
All right.
So developed by the United States Navy.
And they developed it.
I know this.
I did not.
Oh yeah.
It wasn't the hackers that.
Interesting.
To this day, the number one funder of tour military to this day.
All right.
Interesting.
I mean, the same, I guess with the internet, the, the, the origins are developed so that
operatives could communicate with each other without being identified.
All right.
That then goes open source.
They release it, EFF comes in, start sponsoring and everything else like that.
The next idea was, well, you know, people can get around their country's firewalls, whistle
blowers can use it, things like that.
Well, someone forgot to mention that the first adoptees of tech, if you can use it to launder
money or remain anonymous are criminals.
So criminals start to use the damn thing.
All right.
So along same time we get, well, a few years later, we get Satoshi Nakamoto pops up with
his ideas for Bitcoin and then Ross Ulbrich runs with it.
Ross Ulbrich decides he's going to start up Silk Road.
So initially the people who were using tour, which later is the dark web, people were using
tour.
We're just talking with each other, visiting websites, communicating like that.
Someone figured out, Hey man, we could host websites on this thing and they have a lot
of trouble finding the box.
So that is the advent of Silk Road all of a sudden, Ross Ulbrich has this idea that he's
going to change the world by becoming the largest drug dealer on the planet.
So he opens up the Silk Road and the only payment instrument he allows is Bitcoin.
So if those people out there are wondering why Bitcoin is going at what, 44K today?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Starts up.
By the time this is out, it could be 100,000 or 10,000.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Who knows?
If it's 10,000, I'm going to buy some.
Which is a hilarious statement to make because that statement would be ridiculously wrong
like five years ago.
I know.
I know.
I know.
People a hundred years from now will be laughing, wait, it was that low?
So he only accepts Bitcoin and that's of course the initial use case of crypto is no one
wants to admit it today, but the initial use case is we're going to buy a bunch of pot.
We need somebody, we need a way to pay for it.
So that's, that's what happens, Ross.
It's really interesting to me if you, if you look at motivations of cyber criminals, the
motivations are status, cash, ideology.
All right.
My guys all cash across the board, all cash.
Ross is ideology.
He really believed he was going to change the world.
He really didn't.
Unfortunately, I, I actually know the guy who ran Silk Road to and have talked to the
kid, everything else.
And I will tell you that those, those guys who are motivated by ideology, they are a
completely different breed.
They really are.
It's not, you know, the cash guy, it's, it's, it's low hanging fruit, the, the ease of, of
it's hard to stop committing crime, but it's much easier for a cash motivated individual
to stop than it is that ideology guy, uh, that Silk Road two guy, he's still got it.
You know, he's not breaking the law, but you can see it's like, he wants to, he wants to.
So it's, it's, um,
That's fascinating that I mean the worst atrocities in human history are committed with people
that operate under ideology.
All the other motivations are much weaker.
But you know, you think about it with Ross, I mean, very bright guy, very bright guy,
but think about the amount of cognitive dissonance that the guy's got, that he thinks he's going
to change the world by running a drug site.
I mean, certainly, I mean, could he have changed the world?
Yeah.
Could he have done it like that?
Probably not.
Well, I, I can, I can still mend those arguments.
So I listened to quite a few, uh, libertarians and you can push that to anarchists and you
know, there's a lot of people that argue, um, so I actually talked to, uh, to, to faculty,
to Professor Columbia, who actually argues that all drugs should be legalized and not
at a philosophical level, political level, but the fact that, um, all the negative consequences
of drugs that people talk about, uh, actually have to do with other factors in your life.
I would agree with that.
And so that's a, okay, but that's more like a argument about negative aspects of drugs.
I think the ideology comes in where it's like, well, nobody should tell you what to do.
You should be, you should have the responsibility of your own actions.
Like, uh, um, the government or any other institution shouldn't be the, uh, the rule
setters, the constraints for how you live your life.
And so that, I could, I could see that argument being made and ultimately if you, uh, like
create an open market for drugs, how that could build a better society, it might break
down the outdated, the corrupt, the bureaucratic institutions.
I mean, you can make, you can make that argument.
There's an argument.
And let's be fair.
I'm going to be fair with it.
I mean, could, did he change the world?
We do have this whole thing called cryptocurrency.
Yeah.
In the long arc of history, perhaps, yeah.
We do have that.
That's a biggie.
And that might, might have been for it to take hold in society, maybe the darker parts
of society at first.
Maybe that was necessary.
Right.
I mean, maybe, we'll see how it pans out, um, shadow crew.
We had this guy, Albert Gonzalez, this kid's name.
We had, we were growing so big that, um, I had to start farming things out.
So the first thing I started farming, I instituted this review system, kind of establishing that
trust mechanism even further for criminals to use.
We needed somebody to take care of our tech aspects of the forum.
So, um, associate of mine by the name of Kim Taylor, where we're looking for a forum
techie.
He comes to me one night and he's like, uh, founder forum techie, and I was like, who's
that?
And he's like, uh, it's this kid.
And I was like, is he good?
He's like, well, he knows the software.
He's like, okay, we just signed his ass on.
He went by the screen name of a Kamba Johnny was his screen name and, um, he starts selling
credit cards after a while under a screen name of Scarface and, uh, that CV one breach
where you're cashing out the track twos at ATMs, you know, $40,000 a day.
So Alberts in New Jersey one day, broad daylight and, uh, stands at an ATM for 40 minutes,
just standing there, feeding in one ATM card after another, point out cash, taking the
20s out, stuff them in that backpack.
Meanwhile, just across the street, a couple of cops just happened to be there and they
start noticing this kid just standing there.
So 40 minutes, they watched this kid 40 minutes.
Only one cop looks at the other.
Let me see what's going on there.
Walks over across the street.
Alberts wearing a wig.
He's got the disguise on everything else like that.
Ask him kid, what are you doing?
Albert falls apart.
We didn't know Albert had been arrested.
So Albert immediately goes in.
I want to work with a secret service at that point in time.
Secret service, I referred to, and I don't, I want to make sure I don't say it's, it's
not like that anymore, but back then they were fucking idiots.
All right.
They had no clue what was going on.
So there was a competence issue that they were working through is one way to put it.
That's a nice, that's a nice euphemism or fucking idiots is another way to say it.
So they're just like not aware of the digital world.
They had no clue.
No clue.
So Albert tells them how to catch us because they looked at him.
How do we catch him?
And Albert's like, I'm serious.
I'm serious.
So Albert's like, well, you could try a VPN.
What's a VPN?
So he explains it to them.
They're like, that's a good idea.
So I quit shadow crew.
I was worried about all the news that was coming in and everything like that.
I'm still in 160k a week.
I didn't know Albert had been arrested.
I'm worried about being arrested.
And I know the writings on the wall and I'm like, I'm quitting my return.
Where did you see the writing like the keys that were coming in?
Yeah.
The text messages about the Secret Service Investigators.
Building your building.
So the pressure is building.
It's not going to end well.
This is, this is, this is going to be bad.
So I announced my retirement of February 15th, I'm sorry, April 15th, 2004 is my retirement.
I think that's the 2004.
And I quit, I walk away.
Well Albert had been arrested.
They cut him loose.
No one knows he's been arrested.
He comes back into shadow crew.
I leave Kim Taylor at the same time.
He's kind of on the run, which if you want to know that story, that's a nightmare story
in and of itself.
So my second in charge, Kim Taylor, this guy, there was this guy named David.
Oh, what was his name?
He was El Mariachi was a guy's name.
David Thomas.
David.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was a film guy.
Scarface.
Yeah.
So El Mariachi, real name David Thomas, he's on the run out of Nebraska for check fraud.
He comes to us on shadow crew telling us this sad story.
We take up a collection for this guy, send it to him.
All right.
I get him a job working with a low level Carter, trying to make him some money.
All right.
El Mariachi, Thomas does this for a few weeks, comes to me one day and he's like, man, I'm
not making any money.
I'm like, okay, let me see what I can do.
Well, I had a Ukrainian guy by the name of Big Buyer.
He, a real friend of mine and I contact him, I was like, look, man, I got a guy that wants
to do some work.
Can you help the guy out?
And he's like, I got him.
I was like, okay.
So he sends Thomas enough money to go.
Thomas is in Texas at that point, sends Thomas enough money to go from Texas to Issaquah,
Washington and rent an office space.
All right.
So Thomas goes up there, rents his office space, him and his girlfriend rents an office space.
And the plan is, is Big Buyer is going to place an order, get product sent.
Mariachi is going to get the product listed on eBay, cash out 50-50.
Easy enough.
All right.
So Big Buyer places an order.
First order is Outpost.com, $18,000.
The largest order Outpost.com had ever received at that point in time.
Order goes through.
It goes through.
It goes through.
He gets the product.
All right.
Mariachi comes back, tells me, tells my second in charge, Kim Taylor.
Kim Taylor at this point, I'm 33, 34.
Kim Taylor is 46.
He works at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, Colorado.
That's where he works at this point.
And he fancies himself, Jason Bourne.
All right.
So we've got one of the screen names of Jason Bourne.
So I'm like, all right.
So Mariachi's telling us how much money he's making and everything else.
I'm like, well, that's good.
I'm glad you're all right.
Kim contacts me.
He's like, I want to go to Issaquah.
And I was like, why?
And he's like, to make some money.
I'm like, you're making money.
He's like, I want to go to Issaquah.
I was like, all right, go.
Be careful.
So he gets in the car.
Saturn is what he's driving.
He drives his little piece of shit Saturn all the way up to Issaquah.
Gets there, you know, midnight.
They party all night long because they've never met each other.
They're just celebrating, partying, drinking, everything else like that.
Meanwhile, Big Buyer has placed another order with Outpost.com, $17,000.
The second largest order Outpost.com had ever received at that point in time.
By this point in time, Outpost knows the first order was fraudulent.
Guess where it's going?
The exact same address, the first order goes.
So Outpost picks up the phone, calls Issaquah PD, hey, we got a fraudster.
Issaquah is like, would you mind sending some empty boxes?
Outpost is like, be happy to.
So the rule was, is on credit card fraud, if you've got full account access, you place
the order.
The morning it's supposed to arrive, you sign into the bank account or the credit card account.
If you can sign in, you go pick up your product.
If you can't sign in, you go back to sleep that day.
All right.
Well, Big Buyer was the guy who placed the order.
Mariachi and my second in charge are partying.
All right.
So they're supposed to contact Big Buyer.
They don't.
Meanwhile, Big Buyer is raising hell, getting up with me like, hey, where are the guys?
I can't find them.
They don't need to pick up this product.
So I can't get in touch with them.
They go down to pick up the, so Mariachi's got a Cadillac, old seventies Cadillac, he's
got a Cadillac, pulls into the complex.
Now Mariachi's driving, Kim Taylor's in the passenger seat, David Thomas' girlfriend's
in the back seat.
As they pull into the complex, going through the parking lot, Mariachi just happens to
glance over and he sees a van with a guy sitting sideways in the van.
And he looks at Kim Taylor and he's like, that's an undercover.
And Kim's like, ah, it's fine.
So they pull up to the office complex.
Kim's like, I'll go in and get the packages.
So he walks in, looks at the guy behind the counter.
I believe you have some packages for us.
Guys like one second.
So he just appears around the wall, out pops the Issaquah PD, arrest Kim.
David Thomas is in the car watching all this happen.
He bugs out and they arrest him on the interstate where he has three fake driver's licenses
in his wallet along with his real driver's license, another no-no, but they get him.
So David Thomas had outstanding warrants out of Nebraska.
We couldn't bond him out.
Kim Taylor didn't have any warrants, so we bonded him out.
My third in charge kid, Seth Sanders was his name, he bonds him out, uses his girlfriend's
account to bond him out, and I get Kim Taylor to go to Utah where another friend of mine
agrees to housing him and his wife.
So I think everything's fine and all that.
About three weeks later, this guy in Utah gets me on the phone, hey, he's got to go.
I'm like, what's going on?
He's like, well, the only thing he's doing is popping ecstasy tablets every day all day.
And I'm like, seriously?
He's like, yeah.
I was like, okay, he's got to go.
So we kick him out of there.
By this point, I've got another crew that's coming through.
I mean, I had all these crews running, had another crew that's coming through Denver,
send Kim back to Denver to partner up with these guys.
Kim gets these guys arrested.
So by this point in time, I'm exasperated.
I just want to throw my hands up in the air and walk away.
So my retirement's coming up at the same time.
So I'm like, fuck it, I'm done.
So I tell everybody at the rest of the admins and the mods there, I'm like, this is what's
going on.
You guys need to watch out for this.
We need to ban Kim, not let him back in.
Be careful what's going on.
I walk away.
At the same time I walk away, Comba Johnny, Albert Gonzalez, comes back into play.
He sees everything that's going on.
He uses that to his advantage.
He starts banning everyone that's suspicious of him, sets up the VPN at the same time and
says, hey, to make sure we're all secure, I need all transactions to go through this
VPN.
VPNs ran by the Secret Service.
All right.
Secret Service ends up, I think they ended up cataloging like $7 million worth of transactions
over the next four or five months.
Shadow Crew makes the front cover of Forbes, August 2004, headline, Who's Stealing Your
Identity?
October 26, 2004, United States Secret Service, arrest 33 people, six countries, six hours.
I was in Charleston, South Carolina when I saw it happen and I'm like, you're the one
that got away.
I'm the one public.
There were a couple of other guys that got away that they didn't publicly mention.
One, his name was Tron.
He was in the zero.
Yeah, exactly.
But he went by the screen named Tron, he had access, almost unfettered access, to Bank
of America.
So what happens is they identified the guy, Secret Service is in the air to go get him.
They call the Ukrainian police, hey, we're coming down to arrest this guy.
Ukrainian cops are like, oh, come on down.
So as soon as they got off the phone, Ukrainian cops get in the car, go down and tell Tron,
hey, they're, they're coming to get you.
So he bugs out down to South America and they don't catch him, I think for six or seven
years after that, something like that.
But caught him eventually.
Caught him eventually.
Well, let me actually ask you on this point, you said that if you do cyber crime eventually,
it's not going to end well.
It does not end well.
Why is that?
So I don't want to say that's because you're going to be arrested because honestly, very
few people are arrested, all right?
But it doesn't end well because of the type of person that you become.
You quoted me earlier, you lie to everybody around you.
You lie to yourself.
You lie to your friends.
You lie to your family.
Of course, you lie to your victims.
You don't have any friends.
You know, I went 20 years without friends.
I had associates.
I didn't have friends.
You can't truly trust anybody.
You don't trust anybody.
You don't trust anybody.
You know, I had my wife, I was married for nine years.
I lied to her every single day of those nine years and it took her nine years to give up
on me to realize that I was that piece of shit and she leaves at that point.
Then from there, I started dating a stripper and lied to her.
I thought I had friends.
I lied to all those people that I knew that thought they were my friends.
I lied to them the entire time.
You become that individual.
I don't think a lot of people really understand how bad that is.
You know, you talked about, you pointed out that woman that I ripped off.
She was trying to put a roof on her house for frigging kids, man.
You're that person.
You're that person.
So you're also lying to yourself and that's not a mindset in which you can grow as a person
and find happiness, find genuine, simple human affection, which is what love is.
Simple real friendship, all of those things.
So you know, I went to prison, of course.
One of the things that, one of the most important lessons that I've learned in prison, because
cyber crime, crime as a whole, if you're a criminal, it's an addiction, all right?
If you're addicted to something, whether it be drugs, crime, gambling, what have you,
if you're addicted to something, you cannot love anything else except the addiction.
The addiction comes first, all right?
And you pointed out some of those truly despicable things.
Script, for example, tortures that guy.
You get to the point where it's like, okay, this is the business.
And I tried to convince myself that I'm a businessman, but I'm a good guy on the other
end.
And you're not.
You're not.
You become part of it, everything else.
And you know, it's, yeah, you get the higher ups are usually arrested.
They are.
But you know, you've got millions of cyber criminals these days.
So most guys are not going to be arrested.
So you may be arrested.
You may, you may be like freaking Jonathan James.
He was a minor, a very, very talented individual, very competent.
He had, as a kid, he had broken into NASA, the OD Pentagon.
He shut the NASA computers down for six weeks.
This is the, that kid, then he decides he wants to go into credit card theft partners
with Albert.
He's arrested with Albert law enforcement.
They were going on.
They were going to blame him.
He was the only competent individual.
So this kid gets up one day.
He wasn't in prison yet.
He gets up one day, goes in his dad's bedroom, gets out his 45 walks in the bathroom and
blows his brains out.
You know, you've got, you've got things like that, or you're going to rip somebody off
and you're going to end up like scripted with that guy, the, the guy who hit, who ran Evolution
Marketplace.
No wonder who, two people ran that guy and a girl and no wonder who they were.
He ends up stealing about $24 million, a lot of them from Ukrainian mob and they found
them about a year later on a beach without his head and hands, but you know, it always
goes south, but more than anything to me, the, the negative thing is, is you really
become somebody that, I mean, just truly a despicable human being.
When you get to the point when you're, you're, you're destroying people's retirement accounts,
you're stealing money from a woman that simply wants to do something good for her family.
And you, when you become that individual and you're okay with that, my God, man, I got
to the point, I had one guy, I ripped off, it's like for $900 is when I first started
the cyber crime stuff.
It's when I was becoming competent and I ripped him off for like $900 and he sent me an email
and he was like, the email said something like, I guess you needed the money and it's
okay.
You know, you keep it and how I'm getting chills right now thinking about it, it's that
where you become that individual.
Yeah.
Can I actually backtrack, listen, I love love, okay.
How do you do?
And there's a story that you fell in love with the stripper.
I mean, you have to tell the story.
So how did you fall in love with somebody, not there's anything wrong with that profession,
but it's romantic, it's like that true romance, by the way, great movie.
It is great film.
It's truly a great film.
Even Brad Pitt, who makes a brief appearance is genius, there's so much good acting there.
Anyway, so tell me that love story.
All right.
So, you know, like I said, I get, from my dad, I get that fear of being abandoned, you
know, I lied to my wife for nine years until she leaves.
And I was in Charleston, South Carolina.
And what happened was, I noticed that Susan, she was not coming to bed like, you know,
she used to and she'd stay up all night long and sometimes she'd go and be gone a few hours
and everything else.
And I'm like, well, something's going on and I'd passed by her, her computer and she
would minimize the screens and I'm like, well, got to figure out what that was going on.
So put a key logger on her system as any, anybody should in a relationship.
Absolutely.
Because you trust them.
Yeah.
So, why not?
You should be tracking all their movements, all their.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Like I said, I was the control freak too.
It's romantic.
So, I found out she had been cheating on me and she was, see, there you go.
They had a reason.
They had a reason.
I justified.
So I found out she was cheating on me.
She was asleep when I found it out and I sat there looking at it and I was like, well,
shit.
I got up, walked in the bedroom, opened up the wardrobe, got a suitcase out, started
putting her clothes in it and she wakes up.
She's like, where are you going?
I'm like, I'm not.
You are.
Well, my bravado disappeared pretty quickly.
I took about a week of both of us crying and arguing and everything else and she finally
left and I went through this depression.
I went to, I was in Charleston, South Carolina, I would just walk around the house kind of
stumbling in a daze, realized I was getting suicidal and was smart enough to do something
about it and picked up the phone book and that's where there's always this sense of
humor.
So I picked up a phone book and I'm going through the yellow pages and I'm like, psychologist,
criminal psychologist because I need that, called the psychologist crying to her and crying
on the phone, told her everything.
I'm just criminal.
This is what's happened.
I'm like, come in now.
So I go in, spill my guts and saw her for about four months and I joke about it.
It's true.
She, she was trying to get me to stop breaking the law and to go into real estate and I remember
telling her, is there a difference?
She was like, yes, there's a difference.
So saw her for about four months.
I was, I was 34.
I didn't start drinking until I was 34, had never done drugs, anything else like that
because my mom was an addict as well.
So I was this guy, I always wanted to be in control, didn't want to, you know, lose control
of myself and had never been to a strip club.
So one night I was getting lonely.
So I walked into the strip club.
Actually, I was researching the strip club and it was Joe's Roundup in Charleston, South
Carolina.
Joe's Roundup.
Joe's Roundup.
Little bitty hole in the wall stuff.
I was, yeah, real classy.
I walked in and I'm literally that guy, man, that fell in love with the first, the first
stripper that he sees.
She walks by, I'm like, that one.
So I didn't know, I didn't know the strip club game.
Again, criminal, naive as hell.
So belly up at the bar, order the beer, I'm sitting there drinking it.
She comes over to me and we start talking and she's like, would you like to get a bottle
of champagne?
I was like, was that being going in back or what?
She's like, well, yeah, you need to do the bottle to come back.
I was like, sure, let's buy a bottle of champagne, $400 bottle of Corbelle.
So I'm like, all right.
So then again, that bravado disappears pretty quickly.
I get back there and we talk for two hours and, you know, nowadays I understand that
most men who go to strip clubs, strippers are their therapist most of the time.
All right.
So I'm sitting there talking.
We're talking.
Of course, she's, she's sizing me up.
She's looking at the watch.
She's like, what kind of car you drive?
You know, everything else.
And I'm like telling her and talking.
So at the end of the night, I'm like, really nice to meet you.
She's like, it's so nice meeting you too.
So I leave.
You guys just talked.
Just talked.
And there's no dancing.
No feeling of love and all of that.
Yeah.
So just talk, just, you know, got along pretty good.
I'm like, I like her, I like her.
So come back in a week later, walk in and call her over and I was like, look, I said,
I'm not, uh, I said, that was my first time to strip club.
I said, don't know you.
I like you.
I'd like to know you more.
Would you like to go out to dinner?
And she was like, yeah, I was like, where would you like to go?
So she says, rude to John.
And I was like, don't know what it is.
That's where we'll go.
So I go back and I was, uh, I had a theater buddy at that point in time because I was
trying to get my life.
Yeah.
Trying to get my life together.
Uh, JC was his name and I was like, I got a date.
He's like, he got a date.
I was like, yeah, man.
I got a date.
And he's like, okay, where are you going?
And I was like, rude to John and he's like, take your wallet.
I'm like, yeah, and he's like, take your wallet.
It's like, all right.
So, uh, we start, you know, doing the lunch and the dinner thing and, uh, I get to where
I really like her.
She's, uh, I was 34.
She was 23 and, uh, got along really well.
Listen, you know, had common interest in music and arts and stuff like that.
She had, uh, I mean, it's stereotypical.
She was, she had graduated college with a degree in religious studies.
Well, yeah.
So I was like, all right.
So, um, so yeah, you just fell in love.
Yeah.
We, we got along really well, really well.
So I ended up moving her in with me.
She hadn't quit her job and, uh, what was happening was she was working weekends and,
uh, you know, the club would close at three or four.
He wouldn't come home until 10 or 11 in the morning.
And most of the time it would be a phone call saying, come and pick me up.
I can't drive home.
And, uh, then I'd never used drugs had never been around and my mom, Valium and pot and
things like that.
But as far as interacting with her, I'd never done anything like that by this point of time.
I'm kind of getting head over heels with her.
I've moved her in with me and everything and, uh, I had never, I was 34.
I'd never went through a woman's purse in my entire life and, uh, so she comes in, passes
out and I'm like, I gotta know what the fuck's going on and, uh, went over and went through
a purse, found cocaine and, uh, you know, the straw cut off straws and all that stuff.
And I'm like, uh, broke my heart.
I just sat there and started crying, got online and, uh, I'm the guy that can find information.
So I started looking for forums on strip clubs, found a forum, found that one, found where
it was talking about her prostituting herself to support the habit.
And, uh, that got me, man.
That got me.
It's talking about everything she was doing to, uh, to do that and that broke your heart
there.
Oh man.
Yeah.
So, uh, went and I could, I didn't have the heart to tell her that I knew she was prostituting.
But I went to her and I was like, she was waking up and I was like, look, I found this
in your purse.
I can't have that.
And she's like, well, you think I'm prostituting?
I was like, no, no, I don't think that I knew it, but I didn't mention it to her.
And, uh, I was like, I can't have that.
Well, I don't do that.
It's just one time thing.
I was like, all right.
So, um, she went back to work and continued to do it for a couple more weeks.
And then finally I was like, I can't.
So I picked her up one morning as like she was, she was, she couldn't drive home.
Um, before I picked her up, I'd written her a note, left it on the pillow.
So I brought her home, tucked her in the bed and, uh, told her I'd be back that night.
Told her she had a letter when she woke up and woke up and the letter was basically,
uh, you know, I love you.
If you can't stop this, don't be here when I get back and, uh, I went to, uh, Columbia
that day, came back that night and, uh, she had quit her job and she quit drugs that night.
And, uh, I got it in my head that I needed to do whatever I needed to do to make sure
she didn't go back to that.
That became, um, to me, because of my background, that meant spending a lot of money and, uh,
so every night was, you know, three to $600 for dinner.
It was, uh, $1,000 shoes every week, $2,000 purse every week, all that.
I had most of my money laundered out to, uh, to Estonia and, uh, Elizabeth at the same
time, she had, uh, she quit, but, uh, she didn't want me to go anywhere.
All right.
She wanted me there all the time.
I guess that was that connection, you know, she, I guess she was scared.
She might go back to something.
So shadow crew gets busted.
I start, I go through basically all my us funds can't get anything from overseas shadow
crew gets busted.
October, I can't go into committing tax fraud because seasons over can't go back into credit
fraud because shadow crew's been busted.
I don't know who to trust online.
I'm left with running counterfeit cashier's checks to get money in, trying to make it until
you know, I can start back with some other fraud and, uh, lying to her the entire time.
She knows about none of this, none of, none of it.
And she's got it.
She thinks I've got a shitload of money and, uh, she's got expensive tastes.
So, um, and at the same time, she couldn't be intimate.
I mean, the girl loved me.
That's the first time I've really said that.
So there's a deep love there both ways.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Things we do.
So, uh, she, she couldn't be intimate unless she was stone cold drunk.
I mean, just shit stones go drunk and I, you know, I said, I didn't mind her drinking
alcohol.
I'd rather have that than cocaine.
So, uh, that was the intimacy there.
And I kept, I had this, I kept thinking if I continued to invest that it would work out,
you know, that, uh, just keep going, she'll be all right, we'll be all right.
And what happens is, is, uh, like I said, she thought I had money.
She thought I had money.
She wanted a couple of Tiffany engagement rings.
So I said, we can get married.
You know, I figured a marriage, sure that I love her, sure it's going to be all right.
So I was like, let's get married.
She's like, well, I've always wanted a Tiffany ring.
She doesn't have money by the Tiffany ring cause all my money was overseas.
So here I am.
I defraud.
So it's counterfeit cashiers.
I, um, find a, like a three carat ring on eBay for 20 grand and, uh, pay for it with
a counterfeit cashiers check at the same time because she doesn't want me to leave.
She needs me there.
Typically, if you're doing that type of crime, you need to be traveling.
You can't do it in one central area because you're going to be identified pretty quickly.
I knew that, but I didn't have much choice.
So, um, start running counterfeit cashiers checks to get the money to, to live and everything
and get the, uh, get the engagement ring.
We were, uh, scheduled to be married.
Our wedding date was February 26th, 2005, February 8th, 2005 I'm, uh, I've got a Tiffany
wedding band couple of them coming in and I get arrested in Charleston, South Carolina.
And she didn't know, I told her, I said, I've got to go pick up those rings.
She didn't, she thought I was just having them sent in so I had to get those rings.
And I said, we'll go out to dinner after that.
And I left at like eight o'clock in the morning and I was arrested at, uh, I think 1130, something
like that.
Of course, I wanted to call her, you know, and, uh, the FBI got me, it turns out it was,
it was controlled delivery.
There were like 30 agents in the parking line, FBI got me, Charleston PD got me.
Within 45 minutes, the secret service comes in, takes over that investigation.
They knew exactly who they had long about seven o'clock at night.
They're like, we want to search your house.
And I was like, look, I'll sign off on the search.
If you let me go with you so I can see her and, uh, they were like, okay.
So I got to see my phone at that point.
I had like 140 calls that she, where she had been trying to call that time.
She was worried.
Yeah.
So they load me up and hell, I mean, you talk about 10, 12 cars, you know, 40 agents, everything
else.
Uh, she's got a dog at that point.
I'm scared they're going to shoot the dog and, uh, uh, it was dark and they have me
walk up and they're all behind me and I knock on the door and tell her the police are there
and she needs to put the dog up.
So she does and, uh, they come in and just start ransacking them to put me in cuffs,
set me down, start berating her with questions.
She had no idea what the hell was going on.
Were you able to say a word or two to help her understand?
Yeah.
I was trying to tell her and at the same time they're, they're, they take a watch off her
wrist.
They let her keep the ring.
Uh, they're telling her that I'm this guy.
What's my real name?
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang across across the board.
So she's probably terrified.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I tell her, I was like, look, they're going to rain me tomorrow.
Don't come.
Don't come.
I said, uh, see what's going on, but don't show up.
Of course she's there next morning, her, her dad and she's, she's back in the back crying.
They're reading off the charges.
I'm under $300,000 bond, everything else and, uh, that's it.
I, they throw me in a cell.
Meanwhile, more charges keep coming in, you know, and, uh, it's like 10, 12 charges a
day at that point.
And I'm trying to call her to make sure she's all right and, uh, just get through.
So I spent three months in jail and during that three months, she visits twice.
I get like three or four phone calls to her, um, I understand, looking back now, I understand
why, you know, back then it was like, I'm the victim, you know, why doesn't she talk
to me?
But, uh, you know, now I understand why the hell the girl let me to, you know, she found
out I was this piece of shit and, uh, after a week in county jail, two agents fly in from
New Jersey to secret service guys pulled me out of cell, looked at me and they're like,
oh, we've got your laptop.
And I was like, yeah.
And, uh, he's like, well, if you got anything on your laptop, I was like, yeah, he's like,
you're going to be charged for it.
I was like, I figured, and then he looks at me as like, uh, can you do anything for us?
And I told him my exact words were, look, you let me get back with Elizabeth.
I'll do whatever you want me to do.
And he looks at me as like, we're going to get you out.
I was like, all right.
So they let me sit there for three months to get a taste of it and, uh, get me out.
My sister, they have the bond reduced to a thousand dollars.
My sister pays the thousand dollar bond.
By this point, she's just on me and because I'm dating the stripper and, uh, Denise bonds
me out.
The person that I call immediately is Elizabeth.
I'm out and, uh, she's like, I'll be there.
Okay.
So this, uh, like 11 o'clock at night, um, I'm in the parking lot of the Charleston police,
Charleston County jail, me and a secret service agent standing there.
Elizabeth had a friend that owned a limo company.
So she pulls up in a limo, gets out, pops the trunk, gets these two plastic containers
out that have my clothes in them, comes over, hugs me, call me later, gets in the car, drives
off.
I'm sitting there crying like a baby agent looks at me as that's your fiance.
I'm like, yeah, he's like, I am so sorry.
And I'm like, yeah, I had, uh, she sounds fascinating.
Yeah.
Pull up an old limo.
I had $30 to my name at that point, $30.
The agent had to pay for my hotel room that first night.
So he drops me off after paying for the hotel room, buy me something to eat.
Soon as he drops me off, I take that $30, walk a half mile to Walmart by prepaid debit
card.
So I can start back in tax fraud.
So as they get back to the hotel room, call Elizabeth beggar to come see me.
She comes to see me and we talk most of the night and convince her to give me a chance.
I tell her that I, hey, everything's going to be all right.
They're going to hire me.
I'm going to be this big consultant lies, lies, just so she get back with me.
And she's like, okay.
And, uh, so we move from, uh, from Charleston, the, uh, field offices in Columbia, South
Carolina, and, uh, I'm breaking the law even before I start working with them, I'm breaking
the law.
And, uh, so they've got me in the office, the field offices, they got this big war room
in there.
I'm on a laptop outside line, laptops hooked up to a 50 inch plasma monitor on the wall.
They've got a desktop sitting directly next to me outside line, two secret service offices,
officers in the room at all times with a South Carolina law enforcement officer.
My job is four to six hours a day, surfing the web, picking up targets, Intel teaching
them how cyber crime operates, everything else like that.
For the first two weeks, they are extremely diligent.
They pay attention to everything that's going on, ask questions, everything else.
But the problem is, is that that shit gets boring real quick because I'm, I'm very fast
online doing that.
So they're, they're like, what the hell is he doing?
And it gets tiring looking at a guy just doing that shit.
So after two weeks, they get lazy and bored and they start watching porn instead of watching
me.
At the same time, they've got a keylogger and they've got, they've got Spectre pro
documentation, keyloggers and taking snapshots of everything that I'm doing.
You go every night, it goes on a DVD, ROM on a spindle.
So I'm like, they're not going to go through that shit.
So I'm like, fuck it, start breaking law from inside secret service offices while they're
in the room.
Why not?
That continues for 10 months.
At the same time, the relationship with Elizabeth fell apart, completely fell apart as it would.
Do you have an understanding of why it's just because of the, her heart got broken because
there was lying.
It was the trust.
She felt like she did a lot to sacrifice for the relationship.
You got, you got a woman there that she had even said it.
She was like, she had told one of her friends, we were out having dinner one night and this
is before I got arrested.
She told one of her friends that I was the only guy that ever asked her to stop using
drugs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I have to say that, that part of the story is so, it's so powerful and that she
chose to do it and she chose to stop.
When she told me that, there was one instance, she told me that if she didn't marry me, she
would never be married and as far as I know, she's never been married.
So it started to fall apart there.
Yeah.
Because I was a piece of shit.
Still, you didn't take a step.
And by the way, can I just say how just moving it is, how honest you are, but thank you.
Thank you for being that person.
But at that time, you, there's still that lying.
Oh man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's falling apart.
She had, she wants to start going to strip clubs and I'm like, why not, we'll go.
So we start going to strip clubs and she's, you know, she'll come back and be wasted and
we'll have sex, what have you.
And one night, she looks at me and she was like, she was like, I think it'd be funny
if you got a blowjob from somebody else and that got me.
That got me.
I was like, to me, that was the final straw right there.
I was like, she doesn't care for me anymore or anything else like that.
We've been going to strip clubs.
So I started dating another stripper and she knew something was going on.
And she looks at me one day and she's like, why don't you just tell me that it's over.
And I looked at her and I said, it's over.
We're done.
And I told her, I was like, look, I said, whatever you want, we were renting an apartment.
And I was like, whatever you want in here, take it.
And I said, not only that, but I'll make sure you got money for several months.
So you're all right.
And I was like, just leave me, you know, leave my TV and leave, leave me some, some plates
and stuff.
So I go to work that day at the secret service, come back that night and she's taking everything
and left a picture of herself in the bedroom on the floor.
I'm like, okay, I guess I deserve that.
So she's got, I like her.
She's got, she was cool.
She was cool.
So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm giving her a thousand dollars like every two weeks for some shit
like that.
And it gets to the point because I'm doing this tax fraud from inside the offices.
Well, the debit card companies are pinging the cards.
They start to realize that, hey, some son of a bitch is stealing money using our debit
card.
So they start to shut down the cards before I can pull cash out.
So I start not to have the money to send to her.
And I'm like, so she calls and she's like, look, I have that money.
And I was like, well, look, I'm doing what I can.
You promised money.
And I was like, look, if you knew what I was doing to get this money, you wouldn't be asking
that.
And she's like, I need money.
My rent's behind by a month right now.
And I'm like, you're rents behind?
She's like, yeah.
So I was like, okay, so I pick up the phone, call the rental office.
And I was like, just want to make sure that, you know, I'm sorry, I'm behind on the rent
for this apartment number.
Oh no, that rents paid up three months.
It's like, okay, hang up, call Elizabeth back.
I was like, you're behind on the rent.
And she was like, yeah.
And I was like, funny.
They just said you're up on it three months and she gets quiet and she's like, well, you
lied to me too.
And I was like, you're right.
I did.
I did that.
I was like, but look, I can't do it anymore.
And that's the last time I spoke to her right there.
What happens is, is I was breaking law from inside the offices.
I had a buddy that his name was Sean Mims out of Los Angeles.
I had taught him how to do tax return fraud.
I told Sean, I go missing, right?
I go missing for three months.
I told him, if I ever went missing, not to contact me.
And so I go missing, then I show back up online.
First day he contacts.
So he becomes a target and they identify him pretty quickly at that point.
He's set to be arrested sometime in March of, of six, that's when he's set to be arrested.
And Rolling Stone was the name of the operation.
Nine people were supposed to be arrested that night.
So Secret Service goes in, goes and arrest this guy.
They search his apartment and don't find anything.
The apartment manager comes out and explains to him how Sean has done all kinds of work
to the apartment.
As a matter of fact, he brought in $30,000 worth of Italian tile to put in the apartment
that he's renting.
And by the way, last night he had a U-Haul out here and took out a whole shitload of
stuff.
So Secret Service comes back in.
They look at me and they're like, we need you to take a polygraph.
And my answer was, I ain't taking a polygraph.
So they're like, well, we'll throw you back in jail.
If you don't, I was like, call my lawyer.
Lawyer gets me on the phone.
He's like, you don't have to take the polygraph.
I was like, good, I'm not going to.
He's like, but they will throw you back in jail.
And I was like, don't want to do that.
And he's like, have you done anything?
And I was like, yeah.
And he's like, well, you can try to pass the polygraph.
I'm like, okay.
So I was like, let's take the polygraph.
They asked three questions, questions were, have you talked to anybody?
Have you been on computer outside of the offices?
Have you talked to the press, which I was interviewing with a New York Times writer
the entire time, and then have you contacted or warned anybody about investigations?
And I felt polygraph completely.
So they revoked the bond, took me back down to Charleston County, throw me in a jail.
Three days later, Secret Service shows back up and pulled me out of a cell.
It's Jim Ramacone and Bobby Kirby.
And they were, I mean, honestly, I, they were good men and they gave me chances upon chances
to do the right thing and I was not ready to do that.
And Jim Ramacone and Bobby's in there and Bobby, I mean, Bobby was a friend.
Yeah.
I mean, he truly was.
I later on, a couple of years ago, I had a chance to, a couple of years ago, I had a
chance to, to have lunch with the man and told him I was sorry for everything I did
to him because I got him and him and another agent fired.
And told him I was sorry for what happened and he told me then he's like, we were your
friends, man.
We were truly your friends.
So they were good men.
They wanted to help.
Yeah.
They wanted, they wanted you to be a good man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what got me so damn bad is I told him, I was like, man, I'm trying to be a better
guy.
Yeah.
And he's like, Brett, you always were a good guy.
He just didn't know it.
Fuck.
People like that.
Yeah.
People like that in this world.
Yeah.
You need somebody to basically believe.
Oh man.
That you can be a good man.
So Jim Ramacone pulls me out.
He's the second in charge of, in charge of South Carolina.
He's got the Miranda waiver in front of him, right?
And he looks at me and he's like, I'm playing hard ass.
Bobby's over here looking distraught and you know, like a hurt dog and Jim's like, here's
a way that this is going to work.
He said, you're going to tell me everything you've done the past six years.
I'm going to make up my mission in life to fuck over you and your family.
Yeah.
And he said, not just this case, once you get out of prison, I'll hound you the rest
of your life.
Then he slides the Miranda waiver over and he's like, now you want to talk?
And I looked at him and I was like, nope.
He was like, he gets up, gets all red in the face, storms out on the way out.
He's like, fuck you very much.
So I go back to the cell.
A week later, I was on only under under state charges.
A week later, judge rules, they revoke the bond improperly.
Wow.
Oh, reinstates the bond.
Nobody calls the secret service to tell him I walk out.
I walk out, I was dating this stripper and I told my mom, I was like, well, if they're
going to fuck me, they're going to have to find me.
I just went on the move.
Yeah.
I told this stripper girl up.
I'd given her like 60k, some bullshit like that.
And I told her, I was like, Kim, I need some money.
And she was like, what?
And I was like, look, I said, give me a thousand dollars.
I'll give you back $3,000 in two weeks.
She was like, okay.
So I met her in Augusta, Georgia and got the thousand from her and started driving west
on I-20.
No idea where to go to anything else.
Got to Dallas.
There was a prepaid debit card supplier in Dallas.
And then walked in the office, convinced the guy, social engineering, convinced the guy
to give me 60 prepaid debit cards without a driver's license, without payment anything
else he did.
And that started the run.
I ended up stealing, from that I stole like 160k profit, used that to buy a Jeep Cherokee.
And well, the idea was to steal enough money to bug out to Florianopolis, Brazil and set
up shop down there, do it again.
That was the dream.
That was it.
That was it.
So I was on the run for four months, stole $600,000.
I was in Las Vegas, Nevada.
One day I had stolen the night before I had stolen 160k out of ATMs.
Went in the next, the next morning I woke up, signed on to cartersmarket.com, which was
ran by Max Butler, the Iceman.
And there's my name, US Muslim wanted on it.
And that gets your attention.
It was my real name with the US Muslim wanted beside of it.
They knew my real name in that environment at all.
But then they did.
And it was talking about me being part of the secret service, Operation Anglerfish, everything
else.
So of course, they're all like, they're all like, everybody's after you like, oh yeah,
we're going to get this son of a bitch.
So I sat there looking at it and I was like, set it out loud.
I was like, well, Mr. Johnson, you've made the United States most wanted list.
What do you do now?
And I was like, I'm going to Disney World, literally, literally, literally, said that
out loud.
So loaded up the Jeep drove from Las Vegas to Orlando, Florida, and got the two annual
passes one to Disney World, the other one to Universal Studios paid paid for a timeshare.
They were building these new timeshares right off Universal Drive, building these brand new
timeshares paid for a timeshare nine months cash.
Yeah, I was like, we take cash.
Yeah, we take cash.
There's $12,900.
Then they wasn't furnished, so I went down to a furniture store, bought $30,000 in furniture.
They had seized a DVD collection of mine worth 30 grand, bought that back and proceeded to
go to Disney World every day.
And that lasted about six weeks.
They used a trigger fish is what they use nowadays.
It's called a stingray to find me.
So one day I was, it was like 1030 in the morning on Saturday, September 16th was the
day, 2006, so yeah, 2006, September 16th.
I was used to the builders coming around knocking, making sure everything was all right.
So I was asleep, heard this knock at the door and get up, look through the keyhole, nobody's
there, you know, people, nobody's there.
I was like, huh, open the door, step out into the hallway, walking down the hall is Bobby
Kirby, another South Carolina guy and a Orlando Orange County cop.
And they turn around, they're like, hey, Brett, I'm like, hey, Bobby, how are you?
And it's like, we're good.
How are you?
And I'm like, I'm fine.
Would you like to come in?
And he was like, let's put you in cuffs first.
And I was like, that's probably a good idea.
So he was like, he walks in, he's like, he's like, have you got anything in here?
And I was like, yeah, there was $120,000 in the bedroom.
And he was like, seriously, I was like, yeah, that in an AK-47, his face goes wide and he's
like, you've got a rifle.
And I was like, no, I'm kidding with you.
And he was like, he was like, okay.
So they throw me in jail in Orange County and they give me diesel therapy and diesel
therapy is it took like two weeks to transport me from Orange County, Orlando to Columbia,
South Carolina.
And what happens is, is you stop at every county jail you possibly can go through the
processing, which is about six hours, once you get to your bunk, hey, time to transport
you.
They do that on purpose, on purpose, on purpose.
Where is you down mentally and physically and everything?
I get to Columbia, South Carolina.
Now while I was at Orange County, what happens is this inmate, because we were in federal
holding this inmate, he looks at me, his name was Yeti.
And he's like, hey, man, you know, the only time you get off in federal prison is the
drug program.
I was like, well, man, I don't use drugs.
And he's like, you can find a drug problem, can't you?
And I was like, I can find a drug problem.
So what happens is, is every county jail I stop at on the way to Columbia, I tell them
I'm alcoholic and cocaine.
So by the time I get to Columbia, South Carolina, they've got this paper trail of Mr. Johnson
requesting help for drugs.
I had hired Strom Thurman's son as an attorney.
They make me drop him because I paid for him with illegal funds.
So they give me a public defender.
He gets a psychological evaluation order for me.
So psychologist comes into county jail, four hour interview, about halfway through, he
looks at me, he's like, using any type of drugs.
I was like, yeah, he's like, what do you use?
Cocaine, smoker snort, snort, how much, an eight ball a day.
That's a lot.
Yeah.
I don't have any trouble out of that.
Yeah, I can't get an erection and he looks at me and I'm looking at him like, because
I had gotten that shit from Boogie Nights.
Yeah.
So I like that.
And finally I'm like, is that right?
And he was like, it could happen.
I was like, okay, so that makes it into my pre-sentence report.
So all federal inmates, probation office and prosecutor, they do this detailed background
check to basically tell the judge how much time to give you.
All right.
So that drug bit with that interview makes it into the PSR.
So day of interview, I mean, day of sentencing, I'd plead guilty day of sentencing, the prosecutor,
he stands up and this, this dude is screaming at this point and he's like, Mr. Johnson's
manipulated the secret service, he's manipulated the prosecutor, then he points at the judge
and he's manipulating you today, your honor.
We insist on the upper limits of the guidelines.
Well I had been telling everybody in the jail that if they give me any more than 60 months,
I am not staying.
So they were like, okay, sure.
So the judge looks at me and she's like, I agree.
I'm like, she says 75 months.
So I looked at my lawyer and I was like, can you get the drug program for me?
He's like, I don't know how I ask.
So he stands up, your honor, will you order the drug program for Mr. Johnson?
The judge says, no, but I'll recommend he gets evaluated.
So the secret service had told her, hey, he's full of shit.
So she's like, no, but I'll recommend he gets evaluated.
I looked at my lawyer and I was like, what does that mean?
He was like, you're probably not going to get it.
And I was like, how soon can you get me to the camp?
And he was like, well, if you don't appeal, I can get you there pretty quick.
My exact words were, fuck the appeal.
Get me to the camp.
I'll take it from there.
He looks at me like I'm the biggest idiot in the world.
I get sent to, cause you can get a camp recommended.
I have friends, family members look for camps that don't have a fence around them.
And we settle on Ashland, Kentucky.
Two weeks later, I'm at Ashland, Kentucky and pull up there, 14 foot fence, razor wire
on top.
And I'm like, I don't climb fences.
So I go in.
First question I ask is, are there any jobs outside of the fence?
And he was like, guards like, well, you can work in the national forest.
And I'm like, no, I'll die out there.
And he was like, well, you could do landscaping.
I'm like, I can run a weed eater.
Two days later, I walk into the landscaping office and the cop, this is this, this genius
of some of these people and institutions, the cop behind his desk.
The entire wall is a blown up photo of the compound and the outline area.
So I can literally sit there and plot where I'm going.
All right.
My dad, I hadn't spoken to that man in years and he shows up at my sentencing and stands
up in front of the judge.
And he's like, your honor, I want to make sure Brett gets a good start.
He can live with me when he gets out and everything else.
Looking back, the man met that and I just thought it was bullshit at the time.
So he starts to visit me in prison.
I mean, yeah, in prison, he starts to visit and about the third visit in, he looks at
me.
He's like, I've been reading about you online.
I was like, yeah, he's like, yeah, he's like, that's a lot of money you made.
And I was like, yeah, he's like, you think you can teach somebody how to do that?
So what I used to say, and again, it's this thing of, you know, really coming to terms
with things.
What I used to say was, is I thought my dad was back in my life and he was just trying
to use me.
The truth of the matter was, is that my dad hadn't really seen me except in that frame
of crime, you know, being that criminal with my mom, everything else.
I really think that's how the man was trying to communicate with me.
He wanted to connect with you in the places where you know, where you love, where you're
interested in, where your addiction is essentially.
And what I did is I manipulated the man and helped him escape.
So I agreed to teach him how to do tax fraud and in return, he had the only money he had
to his name.
He had $4,000 cash.
So I manipulated him and he gave me that and to drop me off with change of clothes, a cell
phone and a driver's license.
The only driver's license he had was my driver's license, Brett Johnson.
So I was at the camp for, I don't know, six, eight weeks and the hardest worker that landscaping
had ever seen.
At one point, the cops got me on a mountainside with a broom sweeping off the mountain.
I'm like, yeah, we'll do that.
Absolutely.
They're building trust to the guys there.
Yeah, working my ass off.
And then six weeks I take off and I lasted, I think two, three weeks, something like that.
US Marshals, I made it 100.
Takeoff you escaped.
Yeah.
Escaped.
Escaped.
US Marshals, they're canvassing a three state area.
They found me, I think 250 miles away.
It's like Lexington, Kentucky.
They found me in Lexington because I had to use my real driver's license.
I had a laptop, I had prepaid debit cards and I had stolen identity information.
And kind of what the way it got me was I had dyed my hair this flaming red, you know,
I had this deep tan.
I didn't look anything like myself and I was at a hotel, had the curtains open, saw
this guy, I was on the laptop, saw this guy walk by, he walks by the window and he stops
and then he backs up, he looks inside, he knocks on the window.
I look up at him, he's like, you, I was like, me, he's like, you, then he pulls out this
badge and he points at, he's like, and then he points at the door now.
So I was like, oh, okay, so I open up the door and he's like, US Marshals service.
So they arrest me.
How did they track you down?
They canvassed that area.
They talked to every hotel, everything else.
I had, so it's like a traditional like, traditional police work is what it was.
So it wasn't like from the internet, they kind of got something.
I don't know.
Just, just straight, good, good, good, good.
US Marshals are outstanding in everything they do.
So they arrest me.
I go to a, I'm initially held at a county jail in Moorhead, Kentucky and that's, man,
that was one hell of an experience there, but then I'm transferred after sentencing
on that.
So sentencing, here's the weird thing.
So I spent like, uh, I think two or three months at the county jail in Moorhead, Kentucky.
Get sentenced at my sentencing.
It happens so quickly after the initial sentencing that they use the exact same pre-sentence
report, the report that's got all that drug shit in there.
So I'm a sentencing, prosecutors there, secret services there, judge me and my, my attorney
prosecutor stands up.
Honor, we would like it if you would consider that when Mr. Johnson was arrested, he had
a laptop, he had all this information with him.
Looks like he was engaged in identity theft yet again.
Judge looks at the prosecutor says, no, says, Hey, if you're going to charge him with it,
you should have charged him with it.
I'm only considering the escape.
Then he looks at me and he's like, Mr. Johnson, he said, it looks like by you keeping your
mouth shut right now, you're really saving yourself a pretty serious charge.
And my response was, yes, your honor.
And he was like, then he opens up the pre-sentence report, he's fingering through and he's like,
it also looks like before you got involved with all these drugs, you were a pretty good
citizen.
I was like, yes, your honor.
And he's like, so here's what I'm going to do.
He said, I'm going to give you 18 months on the escape.
I was like, okay.
He said, I'm also going to give you, no, it was 15 months on the escape.
He said, I'm going to give you 15 months on the escape.
He said, and I'm also going to order the drug program for you.
I was like, yes, your honor.
So the drug program gives you a year off and it gives you six months and halfway house.
So by escaping, I got out of prison three months earlier than what I should have gotten
out of.
So the original thing about drugs worked in the long, now the interesting thing with that
and it's the best lie I ever told, honestly, the best lie I ever told, I spent eight months
in solitary confinement, eight months.
And that's an experience because you ain't got no books for the first month or so.
Then they give you a King James Bible.
Bible.
Yeah.
And then for a month, no books, so this is a pretty small and six by nine room, six by
nine.
Yeah.
No books.
No books.
No paper.
No pen.
No pencil.
You're alone with your mind.
You got a mat, a toilet.
What's that like?
It's, you sleep as much as you can.
You're sleeping 16, 18 hours a day is what you're doing.
What about, what are you thinking about even just going back to like Elizabeth?
You think about-
Oh, you go through all that.
The whole thing.
Through all that.
Every bit.
Your mom too.
Yeah.
And so you're supposed to get out an hour a day.
Law says you're supposed to get out an hour a day.
That's the law.
That's not the way things actually happen.
What actually happens is, is you're lucky to get out an hour a week.
You take a shower twice a week and that's, that's it.
You got a phone call once a month.
Oh, so you don't get to see nature.
Don't see anything.
You're getting solitaire.
All right.
And it takes about a week.
The first week is the roughest.
You're bouncing off the walls at first week because you can't sleep, can't do anything
else.
Then you start to adapt to it after a while.
When that book does arrive, you're happy as hell to have it.
I'm well versed in the King James Bible, so you're happy to have it.
Then finally you get other books that are coming, that come in from that point.
Spent eight months at that and they sent me out to a real prison.
Big Spring, Texas, West Texas, where, have you been out there?
No.
Man, prairie dogs and tarantulas is what it is.
It got, no kidding.
It gets so hot that warnings come on the radio, radio telling you not to drive on certain
streets because they're melted.
That's that's big spring.
So if you've seen the movie from dusk till dawn, the opening scene is in Big Spring,
it's just hot, very hot.
So and that's where I find out what a real prison is and it's not ran by guards.
Prisons are ran by inmates and that's a fact.
So you're met at the door by whatever race you are is what happens.
So Big Spring is a converted Air Force compound.
It's a disciplinary prison.
So you get the bad guys are in there.
I go through processing and I'm walking up to the unit and I met at the door by a guy
named Nick Sandifer.
He's the treasurer of the Aryan Brotherhood.
And first question out of his mouth is any more white guys come in and shit.
I didn't know.
I was like, I don't know.
Four or five.
Next question is what are you in here for?
My answer was, cause I'm like, I got no worries.
My answer was computer crime, smiled at him.
And it turns out wrong thing to say because computer crime is not credit card theft or
hacking or any bullshit like that.
Computer crime in prison is child pornography.
So tell him that he looks at me like I'm a piece of shit, goes and gets his buddies.
They circle around.
What are you in here for?
I like how the Aryan Brotherhood has like lines they're like, oh yeah, this child porn.
That's it.
That's the bad guy.
They circle around.
What did you say you're in here for?
So I'm sitting there trying to explain it to them.
They're like, you know, you tell a good story.
You still said this.
Now computer crime basically really does mean usually the child pornography.
In prison.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what you see, and that's one of the things you find out that the guys that are going
in there for child porn, they will tell them it's credit card theft.
So yeah.
Right.
They've learned.
So I'm that guy.
But you also don't, I mean, for people who are just listening to this.
You don't exactly look like a typical computer hacker.
That's true.
That's true.
That's very true.
But I don't look like the pedophile either.
That's right.
That's right.
But it's like, it doesn't make it seem like you're, I mean, I guess you're not wearing
a hoodie and you're not like emo dark, you know.
The way it actually works in prison, they won't attack you until they know.
All right.
So they have to see paperwork, which now in federal prison, you don't get transported
with paperwork because of that.
So they have to see paperwork or a guard will tell them what you're in there for.
Guards will tell who the pedophiles are.
So none of the guards told them that was anything.
So for the first month, they think I am, but they're not doing anything because they don't
know for sure.
At the end of the first month, I'd been talking to Kevin Polson over at Wired Magazine about
Max Butler.
He does an article about that shows up in Wired Magazine.
So at the end of the first month, Wired Magazine hits compound, front cover, all the story.
You would think, you would think it saved me.
So I'm reading the article really happy about it.
So what happens is, is four o'clock is mail call, four o'clock is a standup count nationwide.
After four o'clock is your mail call, they hand out all the mail for the day.
So the mail comes, I get the magazine, I'm reading through, I'm like, well, I'm good
to go.
Then it says Brett Johnson, secret service informant in the article.
So you're now a snitch, which is right up there with the pedophiles.
So we go to dinner after that at dinner.
You can hear it.
You can hear the chat.
We got a snitch.
I think it's that guy over there.
We got Warden next day shuts down the entire compound, calls me into his office.
They got security there.
You got the counselors there and everything else.
Warden looks at me, he's like, did you give an interview to Wired magazine?
I'm like, yeah, he's like, do you not know they will kill you in here?
I was like, he was like, he was like, do you feel safe?
Well, I know if you tell me you don't feel safe, they transport you.
Transport you means another eight months in solitary confinement.
You start to see shit in solitary after a while.
So I'm like, no, not going to do that.
So I'm like, completely safe.
He was like, look, he's like, if anybody says anything to you, immediately come to us because
they'll fucking kill you.
So they do a locker search, try to confiscate the magazines.
They can't.
The next day I walk into the unit, there's Nick Sander for laying on his bunk, magazine
wide open reading it.
I'm like, oh shit.
Walked up to him.
I was like, hey, Nick, what are you doing?
He's like, oh, doing some reading.
I was like, anything interesting?
He's like, it's getting there.
I was like, I was like, let me save you the trouble.
Take the magazine, turn it over to the page.
I was like, right there is what you're looking for.
He was like, man, I already knew.
I was like, do we have a problem?
And he looks at me.
He's like, is anyone on the compound you told on?
I was like, no, he's like, until someone gets here, you snitched on.
We're okay.
I was like, okay.
He's like, but I need you to do something for me.
All right.
So in federal prison, you got to have a job.
Everybody works.
Doesn't matter what you do, but you got to work.
I got a job in education teaching a lit class every Wednesday, six, eight, 30 p.m.
lit and had all every area on the compound signs up for the lit class had a couple guards
every now and then popped in and did we teach lit?
No, we taught fraud every Wednesday, six, eight, 30 p.m.
That's how I didn't get my ass beaten and my other job, I had two jobs with them.
The other job, you get to the point, it's weird, man.
You get to the point.
People walking off the bus, you know, immediately two groups of people, you know who the bank
robbers are immediately just by them walking off the bus, you're like, that motherfuckers
are bank robber and you know who the pedophiles are immediately.
So my job as the white guy was to approach the white pedophiles and have a conversation
and the conversation was basically, Hey, don't know what you're in here for.
Don't care what you're in here for.
But if you got some sort of fucked up charge, you need to tell me if you tell me everything
is going to be all right.
If you don't tell me you see those guys over there, if you start to associate with them
or they start to talk to you and then they find out you're in here on something, they're
going to kill you.
And what are the things, pedophile?
Pedophile rapist, anything that harms children, harms women, anything like that.
There are, it's like the mob, there's rules, there's an ethical code.
Even if you have the division between races on all that, you still have this, these lines
drawn.
And what that looks.
And there's hierarchy too.
Very, very much so.
What it looks like in prison, depending on the, it depends on the security class that
you're in, what, what, what level prison.
But at that prison, what that looked like was you're not allowed to talk to anybody.
You're not allowed to watch television.
You can go to the library.
You don't associate with anyone except your own type.
If you do anything like this, we will kill you.
If we, if someone wants to extort you, we will do that too, and you won't tell on us
or we'll kill you.
So that's, that's the way that works at that point.
And everybody quickly learns this quickly, quickly.
And so typically the guys would say, I just want to do my own time.
That would be the line.
And it's like, okay, don't mess with him.
All right.
Every now and then you'd have somebody lie and that would come with those types of consequences.
Uh, I got to see, uh, while I was there, saw two people murdered, saw, went through three
prison riots and through my entire tenure in prison, saw four suicides.
The people who got killed, it was, uh, so we had an outside, you had this track, a third
of a mile track.
You walk and counterclockwise and inside of the track, you got two handball courts.
So of an evening that happened both times, you, all of us would be walking, you know,
doing our exercises.
And at the top of the key, like a flock of birds, you'd see all the inmates start to
migrate down toward the gate.
So the first time you see that, you see that migration, you look up in the distance and
this other, that one of the inmates got another inmate down and he's just hammering his head
right into the pavement like that right there.
Well, guards don't stop that because the guard may get hurt.
So a guard is 15 minutes coming out to stop that till everything's over.
By that point, the guy doesn't have a head.
They shut the compound down and this is what happens.
So you shut the entire compound down.
They make two lines of the inmates and what happens is inmate walks into a room.
They shut the door behind the inmate guard, ask him two questions.
First question is, did you see anything?
The answer is no.
Second question is, if you had seen anything, would you say anything?
Answer is no.
The guard then says, get the fuck out and that's it.
Anybody that stays in any longer than that is automatically suspect.
So there was, there was one incident, I remember this Hispanic guy.
He's in there for a few minutes and everybody's like, what's going on?
So his people then call him over, explain to us what went on and it happens like that.
It's fascinating that because you talked about the network of trust in the cyber crime community
and here's a network of trust in the prison crime community.
Trust.
Trust matters.
Trust drives everything at the end of the day.
The riots that I went through, the first riot, man, you're scared to death.
Scared to death.
You know, you've got the cops dressed up in the Ninja Turtle outfits.
You've got the rubber bullets, the tear gas canisters, all that crap.
You got the inmates that are raising hell, scared to death.
The second riot, you calm down.
Second riot, you start to notice.
This is a racial riot.
This is typically in almost all ways, it's Hispanic, South African Americans.
So you get to detect what is the motivation for the riot was reason and that gives you
some calm.
That's exactly right.
So the second riot, you start to notice this.
Hey, man.
This ain't me.
This ain't our group.
Yeah.
Third riot, no shit.
Third riot, you lay in your bunk and you let them wage war all around you and every now
that you have an inmate, they'll run up to you and they'll point to a locker and say,
is that your locker?
And if you tell them, yes, they leave it alone.
If you say it's not my locker, they'll break into it and steal everything out of it and
go from there.
And that's what happens.
But so you did your time for five years, five and a half, five and a half.
You made it out.
I went through the, I told you it was a good lie that I told, I went through the residential
drug abuse program.
It's a nine month intensive therapy.
And the way I got to that, this counselor at Big Spring, he, he bought this.
He wanted inmates to be educated.
He was a really good guy.
So he wanted inmates to be educated.
He got a discount on a game theory class set.
So he gets all these discs and everything and he's, he's asking, does anybody on the
compound know anything about game theory?
And somebody says, if anybody does, it'll be Brett Johnson.
So he comes up to me one day and my buggy is like, are you Brett Johnson?
I was like, yeah.
He was like, do you know anything about game theory?
And I was like, yes, I do.
So I start rattling off prisoners to lemon and everything else.
He's like, will you teach a class?
So I start teaching that.
I start teaching inmates, a public speaking and to make friends with this counselor.
So I, I get, it gets time where I'm supposed to be transferring out to this drug program
that they only had in Fort Worth and the transfers are taking like four or five months.
That's four or five months.
I could be out free.
So I walked, I went up to him one day and I was like, look, his name was Keely.
I was like, look, man.
I said, is there any way that I can get transferred out any sooner?
And he looks at me and he's like, Brett, I cannot help you.
And I was like, I appreciate that.
Thank you so much for even trying.
So he said that a week later, I'm on a bus by going to Fort Worth.
So he got to Fort Worth.
I got it.
Yeah.
I love it.
So it was a nine month program, 24 hours a day of cognitive behavioral therapy, had nothing
to do with drugs.
It was all peer, peer study stuff and CBT training and honestly, it's the best thing that could
ever happen.
It truly is.
That part.
What, what is it?
What was the thing that changed you as a man?
Was it the solitary confinement?
Was it the years?
Was it losing the people you loved or was it that behavioral therapy?
It's a combination, man.
It's a combination.
It was, so my sister disowns me.
The only person I had in my life, you know, I mean, me and my sister, that's it.
You know, I mean, yeah, I loved Elizabeth.
I love my wife now, but you know, it's me and my sister.
We went through all that shit together.
So Denise disowns me, she doesn't talk to me for an entire year when all this stuff
happens.
And, uh, after I get arrested on the escape, she, uh, she ends up driving seven hours to
come see me to tell me she loves me and I don't see her again for five and a half years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's, that's really the first turnaround.
Took me two and a half years in prison to accept responsibility.
Two and a half.
That was amazing that she did that.
Yeah.
She drove down.
Yeah.
She did that.
Yeah.
She, uh, saw me for 10 minutes, tell me she loves me and, uh, then I don't see her again.
Planted the seed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, uh, but yeah, you had time to think.
Yeah.
Over those years.
Took two and a half years to, uh, to realize that, you know, I didn't commit crime because
of stripper girlfriends or wives or family.
I committed it because I wanted to, chose to, and, um, that's the first turnaround.
Second turnaround is like the CBT training, you know, that, um, it didn't, it didn't really
hit while I was in prison.
You know, I went through it and they ingrained it in you, but until you choose to, to make
it work, it doesn't work.
So I got out in 2011, didn't want to break the law.
Did not.
And, uh, I was under three years probation, couldn't touch the computer.
I had a job offer from a Deloitte to run a cyber crime office in the UK, which that was
a no.
No, you're not moving.
And that's the computer idiot.
Oh, yeah, then, uh, had a job offer from a no before a fishing company, couldn't take
that, uh, got to where I was trying to apply for fast food jobs.
That's a computer.
Can't touch that.
Okay.
Then what about a waiters position?
Well, that's a computer and access to credit cards.
Idiot.
Can't touch that either.
So literally could not get a job.
Could not, um, doing food stamps.
I had a roommate that, uh, penned half the rent.
They tell you when you leave prison to, uh, to get a job and something you care about
and you won't recidivate.
Couldn't get a job.
And what I had was a cat monster, the cat, that was a cat's name and, uh, I had had enough
money to feed that little guy and didn't have money to buy toilet paper for the apartment.
So, uh, there's a, I was on Panama city beach.
How long were you living like this?
It was a steady decline because remember I taught my dad how to commit tax fraud.
So he bankrolled a lot of that until he couldn't.
And then from there it's like, what the fuck do you do?
So I didn't want to go into computer crime at all.
And, um, I ended up shoplifting toilet paper, man, shoplifting toilet paper.
Just like for the basics, the basics of survival.
So about the same time I had a friend that, uh, this guy, I, I've been dating the same
type of women I had been dating, you know, these, you know, the unhealthy ones, the hot
unhealthy ones.
Yes.
Love.
Yeah.
That's how that works.
Yeah.
So I had a friend post an ad for me on plenty of fish and this woman responds, uh, my wife,
she responds and the pictures I had taken where these prison type pictures, you know,
the serious like, yeah, they were there and she sends me a message of, why aren't you
smiling?
And my response was, that is my happy face.
So we start talking and, uh, we started dating.
And she ends up, she's that second saving thing, man, she, uh, I ended up moving in
with her.
I was going broke.
I was about to get kicked out of the apartment and everything else and she didn't say it,
but I think she knew it and, uh, moved in with her and I got a job and the job I got
my probation officer and let me have a cell phone.
I was going through Craig's list.
This guy was advertising for landscaping called him up.
His name was Dustin Duramus called him up and he was like, come on down and talk to
me.
So he was running this business him and his brother were out of his house.
So I'm sitting there talking to him for about 20 minutes.
He looks at me and he's like, can I ask you a question?
And I was like, yeah, he's like, are you on the run or something?
So I'm like, no, why?
And he's like, well, you just don't look like the kind of guy that do this.
So I told him, I was like, this is who I am.
This is what I've done.
And, uh, he looks at me and he's like, man, I got to think about that.
So he, uh, he tells me to go on home that was a Friday, Sunday evening.
He gives me a call and he was like, Brett is like, if I hire you, will you actually
work?
And I told him, I was like, Dustin, if you'll give me a job, I promise I'll work my
ass off.
And he's like, show up six o'clock.
I was like, all right.
So my job was to push a lawnmower 10 hours a day, five days a week for $400 a week and
busted my ass.
I hit it so hard, I would, uh, I had come in of a night and pass out, wake up the next
morning and hit it again.
And, uh, it got to the point.
He ended up, uh, this dude ended up offering me to come in a partner with his business.
His brother dropped out and he, uh, by that point, I've not learned everything on the
business and everything.
And he was like, you know, if you'd like to come in, I'll cut you in half.
And I was like, Dustin, I don't, I can't do it, man.
Cause I wasn't making any money when he didn't want to pay me anymore until, you know, he
was able to do more.
And, uh, I thought I found another job doing something else.
I, in a speech, I say it got cold in the grass, started to stop growing.
The truth of the matter was, is I thought I found another job, uh, guy was offering to
pay me $1,500 a week doing the, uh, sales for, uh, uh, oil rig training was what it was.
And, um, I accepted the job, I quit working for Dustin and the guy, um, I told him before
he even offered me a job, I told him what, you know, my criminal history, cause I was
required to do that.
So I was supposed to start work.
Well, he calls me and tells me if he can't hire me.
So I'm out of work and Dustin's already hired somebody else by that point.
So I can't go back with him.
And, uh, I'm that guy again, man, I, I, it's important for me to, uh, to show value in
a relationship.
All right.
So, uh, Michelle was on the one working and I'm like, I got to do something and, uh,
I get it in my head.
I was like, you know, if nothing else, I can just bring food in the house.
She was only making, I think she was, she was, I mean, we were headed hard, you know,
it was just her, her working and, uh, I was like, I didn't know if I can bring food in
the house and get on the dark web, get some stolen credit cards, start ordering food.
Well, it gets worse than that.
It, uh, you know, she's got two sons there, so I'm like, well, they need clothes.
So he started stealing clothes and it continues like that.
I get arrested.
I get arrested, uh, on a food order and, um, Michelle didn't know what I was doing.
So she, uh, she had been to work and she was coming back from work.
I get arrested.
And I'm like, uh, they let me make a phone call and I call her and I say, come to police
station.
I've been arrested and, uh, she shows up and, uh, she didn't know I'd been doing that.
My probation officer, of course, he didn't know or anything else, um, at my sentencing
for that probation officer was there, prosecutor, the judge, us marshals, Michelle and me,
Michelle stands up and she tells the judge that I'm a better dad to her kids than their
actual father is.
And, uh, but that point I'm crying probation officer stands up and he was like, uh, we
think Mr. Johnson's a good guy.
We think this is a one time thing prosecutor says the same thing.
Judge sentences me to one year probation officer stands back up and he was like, uh, Mr. Johnson
at judge, if you can give Mr. Johnson a year and a day, he can get the good time and get
back to his family center.
So the judge amends the sentence to a year and a day.
So I served 10 months.
They sent me back to Texas and that's what I find out that, uh, Michelle didn't need
me for what I could give her.
She just wanted me for me that entire time.
She stands by me the entire time I do my 10 months, get out, we get married after that
and they kill probation.
So I can touch a computer and they tell you, they tell you, they were like, you know, inmates
a felon.
If nothing else, he can sell cars.
Well, it turns out you can't.
You can sell cars if you're a drug dealer.
If you're the guy that steals all the money and people's information, no, no, you can't
get a job selling cars.
So can't get a job.
Cannot.
And, uh, to this day, Lex, I know what my, what my triggers are.
I know what it would take to get me back into committing crime and I knew I'd go so far
at that point.
So I looked at Michelle and I was like, let me see what I can do.
Signed on to LinkedIn, reached out to this FBI super cop named Keith Malarski out of
the Pittsburgh office.
He was involved with my arrest and some associates and everything else and, uh, sent him a message
and the message was, you know, hey, I respect everything you did.
I think you did a great job.
By the way, I'd like to be legal and, uh, dude responded within two hours, two hours.
He, uh, gives me references, advice, takes me in under his wing, everything else like
that.
And from that point, man, it was the head of the identity theft council did the same
thing.
Uh, card not present group hires me to speak.
Microsoft hires me to, uh, consult with them and the Microsoft hire established enough
trust in the industry that, uh, I was all right from that point.
So now you're helping in many ways fight the very guy that you used to be.
So big picture advice, what, given that you were that guy, how do we fight cyber crime
today and in the next five years, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, what advice do you have
to individuals, to companies, to governments of what, and also to, uh, Elizabeth, like
the humans, human beings that love, that live, that are friends with cyber criminals.
There's so many lessons to really be had from that.
You know, to me, the, the lesson, the, one of the big lessons to me is, is, uh, you can't
serve two masters, you know, if you're, uh, if you're that guy that is committing crime
or that person that's addicted or you're, um, you're in love with somebody that's addicted
or has that, they don't love you.
They love that addiction.
That comes first.
It's always going to come first.
So you have, you have to realize that you have to know when to, uh, kind of when to cut
somebody off, when to end something that, that knowing that they're not going to change
until they decided to change.
At the same time, you got to realize that the only reason I was able to turn my life
around is because people took that chance on me.
Yeah.
You know, that's really the only reason they believe that there's a good person in there.
Yeah.
If, if, if Malarski hadn't responded, if I hadn't had my sister, my wife, these companies
that, that initially gave me that chance, my ass would be back in prison for 20 years.
I have no doubt about that at all.
All right.
So you have to realize that, um, you know, cyber crime, a lot of companies that I talk
to, they don't really understand the, or appreciate the, uh, that networking aspect, that, that
trust aspect of how criminals establish trust with each other, how they work together.
A lot of companies think that it's a single player that's out victimizing them.
And when you really break down how cyber crime operates, that you've got a, a group of individuals
that are working together to hit you, but not only hit you, but they share and exchange
information freely.
You know, companies don't do that.
You've got privacy concerns, you've got competitive edge concerns, everything else.
Companies don't share information across the board like, like criminals do.
Criminals do that.
Um, you have to appreciate that.
You have to understand that, that big statistic that 90% of their tax use known exploits is
not the stuff we don't know about, it's the shit we do know about.
We're not doing anything about.
So the way to defend against cyber crime is like, there's a lot of low hanging fruit
they should fix.
A lot of that.
A lot of that.
Sort of a lot of basic stuff that's already vulnerabilities, updates, assistance, security.
Now that doesn't take care of solar winds or CNAP or anything like that.
It doesn't.
But those instances, I mean, that, okay, that's a big instance, but I mean, it is, but in
the full spectrum of, especially in the future, uh, because there's more and more companies
are coming online.
Right.
They're becoming digital.
And it's just more and more and more and those vulnerabilities in terms of human nature.
So the first social engineering and the actual outdated systems, all of it, and some of it,
I guess is the, uh, I mean, you're exceptionally good at this is educating on the social engineering
side.
Right.
Is educating people and companies that.
You've got to do that.
You've got, and companies have to, you know, I made that point that they never report to
law enforcement.
That's companies and individuals.
Yeah.
You know, I've worked with fortune 50 companies that will not press charges instead.
They'll have that insider or that criminal sign an NDA, they'll pay them off and we won't
mention the shit anymore.
You have to be, you have to press charges.
You have to report.
You have to raise the awareness of everyone in the group.
You have to be, it's that, it's that idea.
And I've talked about that before of understanding your place in that cyber crime spectrum.
The way a criminal will victimize you depends on who you are and what you do as a person
and as a business.
So you have to understand that design security around that, you know, we've got 7,500 security
companies out there.
A whole lot of them are snake oil salesman.
A lot of them is going to tell you that we're the one stop solution, but you're not.
You're not.
You're a tool.
All right.
And you may have a very good tool, but it's not the only tool that's needed to protect
against the attacks that are out there.
We have to be open and honest about that kind of stuff if we're not.
So I guess defending defense is not just like one tool.
It's the process of just like a diversity and just constantly educating people.
Absolutely.
So it's the social side.
It's constantly, because there's so many probably attack vectors in terms of the software
that you have.
You have to look at it.
That's that attack surface.
You can't plug everything.
It's too damn large to plug everything.
But you can do the best job you can possibly do, but it takes a variety of tools to do
that.
All right.
The idea, and Arcos is big about that, but the idea is to take the cost of fraud to the
fraudsters so high that they basically try to pick another target.
All right.
And that's the idea that you want.
You want it to be not worth the criminal's time to hit your company.
What about white hat hacking?
So like, you know, hacking for good, sort of testing systems and then giving companies
the vulnerabilities as you find them.
I think it's outstanding.
I do.
I think that I think pen testing, white hat stuff is outstanding.
I truly do.
I think that that's you have to.
It has to be tempered with what is reality as well though.
All right.
You know, we've got a whole industry of people who try to sell RFID wallets, but I don't
know if many RFID hackers out there on the criminal side, be honest with you.
Yeah.
So some of it is just like a psychological safety blanket that's not actually providing
any protection.
By the way, you wrote on LinkedIn something about ID me.
What is it?
Well, is it a problem?
I was going down a rabbit hole.
I was wondering if you were going to mention that, you know, they, they lost, I guess
I was partially responsible for them losing an $86 million contract.
What was the contract with the government?
The IRS.
Yeah.
Just the IRS.
So what is it?
So ID me is an identity.
Okay.
Backtrack.
ID me is a marketing company that wants to say they're an identity verification company.
I just want to bring this up to see you get angry.
I'll tell you what my issue is.
My issue is.
So it's a company that's used for authentication by the IRS, I guess.
Well, IRS Social Security Administration, VA at 1.23 state unemployment offices, a few
other services.
So I guess the idea is that you would be able to unlock your account or get, you know, authenticate
yourself as a human being by using your face or something like that.
No private information.
They've got a, they've got a tiered system or the verification they've got.
You can do, they've got a free system, which is questionable where you submit an ID and
it's been shown several bypasses been shown.
And I don't want to talk about their security horribly bad because I want to be honest,
there are bypasses for a lot of security systems out there.
Right.
All right.
The, the issue that I have with ID me is that their policies are somewhat questionable.
I don't care if you're a private company that has those policies in place, but if you're
a government agency and you as a citizen are entitled to a benefit or a service of that
government agency, and then the government agency forces you to give up your complete
identity profile to a private company.
And then that private company uses that profile for marketing purposes to further profit things
like that.
I have a huge issue with that.
I don't care if you're a private company that does that.
I just don't think the citizens need to be forced into doing that in order to get a benefit
or service that they're entitled to.
So that's, that's my big issue.
So that, I mean, given how much value, how much we talked about the value of identity,
you don't think that should be handed over lightly?
No, absolutely not.
And who would have thought that Brett Johnson would ever become a privacy advocate?
But here I am.
I mean, it's just people don't understand or appreciate the value of who they are.
You know, and, and certainly you've got a host of companies, ID means not the only one,
but you've got some of these companies that say, well, we strip out the PII of the individual
we're just using the biometrics and the sites they're visiting and things like that.
That's identity.
That is, you can still ping that one unique individual out of all using that information
stripping out the PII, you can still ping who that individual is.
So having lived the life of crime for many years, I'm sure you've connected indirectly
to a large number of very dangerous people.
Indirectly indirectly.
Yeah.
But the network indirectly is even larger, right?
Oh yeah.
Are you, and I apologize for this question, are you ever worried for your life, for your
well-being?
Like having seen a world that's really dangerous in ways that's not, that operates in the shadows.
You know, like I said, when I, when we started Shadow Crew and started that initial cyber
crime business, that world, violence wasn't there.
It came in later.
Now violence is inherent in the system to do the mighty Python that it's, it's part
of it.
The mob, the mafia are now part of this whole thing.
Cartels are part of it.
Drugs are inherently intertwined in cyber crime marketplaces because of the profit potential.
And with that comes a lot of violence as well.
The cartels already brought the violence that they're good at from the 20th century into
the technology of the 21st century.
Now, do I worry about that?
It's interesting that, that my family worries about that, all right?
I think I may be just too involved in it to, to appreciate that type of, of danger.
But my family worries about that.
They do.
Do I think it's a possibility?
I'm the guy that says what needs to be said.
I've made, I've built my trust in this industry by not being scared of calling out companies
and individuals and not being scared of targeting criminals or criminal groups.
Your honesty as a human being emotionally and intellectually is really refreshing.
So it's a gift and thank you, thank you for doing that.
Is there a device you can give to young people today about life?
You broke many rules, all the rules.
Some rules should be broken.
So if you look at somebody young today in high school and college thinking how they
can break the rules legally and live a life that's something they could be really proud
of, what would you say?
Biggest lesson I've learned.
You want your life to be one where you're helping people and not hurting people.
And that really hit me the first time I walked into Quantico.
You see the brightest minds in the United States who give up a lot of money, the opportunities
of a lot of money because they believe in helping people.
Where I spent a career just hurting and harming individuals, that's a hell of a lesson.
And I'm glad I'm there.
But I would tell people out there, it's fine to want money.
It's fine to do that, it's fine to test systems.
It's fine to circumvent the rules if you're not breaking the law.
It's fine to do all that.
I like doing that, all right?
But if you've got the mindset, if you can just adhere to the mindset of helping people
and not hurting people, I think you'll be all right at the end of the day.
What gives you, again, given the dark web, given all the dangers out there, what gives
you hope about the future?
Going into five, 10 years, 50 years, I mean hope for human civilization.
If we do all right, if we make it out of this century, what do you think would be the reason?
That's a damn good question.
I mean, we got a lot of bad stuff going on.
We got a lot of reasons.
If I asked you the other question of how do you think human civilization will destroy
itself, I'm sure you have a lot of answers.
What gives me hope is you see people working together.
COVID's have been a little bit different because I think too many people wanted to play politics
with it.
That's been the heartbreaking thing about COVID is it's in many ways pulled people apart.
Because a virus involves kind of being afraid of each other because, I mean, that was a
scary thing, people talk about pandemics in that way, that you're afraid of other humans.
That is the most terrifying thing.
It's not the destructive nature of what it does to your body, it's just that it pulls
people apart.
Then you realize how fundamental that human connection is to humans.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
As human beings, we do, when things really get bad, when things really get bad, we do
tend to respond and group together.
We do that.
When there's injustice, we see it, we rise up.
I wake up in the morning and I watch Fox News and CNN so I can be pissed off at everyone.
The division, the outrage, they're really feeding, they want you, they want you to be
angry.
Yeah.
That's what causes me to spare and what I think that we just need to.
Elizabeth was very good.
She taught me one hell of a lesson because before I met her, I was a newshound, news
beyond all the time, a couple of channels of it.
She was the woman who didn't watch the news at all.
I didn't understand that back then, man, but now I do.
Now I'm pretty smart.
Don't need to listen to that bullshit as it is.
That's why I love reading history books.
I feel like that's the right perspective on take on modern times.
How will this time be written about in the history books and react to that, the daily
ups and downs of the outrages, which is getting worse and worse in terms of how quick the
turnaround is in terms of the news.
I'll tell you what, I'm sitting here, I appreciate you talking to me.
I do because I'm talking about that relationship and everything.
It's really been this realization for me on a lot of things, so I really appreciate you
asking those questions and everything, me being able to talk about that.
I love it that you value, first of all, you're self-aware how important love is in a human
being's life.
It can make you do some of the best and some of the worst things in this world, and it's
good to think about that.
It's good to think about that.
That is what makes us human is that connection and that love for each other.
What do you think is the meaning of life, this big, ridiculous question?
What are we all here for?
I don't think it is ridiculous, man.
To me, that meaning of life is finding out that lesson that we need to help each other.
You ask about security, I didn't get to say that, but everybody's worried about themselves.
The way you solve that security problem is it takes everybody looking out for everyone
else.
That's how you solve that problem.
However you take, whatever journey you take to discovering that point.
Yeah.
With me, I've been asked a few times, do you regret anything, would you change anything?
I've done a shitload of despicable things in my life, but I'm at a point in my life
where I like who I am and I know that I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing
in my life.
When I change anything, as bad as a lot of that shit has been, I wouldn't.
It made you who you are.
The whole of it.
That's right to say that, but it's true.
That's the weird thing, it's true.
Also you mentioned that you're thinking of launching a show.
What's it going to be called?
You've done a couple of podcasts, you're incredibly good at this.
So good at this.
I've done a couple.
I'm on a lot of podcasts and everything like that.
I had the fraud cast with a friend of mine, Carice Hendrick, and that ended because of
a difference of opinion, depending on who you ask.
One of us was an asshole, and it may have been me, but then I did the Anglerfish podcast,
which I got to be honest with you, Lex, it was completely directionless and it was Brett
Johnson getting lazy.
So I ended that.
The Brett Johnson show is launching with the next.
That's the new one.
That's the new one.
That's what the new one is called.
What do you think of doing with it?
Making a difference for one thing, but it's going to be talking about cyber crime security,
helping people.
Interviews.
Interviews.
A lot of it's going to be solo.
Now I'm calling it the Brett Johnson show, because it's going to handle crime, talk to
criminals and how they turn their lives around to a degree as well.
But there's some shit I want to bitch about too.
So figure it out.
I can tell you're good at this.
I'm a fan already.
I want to listen.
I want to subscribe.
You should too.
You're launching it soon.
Soon.
Next week.
Brett, you're an incredible human being.
The honesty, the love, I could just see how much of yourself you put out there.
One of the best public speakers I've ever heard, definitely you should be in a Scorsese
film about cyber crime, 100%, I could tell you're a good actor.
It makes perfect sense.
Anyway, I really, I'm deeply honored that you've spent your time with me today.
I am too.
It was amazing.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Brett Johnson.
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now let me leave you with some words from George R.R.
Martin from A Clash of Kings.
A good act does not wash out the bad, nor bad act, the good.
Each should have its own reward.
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.