Lex Fridman Podcast - #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal

Episode Date: March 27, 2022

Brett Johnson was a US Most Wanted cybercriminal, called the Original Internet Godfather by US Secret Service for building the the first organized cybercrime community called ShadowCrew, which was the precursor to today's darknet and darknet markets. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Public Goods: https://publicgoods.com/lex and use code LEX to get $15 off - NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour - Blinkist: https://blinkist.com/lex and use code LEX to get 25% off premium - MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex to get 15% off - Onnit: https://lexfridman.com/onnit to get up to 10% off EPISODE LINKS: Brett's Twitter: https://twitter.com/GOllumfun Brett's Website: https://anglerphish.com PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (08:47) - Early years (43:05) - Phishing and social engineering (1:01:09) - SolarWinds cyberattack (1:06:56) - Future social engineering fears (1:09:37) - Early cybercrimes (1:22:10) - Cybercrime entrepreneurship (1:25:39) - ShadowCrew (1:56:42) - Dark web (2:05:29) - ShadowCrew arrested (2:17:28) - Cybercrime (2:22:34) - Love (2:54:39) - Prison (3:22:50) - Life after prison (3:44:39) - Advice for young people (3:46:03) - Hope for the future (3:49:32) - Meaning of life

The following is a conversation with Brett Johnson, a former cyber criminal who built the first organized cybercrime community called Shadow Crew that is the precursor to today's Darknet and Darknet markets. He is referred to by the United States Secret Service as, quote, the original Internet Godfather. He has been the central figure in a cybercrime world for almost 20 years, placed on the US most wanted list in 2006 before being convicted of 39 felonies for cybercrime, escaped from prison, and then eventually being locked up, served his time, and now is helping people understand and fight cybercrime. 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

will never fully understand their mind and their story. But if you open the heart too much, you can be 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 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. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description as the best way to support this podcast. We got public goods for household stuff, net suite for business, blinkist for books, masterclass for wisdom, and on it for health. She's wise in my friends. And now onto the full ad reads, as always no ads in the middle, I try to make them interesting. But if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too.

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Go to lexfreedman.com slash on it to get up to 10% off alpha brain. That's lexfreedman.com slash on it. This is the lexfreedman podcast and here is my conversation with Brett Johnson. You were convicted of 39 felonies for cyber crime placed on the US most wanted list in 2006 escaped from prison. You built the first organized cyber crime community called Shadow Crew that is the precursor to today's darknet and dark net markets. And for all this, the US intelligence service called you the original internet godfather. So 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 robots when you were 10. You know, usually kids are doing the Lego bed get involved with sports everything else and With me it wasn't like that with me. I'm I'm from Eastern Kentucky. Eastern Kentucky is one of these 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 wanna call it, man, I was my parents, my mom was basically the captain

of the entire fraud industry. So 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 fall in a convenience 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, a neighbor acted as a pimp. My mom prostituted, I mean, she acted as a pimp for a neighbor. Her name was Debbie, and my mom used to sell her out. 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 see that a lot with cyber criminals. You know, that sense of being that entrepreneur. So what was the motivation you think for her? Is it money? Is it basically the rush of playing with the system of being able to know the rules and break the rules

and get away with it. My mom's a complex character. She has no one single motivation. So my mom was the individual. She's still alive. My mom was the individual who tested people. 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. She would cheat on the man she was involved with. She would abuse the, our children, me and Denise. She would psychological, physical. Oh, it was mental, emotional, physical, everything, everything. She used to beat me and Denise with belt buckles, you know, and that ended when she was, I mean, she used to beat me and Denise with belt buckles.

And that ended when she was, I forgot what we had done. It wasn't much. I think that it may have been the part where she accused me of stealing her marijuana, but 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 living in a single wide trailer at that point. She was hitting me into Nice. We were on the bed trying to get away from it. And Denise kicks her through a closet. That's what happens. And Denise stands up and she said, you're through hitting me. And that was the last time that mom hit us at that point.

But, 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, there, there's a struggle there. There's a lot of darkness. So, if you, how did you feel? If you go back to the mind of the kid you were with your mom, was there sadness, was there things like depression, self-doubt, all those kinds of things. Or did you see this crime, this chaos, as ultimately exciting? You know, I don't think,

back then I didn't do it as exciting. Now it becomes exciting when I start being involved in cybercrime, cybercrime, all right. But back then it was simply a means to an end. It was all, so you take a 10 year old kid, and the way I get involved in crime is, like I said, my mom was the foster, my dad was a good guy.

He just forgot he was this good guy. You know, he was always, he always had these principles, but his issue was, is he loved my mom so much, he was scared 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, the one instant. So, I mean, this woman used to, she used to bring men home in front of him, telling him that, hey, I'm leaving

you. I don't love you anymore. I want you to die. Blah, blah, blah, blah. This was my mom. 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, is a year younger than I am. My dad actually files for divorce. Files for divorce at that point. My mom kind of goes crazy. My dad I was with my dad. My my sister was with my mother because that's that Eastern Kentucky mentality. You, men stay with men, women stay with women. So, um, he was following 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 sofa. I woke up one night and there were 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 her 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. It 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. 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, we're going, I'm taking the kids and we're going back to Easter Kentucky to attend the funeral. Well, that was her leaving. Me and Denise didn't know she didn't pack any of our clothes at all. She stoves 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, something like that.

My mom, like I said, she used to bring men home in front of my dad. She would hit sit there and cry and beg her not to do it. She would do it anyway. When she leaves them, she kept up that. So 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 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 was taking a bath, we were allowed to bath in Bath and two inches of water, one time a week because he didn't want to have to pay the water bill. There's rules. there's 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 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 family, right? So my mom, she used to leave me and Denise at home for days, man, for days. She'd go out and party.

I mean, sometimes she'd take me to these weather, 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 us at home and my entry into crime. Denise walks in one day, she's nine years old. And 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 stills 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 hell yeah, let's do that shit. So start stealing food and we get to the point where we're wanting to sandwich. Well, you can't stuff a loaf of bread down your pants. So there was a K-Mart in the shopping center. I go over to the K-Mart, get a hoodie off the rack, take the tags off of it, wear it out, work just fine. And the way you still bread is you put the hoodie over your shoulder, stuff the loaf of bread down the sleeve and you walk out with it. So we started doing that. How did you figure that out? Just thought pattern.

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 think through that. You got to think through it. But you got to realize by this point, I'm already seeing what my parents are doing. You know, I'm already seeing to see that clotting, that kind of puzzle solving was something

you already developed in your life. Oh yeah, pretty young. Yeah, 10 years old, pretty young. But seeing how they act, how they respond to things. And my mom, I guess you 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? That 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.

Is that what she said? She joins us. Yeah, she comes in. I've got the intelligence, I've got the Atari 26th out of her play 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 didn't find that. Denise. Denise stands up. We stole it. My mom show me how you did that. And she gets her mom too to join in. And she used to run me into Nase's,

these little shoplifters. We'd take, you know, we'd still stuff for her. We would distract security. And her and my grandmother would still stuff. They got caught doing that. But that's the entry into crime. And Denise, I'm adamant, and I kind of mean it. But the truth is, I say, and 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. 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'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 slate that, hey, this guy's gonna beat this guy when he grows up.

That's like, sometimes that one person you meet, that decent person can turn the tide. Absolutely. Absolutely. So what happens is, you know, the abuse, everything continues on. When I'm 15, my dad 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 a scat this woman that

the abuse would, it was, it was crazy abuse, man, just crazy stuff. You, she would tell me in my sister, you know know that she gave up her life for us that she was gonna 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 and 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 and Panama City, and I really had it in my head that, that I was going to go down and live with my dad in Panama City and I really had it in my head that I was going to go down and live with my dad. I called my dad one day. I was set to go to me and my cousins where we were going to go see Return of the Jedi that came out again in the theaters. So I called my dad. It was a Sunday. 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 the floor. I was going to stay in hazard.

I had to call my dad from pay phone, but the result of that was I walked him into a hospital, got in an elevator, and a woman got an 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. Yeah. And, know, but just anger came from someone. Yeah, yeah, and you know, the, the elevator, beat the hell out of this lady. Turned out she looked shitload like my mom, but they elevator doors open. One of the security guards, I played basketball 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 parents 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 front yard, and two of them get out and I'm sitting on the front porch

and me and my cousins aren't. 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 know what they wanted. They wanted to arrest Brett Johnson and 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 a salt and a first degree. The judge sentenced me to time served on a psychological evaluation where they sent me to Louisville, Kentucky. It's been 30 days up there. They cut me loose. They wanted me to have counseling after that. And everyone to counseling. You know, I wanted to, but mom was like, don't need it. And 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 that moment in the elevator. Yeah. And then what happens is is, you know, you're 15. Fuck man, you're 15 15 So I go back to the the high school that I was in and I'm this piece of shit Everybody everybody out cast everybody knows So I move we move we were in we were in white'sburg at that point I Finish up the year there and move to back to Perry County Where 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 Dill's Combs High School. So I was within, Mandonese 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, now let's just go, let's go. So from there it was when we went down to the city school hazard and the principal tells my mom the niece can come, he can't. So my mom was raised hell and I'm like, now let's just take me to this other school. So this other school was like 15 miles away and you know country country country high school

So I go there and they accept me and I walked in the first day and This English teacher Name's Carol Combs I walked in and Handered the paper out. She was my home room teacher and she heard voice. And that is the way she explained to the day. She heard this voice. And she looked up and she was like, son, have you ever done any drama before? No, man, but I'm interested in the academic team.

How is this quick recall guy? Right? And she's like, no, she's like drama. No, I'm not interested in theater. I'm interested in academics. Well, 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. Around there, I was captain of the team. I was this, this 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, the high school that I came from was Wiesberg. The first time that Wiesberg came against us, she told me, I was talking to her about a year ago, and she told me she's like, Brett, she said, that first meet against Wiesberg. 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 with theater, I ended up my senior year. I won best actor and actress in the state. Only got ever do that in the state. So, did pretty well, man. Did pretty well. Had, 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. Yeah, you'd make a hell of a I mean, I've all the many things you could probably do you make a hell of Actor I'm very good on stage. I'm very good on stage. Have you acted professionally anywhere? Not not professionally We've done the you know the college circuit stuff like that. What happened was it is so I turned down the um, turn down the scholarships, you know, scared of leaving I guess it sort of was start starting community college. And um, 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 Ninja's movie. Remember that, the three little ninja kids? Back in the 80s, he had written this for Dan Phil. And it made a shitload of money. So he invites Edward Emanuel to come down and see the play and Edward 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 pod. We'll make you a big fish in a big pod. And I was like, deal. So 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. Yeah, and he drives down to where we're where I two weeks. So he flies out two weeks later. This guy flies back in. And he drives down to where I'm living. I'm out shooting ball 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, no, I got it. I was like, okay. So I keep shooting ball. He walks in the house. Stays about 15 minutes. Walks like, okay, so I keep shooting ball. He walks in the house, stays about 15 minutes, walks out, wide as a sheet, doesn't say word to me,

gets in the car, leaves. I don't hear from him again. Had no idea what went on. Takes me a couple weeks. What happened is my mom, he walks in, 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 drug trafficking, the pimped stuff, illegally mining coal, charity fraud,

illegally mining coal. Yeah, while getting cold. So you can explain that. So to properly mind 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 doge and a loader or whatever you're going to get to an auger or what have you. So you start mining, but you don't get the permit. So you don't have to permit. So 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. Let you strip 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, sew grass, make sure everything is environmentally friendly. You've got to 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 that process. I need 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 dozer operator. You can farm out the trucking to someone if you need their 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 Eastern Kentucky, because it's that the weight of the bytuminous coal and every factory. You know, this is awesome. The fact that you know exactly the volume of a ton of coal, I mean,

it's good. Yeah, you learn this shit, right? You can reta the shit off. So, uh, so you uncover the pit and then 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 shitty legally. So back then, a ton of coal was, uh, that'd give you like 36 bucks per time is what that is. And you'd have to go out and you'd, you'd test the BTU's on, you'd take it to 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 back here the coal, how pure the coal is, what, what, what BTU it burns at back then, a good, a good BT2U was around 12 9 was what you'd get all right

So 12 9 coal 36 dollars a ton you take that sample over to the end the cold triple 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 Well, 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've bought the rights to whoever the landowner is, you said you're going to give them two dollars 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 asses minding 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. They know what you're doing. illegally, they're going to report you. Well, all of a sudden, you've got all these inspectors that are coming around and everything. 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? We're at dead of night. So you're lugging it up to a clock in the morning, hauling it as ass out as 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 mind too. Yeah. You learned how to run a loader, run a dozer, learn how to clean off a pit, everything like that. So this is, this is the lifestyle 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 break down some of these are charity fraud. It's much more romantic than what it sounds. It was basically, it was basically standing beside the road with a sign in a bucket, taking up collections for homeless shelters, for abused women, for children, stuff like that. Then later on, I branched off. 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. You know, we're going to talk about that, but actually, can we just step back and talk about your mom, 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'd call my dad yesterday.

My dad, he's dying. 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 look to have, because how I'm 52 now. Prior to 52, I'd have been like, no, you need to do this. But I looked at him and I was like, fuck it, I'm ready to go. And I'm like, I look to have, because how 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 so he's not gonna get the operation. I was talking to him yesterday and he asked me, he's like, have you seen your mom? And I was like, that, I'm not talking to him for about two years.

And I told him, I was like, I love my mom, but my mom is not a good person. She's not. And 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 and I came from a good family, everything else and, you know, upstanding family. 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 well, 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. I grew up in that environment though. So it took me a long time to come to terms with that. My sister came to terms with it long before I did. My sister, 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, just immediate response, not even thinking about it. My response was, well, these 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 wanna do it, if anybody's gonna take care of you, you gotta take care of yourself. You're on your own.

You're on your own. You know, it's up to you. And Nase has always been that child that has expected someone to come in and savor. Well, and almost like, it's all going to be okay. Somebody. Yeah, and I knew it wasn't going to be okay. Somebody. Yeah. And I knew it wasn't.

And no, you go unless you make it okay. It ain't going to be okay. So, you know, I was, I am able to forgive her, your mom. My, my boundary with my mom, the reason I've not spoken with her. Um, over two years ago, I started 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 those choices around. So 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,

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 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 the old ways of the past. No, not at all. So my ultimate of 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 calling, cussing my life out, cussing me out. I don't need you out of 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 taking 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, I told him. I told my dad about the abuse and everything else. 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 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 as a like out of anger, no, no idea why, all right, but I would piss on the carpet. Carpet pissers like the little bowski, right? So it was really tied the room together. It was really tied together.

I was talking about that and this lady comes up to me after the presentation. And she had, she had a career previous to that where she dealt with abused kids. And she told me she's 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, 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, a set 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 have to. And 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 good parent. She's an angry parent. She's a good parent.

She's a teacher, good citizen overall. I was just the guy that kept running on going with it. Keep on going. So let me ask you about that. So your life of cybercrime, in describing some of the things you did or knew about, you said, quote, I won 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 for it. I lied to family friends, everyone I knew, I was a truly despicable person. True. 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 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. It's what I cared about. It's rough to admit that. You know, that you don't give a shit what you're doing to anybody else. You don't care about you, but that's the truth't give a shit what you're doing to anybody else. You don't really care about you. But that's, that's the truth of the matter.

I didn't care about the victims. The lady that was, 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 26, 04, Seagr service set or 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 as 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 cash years checks. Defrauding people with that, having them send products or boi in collections, what have you by COD, collect on delivery, and I would pay with it with a counterfeit cash years check. This lady was on eBay. She had been collecting these silver coins all over life.

The US currency used to be the coins you used to be silver. So she had a whole collection of these things. 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, uh, you know, he sent it to COD. You can use, uh, my FedEx account to do that or my UPS account to do that. I'll pay with a cashier's check. You can take it in, same as cash. She believed that. She was, even on the ad and we talked on the phone and everything else she had told me that she was she was a single parent and it was the only money that she had to

To put a roof on the house for her and her kids and I didn't give it down I didn't give it down. It was more important was me at that point Can I ask you a question about the social engineering ask so maybe it specifics like The methodology email you said phone like the methodology, email, you said phone, maybe you could discuss this process for my 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 as 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. They're 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 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 the cybercriminal in I was no different.

Most cybercriminals 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. That's the reason I'm so jealous. Yeah, that's the best.

It's so tight. Because I care about love a lot. Yeah, so the big picture of that is trust. How do you establish trust with a potential victim? 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.

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. Spoof phone numbers, browser fingerprints,

or whatever that may be, whatever the tool may be. Then that lays a base level of trust. At that point, you shoot in with a social engineering and lay whatever story that is in order to manipulate that victim to act not out of reason, but out of emotion, 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. You have this, a lot of sort of conspiracy theories now about

distrust institutions thinking like everything around us. It's like, I've been listening to people who believe the earth is flat. And you know, that that conspiracy theory is fascinating to me because it basically says that you can't trust anybody Right that like everything you hear is a lie. So that's one, you know, you can live that life Or you can live a life where you're just naively trusting everything and we as humans have to because that life is Kind of full of happiness if nobody screws you over. Right. Because you, you know, 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 makes becomes really tricky You're almost too afraid to distrust everything because you'll never get anything done right 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.

And a lot of the times that social engineering is just feeding into what the victim wants to believe. It's not really coming up with a brand new story at all. It's just knowing 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 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. What is it? This business man, Steven Schwarzman, I've talked a few times. He mentioned this thing that, you know, 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 Did you ignoring it right you take the time to listen? You know somebody at that point. Yeah, absolutely you do then you have to be able to dismiss it

You know you're you're looking for that just to see how I can manipulate that is what you tried 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 fishing attacks. So that is a social engineering attack. pH, by the way. Yeah, pH. That's another social engineering attack. That'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 Fishing Attacks. So you could ask for all the information. You were getting just complete identity profiles on a fishing email.

Nowadays you can't do that. Nowadays you look for basically credentials because everyone is aware of fishing. But back then it was complete information. We had a fished out, I don't know, 200,000 E-trade accounts. That's what we had the login password. Login password, complete social, data 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 whatever account you wanted to went through just fine. Aint' of my life on that for four to six months. E-trade got to the point where you couldn't do any ACH coming out. You know, you, they locked everything down. Well, you're still sitting on thousands of E-trade accounts.

How do you make money on that? Hmm. It's a good question. Yeah, so what you do is you find some fat cat that's got his retirement invested in blue chips. 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, bumping dump schemes all the sudden. So you're destroying people's retirement accounts for just a few thousand dollars

Bam, bam, bam, and of course each raise 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 With scam a zell so you know the instant payment that does the same kind of operations and type of difference With the same mechanism you find an I'm talking with different with the same mechanism. You find an easy way to exploit a system and typically the financial organization, not our problem. Our system secure, it's the humans, it's their errors. Well, not really.

You've got some culpability in that and you're just trying to avoid paying the part of the bill. That's 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, like, 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, it's, there's a human in the loop that's really fine tuning it to the specific, or maybe I'm very predictable, but it's very loving in the way I would write a message. And so, so, so think about that, all right.

So, so when fishing first comes out, you could look at the language of the text or the website and say, yeah, if you, 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, as time has went on, as, 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. The way a business email compromise typically works is the attacker will find a payroll person, find a CEO.

He will fashion a spear fishing email, which is that's a fishing attack that's targeting one specific individual. All right. So he'll fashion a spear fishing email. 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 log ink 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? Talk about relationships, talking about vacations.

What are they 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 this, the payroll department is good. So then he spearfishes him, 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, eye, he's got that Russian letter that looks like an eye, but without the dot on top. All right, comes back into the email,

into the payroll email. Block's 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, we're updating our account status. I need you to send this payment instead of this over here.

They've set up a new account, send all payments over here now. And that is business email compromise and a net show. All right, works great. Probably the larger the organization, the more susceptible to that kind of attack, because there's a susceptible to that kind of attack because there's a Like a distribution of responsibility to a you're more likely to believe that okay this other person is responsible I'm sure they they secured our Absolutely. I'm okay with this So that's business email compromise and it's it those crimes and that's one thing you see about cyber crimes

Cybercrimes 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 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%. No next points. And then potatoes are that 90% known exploits. And then the rest is, what 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. It's a fascinating study of 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 able to tell these stories now? Because it is studying human nature by exploiting it, but you get to understand, like our weak points are our hope our desire to trust others also sort of the The weak points and the failures of digital systems and at scale humans have to connect right is fascinating is This is a weird question asking for a friend Is is spearfishing itself illegal? What's the legality here? Oh, it's all illegal. Absolutely it is But it absolutely so here's what okay, let me let me construct an example so

If my friend were to spear fish 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? Do you think? That becomes questionable.

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 person who's a county took over takes, you know, exception to that.

No monetary loss. So there's not really standard, like fines. Probably that's what happened. Right. Right. Right. So, I mean, that's kind of interesting, because it's, it's, so when I got the ransomware, when I got the zero day attack on the QNAP mass, You know, they basically say 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 solar winds. Yeah. Yeah. So I've got 130 page class action lawsuit printed out at the house. I've been going through it that catalogs how solar winds lied for years about their vulnerabilities and they lied to investors. The people who came in on 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 solar winds 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 solar whiz. Now does that mean the solar ones 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 criminally negligent is. And I think that that solar ones are certainly responsible, not responsible, they're culpable for what happened. Can you actually tell folks about SolarWinds, what is it, what are some interesting things that you're aware of? SolarWinds was very, it provided a backbone

of security for hundreds, thousands of different companies. If you looked at a lot of security companies using solar ones 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 solar ones 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 was going on, all the emails, all the communications, every single secret that was going on with those companies. If 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? And 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, 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. Oh, yeah. And so now there's people sitting on information. Absolutely. So 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 can go through it blind by line. Or are there 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 So it's a completely catastrophic attack. Once all the chips are down, everything's tallied up, people are gonna be like, yeah, we're done, we're done. Yeah. Yeah.

All right, this whole computer thing, we tried it. We're done. 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, there's not been obvious big negative impact from that yet.

So, but like there's been a lot of negative impact, but we're just starting. Right. So the starting, 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 top of criminal that I used to be. They'll enlist these guys and still information on what have you. Then Russia will take the information they want to, and they'll basically go off and sell whatever you want to, it makes some money. China's all about IP, North Korea is about stealing money because they really don't know what they're else to do right now, but... So North Korea is actively involved inside Bukhara? Absolutely. They've stolen a shitload of Bitcoin, everything else. So absolutely, they're actively involved inside because absolutely they've stolen a shill load of Bitcoin everything else so absolutely they're actually 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 solar winds is going to be the number one attack the the follow-up to that is this not petty attack that happened. 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, it's typically not technical sophistication, but it says 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 can really be. Oh, yeah. 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 the internet into the metaverse that there are so many more attack factors 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 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 mean, I like it. I mean, that's where we're going to agree on it. And then don't use out. No, I'm just kidding So maybe step back you mentioned I'd love to talk about shadow crew Maybe this the right time to actually yeah, let's go to shadow crew. cool just such a fascinating story so tell me the story of building shadow cool the precursor to today's dark net and dark net markets you're this is why you're the original

godfather this is it this is it so I I get married I I think the car accident to get married got the money from that you're romantic I remember I remember. 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, uh, I met this story. That's, that's dude. I was, uh, how did you fall in love there? My, 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 can talk it, but, you know, more of that agnostic than anything, she breaks up with me. So I was at the community college. You'd make one hell of a preacher by the way. more that agnostic than anything she breaks up with me. So I was at the community college. You'd make one hell of a preacher by the way. Yeah.

So you've got that lengthened, huge problem. You know, I'm looking for Jesus to show up and he just doesn't. So I was at the community college and I was straight asshole. I was arrogant, conceded everything else. And I had posted an advertisement on one of the billboards looking for an adult babysitter, hot blonde, you know, come visit me in the library. Buddy mind shows up and he's like,

Brett, and I was like, yeah. He's like hottest girl in 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 these two guys that are hitting on her. So 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 taken down. And finally I looked over and I was like, you want to get out of here?

And one of the guys looks at me, he's like, hey, we're talking to her. I was like, you wanna get out of here? And one of the guys looks at me, he's like, hey, we're talking to you. And I was like, well, you're talking at her. You're not talking to her. I'm about to saber ask from you. Yeah, and this is a smooth pickup line, by the way. If I ever heard one, that's good. You wanna get out of here?

So start dating and she was the girl that screwed my brains out. And I felt, I head 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 always 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 UK. Got a job in Lexington at Lexmark testing printer boards, circuit boards. So I would leave on a Thursday night work 3, 18 hour shifts

at Lexmark, come back home on Monday. Got married, fake to car accident to get that the other the rest of the money that I needed 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 USAA insurance on a car accident. And she was telling me all about, she's like, look, go down to this car tractor, 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, boom! She's like, by the way, you worked for me, and I was like, I worked for you. So, so. And you get to define the wage. And you could also define how long you were unable to work.

Exactly. Exactly. And the power of practical side 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. So he comes to me and he's like, hey man, can I get in on that? I was like, yeah, man, you get in 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, everything else. I'm like, are you okay? And he's like, yeah man, it's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. I'm like, okay, so wait And he's like, yeah, man, it's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. I'm like, okay, so wait, 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.

We'll 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 walked back up, 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, had to like we've wrecked. She knows what time it is and everything else. And follow the claims. So that gets the money to get married and me and my wife move from hazard to Lexington. And I'm the kid that my crime usually, if I was a single guy, wouldn't break the law.

But now be all right, you know, but females involved. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I got to spend the money. I got to show them gifts. Everything else was never enough to show love in some sort of healthy way. Always had to go overboard. Typically, it was buying some or stealing some sort of healthy way, always had to go overboard. Typically, it was buying or stealing some sort of expensive. So that was the thing, that was the way you show love is by buying expensive gifts or something overboard. Back then 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 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 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-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. I was working at the first job I had was a telemarketer at a cemetery, selling gravesites.

And then that ended, went over to work for the Shriner's Hospital. And it 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 Koana's clubs, selling food baskets to the food banks and everything. So I stole the phone list and started at my own Kewanas Club and would do the telemarketing, go out twice a week and pick up checks. Well, what happened was, 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 Kauwana's 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 and 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 first time I've really talked 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 the Lexington and by this point, I'm doing this, like I said, these schemes on eBay.

And I'm like, there's got to be better way to make money on eBay. It's got to be. So didn't really know how I'm like there's got to be better way to make money on eBay. It's got to be. So, didn't really know how. Well, not I'm watching the inside edition with Bill Riley and their profiling, Beanie Babies. So I'm sitting there watching and the one they're profiling is this one called Peanut to Royal Blue Elephant selling for $1500 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 a skip class the next day would round 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. Hmm, turns out they had a little gray beanie baby elephants for eight dollars. Picked up one of those for eight dollars, stopped by a crogr on the way home, picked up a pack of blue-rit 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, look like they've got the mage.

And what happens is, I've tried to dye the damn thing. I'm like well, that's not going to work That's just not gonna 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 he 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 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 to money orders totaling $1,500 Send them to me issued by the US government that way we're both protected As 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 Send me the money orders. I cast them out Center 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 a

first, really the first lesson of cybercrime that most of these criminals, including self-warns. If you delay a victim long enough, just keep putting them off. A lot of them get 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 to make sure 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 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 are going to tell you to go local.

Locals are 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 mod chips. It was for the initial pirated software was Sega Saturn PlayStation 1. Well, you had to have a mod chip in those to play the pirated disks. So I started selling in install mod chips. That led into installing mod chips in a cable television boxes so you could watch all the pay-per-view, which in turn led him to programming satellite DSS cards. Those ATN and SRCA satellite systems pull the card out of it, program it, turns on all the channels. That is very entrepreneurial. So just technically.

So there's laws and rules that you're breaking non-stop. 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, after 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, as an engineer, that is some gutsy thinking. That's how it was and Steve Jobs thought it that's innovation and maybe just think

You're if you can introspect your thinking process here This is a new I like how you remember that it's in a HP Like what this is a totally new thing to you computers is a is a Like what this is a totally new thing to you computers is a is a is yet another domain How are you figuring these puzzles out presumably mostly alone? Along when you were thinking through these problems is there This is a strange question to ask, but you know what What is your thinking process? What is your approach to solving these problems? So 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? So 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 you lay that groundwork'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 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 cybercrime as a whole, all right. But initially, it's basically trial and error. 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 in her name if I could do it under your name? So 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 trial and error. It's that childhood where that mindset is kind of ingrained in you where you're looking for ways,

non-traditional ways of getting around things or getting through things. I mean, one of the questions, probably ask this later is, there's also a unique aspect to the outcome of what you're 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 that identity theft, because identity theft can take so many forms. Right. Right. So, yes, so shadow crew. So what's, so as we're, you started with love. Started with love. So now 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, 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. Over night, little cottage industry pops up in the United States. You go down to Best Buy by the system for $100. Take it out of the parking lot, open system up, open box up, pull the system out, pull the card out, throw the system away, program the card, ship it's asked to Canada $500 a pop, started doing that.

Business is good. Making you know, $3, $4,000 a week doing that. I'm like, yeah, that's good. I 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. Especially in Canada. And 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. PayPal had no clue what they were doing with security. So it's like, okay. So there's city money in PayPal. I'm having the PayPal cashed out to to bank accounts in my name at that point.

And I get scared because by that point, I'm still in four to six thousand dollars a week. And I'm like, somebody's gonna 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 ATM. Good. No idea where to get a fake ID, not a clue. So I get online, looked around, spent a couple 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. Like, what the hell? Oh, I got played. He had a little website set up with reviews. And I'm like, oh, it's all a legitimate building that trust that I talked about. So the end result, I got pissed. There was no site that dealt with anything cybercrime 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, 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 if somebody claims they've got a product or service

do they have it, does it work? Or they're just gonna rip you off because in So, if somebody claims they've got a product or service, do they have it? Does it work or they're just going to rip you off? Because in those channels, every month is a 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 all of the degree mill type stuff. But they had a forum and no one was using the forum meal 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. About the same time I started doing that. Two other guys show up. One's name Mr. X. He's out of Los Angeles. Other guys named BL's above.

He's out of Moose Charles's schedule on. And we all become buddies. So, you know, a few weeks of me bitching, he's out of Moose Draws of Sketch 1, and we all become buddies. So you know, a few weeks in the kitchen, a few weeks in the 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. And he's like, I am. I was like, no, you're not. And he's like, well, I'm gonna charge you for it. I'm like, yeah, you are. And 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 gonna do this, you have to trust people or you're gonna fail. He said, so I'm gonna charge you $200, but I'm gonna send you a driver's license.

Well, by this point, I'm friends with the people who own Counterfeit Library. We'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's license. Name is Steven Schwecky out of Ohio. And real guy, worked at ADP payroll to this day, works at ADP. This 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, you know, looking back, it's like, so it is kind of a strong first step in creating a fake identity. Very strong. Very strong. So this is that was like, you can ask him 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. These absolute.

So you have to have, this is like mob. You have to have an inner circle. It's so trust. I'm sure you probably say this before. Successful cybercrime, 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 the people who gather the data, basically the general store sells people who sell PII, credit card logins, data tools. They'll sell the spoof 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 laundry the money out, put cash in pocket. You've got either because of a skill level, sometimes a geographic location limits what that individual can do. You have to rely on people who are good and areas where you are not in order for that crime to succeed. That means you have to trust those people. So what happens with shadow crew? So 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 spamer 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 in 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

Ukraine thanks and accent so he 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 cybercrime. Demetri 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, there's 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. Demetri 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 side is what we were and fake driver's licenses. So the, and we had, I guess we had two, three thousand 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 trying to get us arrested and everything else. What, let me backtrack a little bit. So the driver's license that I'd got, BL's above had an idea. What he wanted to do is he wanted to sell drivers licenses. Mr. X wanted to sell Social Security cards. He made a very passable Social Security card. Me, I had no skill level. I knew PayPal fraud and eBay fraud. So, BL's Bob was like, take what? You be the reviewer. That way, you get every product or service that

comes in that will 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 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, driver's credit card, not credit cards, cashing out to Casinos doing some show of 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, 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, Scrip shows up saying he's got this. I'm the only

reviewer on site. People think he's 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. He's like, what the hell is that? So I tell him what it is. He's like, you review me. And 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 I CQ. 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 member, 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 turn 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 a, now it's called CMP fraud, card not present fraud. So you hit an online merchant with stolen credit card data. Back then, a fairly experienced fraudster could profit $ could profit 30 to $40,000 a month. Okay. Just buying, you know, laptops, what have you and cash it out? You know, put them on eBay for sale and sell them like that.

And 30 to 40 K 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, and he had... And he had a counterfeit nut stone. So counterfeit.

So counterfeit. That must be tough to do. So the connection must be harder than a lot of... It's crazy. It's crazy. So, you know, on your back, so what Boa initially had, and I became the United States sales person 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 as customers name, second data track is the card number, forward slash, 16 digit algorithm out of that. That's important. We'll get back to that in a few minutes. Third data track is called in a discriminated 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 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. So what typically happens is, is you buy 10 of these dumps, you get 10 counterfeit cards, and code track two on all 10 cards, track one, you create one fake drivers license

Track one is just the name of that one fake drivers license that way when you go in the shop Swipe the card track two just send off a verification track one shows up on the screen in front of the cashier Beard rasp or ID you pull out the fake ID everyone's an ice-warmed fuzzy you walk out with cameras Rolex and track one could be eight It doesn't have to be connected. It's not connected to track. Not connected at all. That's one of the big problems. All right. Yeah. So script 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, script 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 CVV1 breach or hack. That'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 swap 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 doing a lot of fishing, a lot. We were getting pins. We were getting card numbers, but you can't get that algorithm.

So Ukrainian 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, sorry, I'm trying to understand. So that means, so if there's no, how 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, so the pin is the thing that gets you in back. So back then, all right, back then what we're talking about is you need to,

typically today, you need a whole track two, you need that valid track two then all right back then what we're talking about is you need to typically today you need a whole track to you need that valid track to all right you need the you need the 16 digit card number forward slash and then whatever that algorithm else out beside up yeah 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. It can make a lot of money with physical, so much money that Cardinal Democrats, Cardinal President, probably remember I told you was 30 to $40,000 a month. All right. That turned into 30 to $40,000 a day. Yeah. 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 buy Western Union or what have you

to your Ukrainian contact. That's before cryptocurrency came into play. Now you had a couple of four runners with Ego, then 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 Ego, Liberty Reserve And today it's with crypto. That's used.

It 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, you saw secret service, you saw DOD, you saw all these like, and you're like, that's interesting.

So, you know, and 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. There were that. That's... That's... That's...

That's... That's... That's... That's... That's... That's... That's... That's... That's... 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 post those damn things on Shadow Crew. So I'm sitting there going ahead 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, lottery money out, and I would sell the bank accounts 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 license. This is what have you. And then finally, we happened upon the California death index. All right. Complete information, mothers, maidens, socials, DOBs, all that.

And it's like, gotta 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 deathbed, not deathbed, 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? 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. This gets along. 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. Pride or 98. Of course, most people don't. Right. Prior to 98, it took the family.

After 98, the hospital can do it. Theater 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 that don't. Because that death benefit's 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 follow income tax returns on these people. Turns out you can all day long. So I started doing that and I started to steal.

And once I got ramped up because you test everything, you know, you're testing, make sure you got 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, yeah, filing 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 works for an employer. Still worse like that today. All right, so.

And you keep in the amounts relatively low. Keep in the $30,000. All right, mounts are very low. But you still be able to achieve scale because this is the sludge index. I got to work. And I was manual. Later on a couple of buddies mine

went automated with it. Well, you would go and do 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. It's 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 any of it, it's sitting around here, but a backpack will hold $150,000 of 20s. Is what it'll hold. So I put 150K in 20s and 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 coal 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 was 20 most of the time it's 20s coming out at you right. These 20 ways you can't do a gram each 20 ways a gram. So you actually go by weight, which is what federal authorities do when

they get a palette of cash they just weigh it. Oh, they, they just weigh it. So 150K is seven and a half keys of cash. And 50, you know, that's pretty light. That's bad, that's bad. Did you get big backpack? Go do a big Ron David Goggins with it? I like it. So the fact, 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 laundry money. All right, so, you know, I'm throwing cash in in the spare bedroom. One day you opened up the bedroom and you're like, gotta do something with those backpacks. And that's when you start learning how to laundry money, you know, cash-based businesses, things like that.

I had a production company, I had a couple of, I had a detailing company, I was thinking back going into 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, as one tax return start. And so what, at that time, and what you're aware of now, how it evolved, how does money, 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 that transactions are legal, you then start depositing into bank accounts. From bank accounts, my thing was, is have bank accounts

of the United States, Mexico, Canada, and then finally bounce over to Estonia, was the final destination of all this stuff. And the idea is, 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, you have money that needs to be moved to other people. So how does that work?

What's the business? If it's approved to service and you're giving them money? Right. So, you do the O's arc thing if you want to do that. So, you can gamble, cash out some life assets or trips to whatever casinos you've got. You've got your production company or your detail company. So, how many cars you clean in a day? 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 detailed company, make $100,000 a month, that's a problem. Okay. So then you start depositing it into that. Well, because of the Patriot Act, as the specialist activity reports, 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.

Fortunately, what you also had is you had a bunch of prepaid debit cards that were coming in to 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 bank Latino and Estonia at that point. That's 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. They took them that long to get to it. So how do the stories like with script that coming to 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 a state

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 still in a lot of money at the same time. Somebody doesn't pay him. I'm decent amount of money. Somebody doesn't pay him. Now, we 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, who 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 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, you're getting more 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. Then you're like now, that's real. That's real and Well, you're 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 a that's a line that some people can cross and some can and you're not one of those that can cross it. You know, I got to tell you, I joke with my wife. The joke I can get by, the joke I tell my wife is, you know, if I knew some guy that had 8,000 bitcoins, I might be persuaded to ask him for access to that. And she's like, how? And I was like, well, hammer and toast.

Yeah. 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, and I think that's what scripts issue is it was a lot of money to him. It's been 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 like it. The sensitize. And you figure, you take somebody 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 million a bit coin. He was the only game in town. And that 24 now is like, I don't know, 24 billion, some crap like that. But he felt in danger. This guy was going to turn him in. It was a black mountain and everything. So Ross thinks he hires a couple hitmen to kill the guy. So 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 not just about money, there's a lot of other forces like if you're threatened For your well-being or for your wealth or for your power all of us all the different motivations plus that that online aspect with Those communities like that if you're the head guy you really feel like you're the parent of these guys Yeah, so somebody's starting to threaten them. It's like all right What I need to do so would he make a silk row? 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.

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? Right. So, can you maybe tell me, you know what, let's just even step back, what is the dark net? How big is it? So, what happens there? 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 an 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 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. The shadow crew provided that trust mechanism for criminals.

You had that communication channel with forums where you could reference conversations, weeks, months old, take part in our famous 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 cyber

crime at large. That's still in play today. That was the way things were until a couple of things happened. One was cryptocurrency. The other one was the Tor browser, the dark web. I was working with the secret service, ripping the secret service off, when tour comes into play. All right, so 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. It could not use it at all simply because no one was using it. And it was extremely slow. So people don't know. Tor browser is a 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 this. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It wasn't the hackers that's,uh, interest US Navy 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 origins are so and it was 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 and start sponsoring everything else like that. The next idea was, well, you know, people can get around their country's firewalls.

Whistleblowers 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. And so criminals start to use the damn thing. All right. So along the 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 was 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 can 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 Oberg 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 wondering why Bitcoin is going at what 44 K today? Yeah, yeah, it starts by the time this is out, it could be a hundred thousand or 10,000.

Absolutely. We'll see. 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. People a hundred years from now will be laughing. Wait, it was that low.

So, then. 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 to wait a bit for it. We need somebody, we need a way to pay for it. So that's what happens.

Ross, it's really interesting to me. 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 gonna change the world he really did I've been fortunate 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 low hanging fruit. The ease 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. That's Silk Road 2 guy, he's still got it. He's not breaking the law, but you can see it's like, he wants to.

He wants to. So it's, it's, it's fascinating that, I mean, the worst atrocities in human history are committed with people that operate under ideology, all the other motivations in which 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 you have changed the world? Yeah, could you've done it like that? Probably not. Well, I can still man those arguments. I listen to quite a few libertarians and you can push that to anarchists and you know, there's a lot of people that argue, so I actually talk to a professor at Columbia who actually argues that all drugs should be legalized and not at a philosophical political level, but the fact that all the negative consequences of drugs that people talk about are 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 the government or any other institution shouldn't be the, the rule setters, the constraints for how you live your life. And so that, I could see that argument being made, and ultimately if you 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 that argument. There's an argument, but. And then let's be fair. I want to be fair with it. I mean, you can make that argument. There's an argument, but.

And let's be fair. I'm gonna 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. Yeah.

That's a biggie. So. And that 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 I will see outpans out shadow crew We had this guy Albert Gonzalez. It's kids name. We had we were growing so big that I had to start forming things out. So the first thing I started farming, I instituted this review system, kind of establishing that trust mechanism, even further for criminals use, we needed somebody to take care of our

tech aspects of the forum. So, um, associated with 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, found our forum techie. I was like, who's that? And he's like, uh, this kid. And I was like, is he any good? He's like, well, he knows the software. And I was like, okay, we just signed his ass on. He went by the screen name of, uh, Kumpajani was his screen name. And, he starts selling credit cards after a while and her screen name was Scarface. And, uh, He starts selling credit cards after a while and he's reading them with Scarface. That CVV1 breach where you're cashing out the track to's at ATMs, you know, $40,000 a day.

So Albertson, New Jersey, one day, Rod Daylight, and stands out at an ATM for 40 minutes, just standing there, feeding in one ATM card after another point out cash, taking the 20s out, stuff from 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 watch this kid, 40 minutes. Finally, one cop looks at the other. Let me see what's going on there. Walks over across the street, Albert's 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 the secret service. At that point in time, secret service, I referred to and I don't want to make sure I don't say 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 as one way to put it. That's a nice, that's a nice euphemism. So for fucking idiots, it's another way to say it. So they're just like not aware of the digital world. They had no clue, no clue. The way that Albert tells them how to catch us, because they looked at them, how do we catch them? And Albert's like, how are that serious?

I'm serious. So Albert's like, well, that serious? I'm serious. So I was like, well, you could try a VPN. What's a VPN? So he explains it to him. They're like, that's a good idea. So I quit shadow crew. I was worried about all the news.

It was coming in and everything like that. I'm still in 160 K a week. I didn't know Albert had been arrested. I'm worried about being arrested. I know the writings on the wall and I'm like, I'm quitting. Where did you see the writing? Like the IDs that were coming in? Yeah.

The text messages about the Secret Service Investigators and the revealing, the pressure's building. I mean, this is not going to end well. This is going to be bad. So I announced my retirement of February 15th, I'm sorry, April 15th, 2004. This 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's where it'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 Marriachi. He was a guy's name. David Thomas. David, yeah. Yeah. He was a film guy. So Scarface. Yeah. Yeah. So El Marriacci, 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 quarter trying to make him some money. All right. Elmer out she does or 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 Byer. He, a real friend of mine. And I contacted him. I was like, look man, I got a guy that wants to do some work and he helped 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. Since Thomas enough money to go from Texas to Isacqual, Washington and rent an office space. All right. So Thomas goes up there, rents his office space, him and his girlfriend rent Rens is Office space.

And the plan is, this big buyer is going to place an order, get products sent, Mary Ochi 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. Because it goes through. He gets the product. All right. Mary actually comes back, tells me, tells my second in charge, Kim Taylor. Kim Taylor, at this point, he's, I'm, I'm 3334. Kim Taylor's 46. He works at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, Colorado. That's where he works at this point. And he fancies himself Jason

Born. All right. He's even got one of the screen names of Jason Born. So I'm like, all right. So Mary Ashi's telling us how much money he's making 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 Isacquah. 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 Isacquah. 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, piece of shit Saturn all the way up to Isacquah. Gets there, you know, midnight. They party all not long because they've never met each other. They're just celebrating party and drinking everything else like that.

Meanwhile, big buyer has placed another order without post.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 this a quad PD, hey, we got a fraudster. This a quad is like, would you mind sending some empty boxes? I'll post it 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 that'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, Bigbuyer was the guy who placed the order. Maryachi and my second in charge are partying. All right. So they're supposed to contact Bigbuyer. They don't. Meanwhile, Bigbuyer is raising hell, getting up with me like, hey, where are you? 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 Mary Occhi's got a Cadillac, old 70s Cadillac. He's got

a Cadillac. Pools in to the complex. Now Mary Occhi's driving. Kim Taylor's in the passenger seat. David Thomas's girlfriends in the back seat. As they pull into the complex, going through the parking lot, Mary-Ochie 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, 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 disappears around the wall, out pops the Issaquat 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. He uses his girlfriend's account to bond him out. And I get married. I get Kim Taylor to go to Utah where he, 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. 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, well, the only thing he's doing is pop an ex-gency 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. I had another crew that's coming through Denver, sent 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? 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, come to 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, 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 it saw it happen and I'm like, you're the one that got away. I'm the one public, there were a couple other guys that got away that they didn't publicly mention. One, his, his name was Tron. He was a, in the zero. Yeah, exactly. But he went by the

screen name Tron. He had access, almost unfettered access to Bank of America. So what happens is they identified the guy, secret services in the air to go get him. They call you a Ukrainian police. Hey, we're coming down to rest 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 coming to get you. Yeah.

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. Cautum eventually. they caught him eventually. They caught him eventually. Well, let me actually ask you on this point. You said that if you do cybercrime eventually, it's not going to end well.

It does not end well. Why is that? So, I don't want to say that it'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 quote him 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 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 a freaking 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

And that's not a mindset in which you can grow as a person, find happiness, find genuine, simple human affection, which is what love is. Yeah. 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 have learned in prison, because cybercrime, 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 know, you pointed out some of those

truly despicable things. Scripped, for example, tortures that guy. You get to the point where it's like, okay, this is the business. And, you know, I tried to convince myself that, you know, I'm a businessman, but I'm a good guy on the end. And you're not. You're not. So those lies become part of and 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 cybercriminals 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 to NASA the OD Pentagon. He shut the NASA computers and average six weeks. This is the that kid Then he decides he's 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 neds bedroom, gets out his 45, walks in the bathroom and blows his brains out. You know, 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 guy who hit, who ran evolution marketplace. No one to who, two people ran that guy and a girl. No one to who they were. He ends up still in about $24 million. A lot of from Ukrainian mob and they found him about a year later on a beach without his head and hands, but it always goes south, but more than anything to me, the negative thing is you really become somebody

that I mean, just truly a despicable human being. When you get to the point, when you're destroying people's retirement accounts, you're stealing money from a woman that simply wants to do something good for her family. When you become that individual and you're okay with that, my God, man. I got to the point, I had one guy ripped off,

it's like for $900, is when I first started the cybercrime 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 was sent something like, I guess you needed the money. And it's okay, you know, you keep it.

And how I'm getting children right now, thinking about it. It's that where you become that individual. Yeah. Can I actually backtrack? Listen, I love love. Okay. 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 true romance by the way great movie It is great film. It's a truly a great film and even even Brad Pitt Who makes a brief appearance is geniuses so much good acting there. Anyway, so tell me that love story. All right, so you know what? 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 pass by her computer, and she would minimize the screens, and I'm like, well, got to figure out what the hell is going on. So put a key logger on her system. As anybody should in a relationship.

Absolutely, because you trust him. You know why not? You should be tracking all their movements, all their stuff. Exactly, exactly. I can say that I was the control freak too. It's romantic. So found out she had been cheating on me.

And she was, see, there you go. Yeah, that's a reason. That's a reason, I justified. So I found out she was cheating on me. She was asleep when I found out she'd been cheating on me. And she was, I was just either here you go. Yeah, and a reason, bad 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. So 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, my bravado disappeared pretty quickly. I took about a week of both of us crying and arguing and everything else and she, she finally left and I went through this depression.

I went, I was in Charleston, South Carolina. I would just walk around the house kind of stumbling in a days, realized I was in Charleston, South Carolina. I would just walk around the house kind of stumbling in a days, realized I was getting suicidal and was smart enough to do something about it. And picked up a phone book. That's where there's always a sense of humor. So I picked up a phone book and I'm going through the yellow pages.

I'm like, psychologist, criminal psychologist because I need that. I called the psychologist, crying to her. I mean, crying on the phone, told her everything. I'm just criminal. This is what's happened. She's 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 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 I saw her for about four months. I was 34.

I didn't start drinking until I was 34. I 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, I didn't want to lose control of myself myself and had never been a strip club. So, one night I was getting lonely. So I walked into the strip club. Actually I was researches the strip club and it was Joe's Roundup in Charleston, South

Carolina. Joe's Roundup, little bit he pulled the wall stuff. Yeah, real classy. So I walked in and I'm literally that guy, man, that filled love with the first, the first stripper that he sees. She walks by, I'm like, that one. So I didn't know the strip club game. Again, criminal, naive as hell.

So belly up at the bar, hoarder of 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 me going in back or what? She's like, well, yeah, you need to do the bottle or you're going back and I was like, sure, let's buy a bottle of champagne,

$400 bottle of corbale. So I'm like, all right. So that again, that brav of Corbale. So, like, all right. So, again, that bravado disappears pretty quickly. I get back there and we talk for two hours. And, you know, nowadays, I don't understand that most men who go to strip clubs, strippers are the therapist most of the time, all right? So, I'm sitting there talking and we're talking.

And of course, she's sizing me up. She's looking at the wire. She's like, what kind of car you drive? You know everything else. And I'm like, telling her and talking. And so at the end of the night, I'm like, really nice to me. She's like, it's so nice meeting you too. So I leave, you guys just talked and just talked.

And there's no dance feeling of love and all of that. Yeah, so just talk, just me. 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, I said, that was my first time to strip club.

I said, don't know, yeah, I like it. I like to keep doing it more. Would you like what? I didn't. And she was like, yeah, I was like, where would you like to go? So she says, root a John. And I was like, don't know what it is. That's where we'll go.

So I go back and 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. 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, root a John. And he's like, take your wallet. I'm like, yeah, he's like, okay, where are you going? I'm like, root a John and he's like, take your wallet. I'm like, yeah, he's like, take your wallet. It's like, all right. So we start doing the lunch and the dinner thing and I get to where I really like her. I was 34, she was 23 and got along really well listen had common interest in music and Arts and stuff like that. She had I mean, it's stereotypical. She was she had graduated college with a degree in religious studies Yeah, so I was like all right, so

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 What was happening was she was working weekends and you know the club would close at through four She 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 then I never used drugs, I had never been around. And my mom, value and pod 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 moved her in with me and everything. And I had never, I was 34, I never went through a woman's person my entire life. And so she comes in, passes out. And I'm like, I got to know what the fuck's going on.

And went over and went through a purse, found cocaine. And 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 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, prosting herself to support the habit. And that got me, man. That got me talking about everything she was doing to do that.

And I broke your heart there. Oh, man. Yeah. So I went, I didn't have the heart to tell her that I knew she was prostitute. But I went to and I was like, she's 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?

And I was like, no, no, I don't think that. I knew it, but I didn't mention it to her. And 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 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. She was, she was, she couldn't drive home. Before I picked her up, I had written her note, left it on the pillow. home. Before I picked her up, I'd written her note, left it on the pillow. So I brought her home, tucked her in the bed, and...

Toto, I'd be back that night. Toto, she had a letter when she woke up. The letter was basically, you know, I love you. If you can't stop this, don't be here when I get back and I went to Columbia that day came back that night and she had a quitter job and she quit drugs that night. Really quit him. And 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, to me, because of my background, that meant spending a lot of money. So every night was $300-$600 for dinner.

It was $1,000 shoes every week, $2,000 per week, all that. I had most of my money laundered out to Estonia. And Elizabeth at the same time, she had, she quit, but 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 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. I 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 cash sheers checks to get money in, trying to make it until I can start back with some other fraud and line her the entire time. She knows about none of this. None of this. And she's got

she thinks I've got a shitload of money and she's got expensive tastes. So 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 deep love there, both ways? Yeah. Yeah. The things we do. So, she couldn't be intimate unless she was stone cold drunk. I mean, stone cold drunk. I mean, just, shit, stone cold drunk.

And I, you know, I, shit, I didn't mind her drinking alcohol. I'd better have that than cocaine. So, that was the end of the sea there. And I kept, I had this, I kept thinking, if I continue to invest, that it would work out. You know that just keep going. She'll be alright. We'll be alright.

And what happens is, 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. I had money. She wanted a couple of Tiffany engagement rings. So I said, we can get married. Yeah, I figured marriage, sure that I'll lover, sure it's gonna be all right. So I was like, oh, get married. She's like, wow, I've always wanted a Tiffany ring.

Should I have money by the Tiffany ring? Cause all my money was overseas. So here I am, I'm defraud. So it's counterfeit cashiers. I find a, like a three-carat ring on eBay for 20 grand and Pay for with a counterfeit cash years 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 start running counterfeit cash years, Chase, to get the money to to live and everything, get the, get the engagement ring. We were scheduled to be married. Our wedding date was February 26th 2005. February 8th 2005, I'm I've got a Tiffany wedding band a couple of them coming in and I get arrested in Charleston, South Carolina and 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 thought I was just having them sent in. So I got 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, I think, 1130, something like that. Of course, I'm one of the gollers, you know, and FBI got me, it turns out it was, it was controlled delivery. There were like 30 agents in the parking lot.

FBI got me, Charleston PD got me. Within 45 minutes, the secret service comes in, takes over that investigation. They knew exactly what 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 they were like, okay, so I got to see my phone at that point. I had like 140 calls that she or she had been trying to call that time. She has worry. Yeah. And so they'll open me up and hell. I mean, you talk about 10, 12 cars, you know, 40 agents, everything else. She's got a dog at that point, I'm scared they're gonna shoot the dog. And it was dark and they had 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 they come in and just start ransacking them to put me in cuffs, set me down, start braiding her with questions. She had no idea what the hell was going on. We were 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. They're telling her, I'm this guy. What's my real name? Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang across across the board. She's probably terrified. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I tell her, I was like, look they're going to our rain meet 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. It's more than her, her or 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 that's it. They throw me in a cell. Meanwhile, more charges keep coming in. You know, and 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 does it 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. 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 you know, now I understand why the girl loved me too. You know back then it was like I'm the victim. You know why doesn't she talk to me, but You know now I understand why it helped the girl love me too, you know that she found out I was this piece of shit and After a week in county jail

two agents fly in from New Jersey to seek for service guys pull me out of cell Looked at me and they're like we've got your laptop. I was like yeah, and He's like well if you got anything on your I was like, yeah. And he's like, well, if you got anything on your laptop, I was like, yeah, he's like, you're gonna be charged for it. I was like, I figured. And then he looks at me and he's like, 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, he's like, we're gonna get you out. I was like, all right. So they let me sit every three months. To get a taste of it. And get me out. My sister, they have the bond reduced to $1,000.

My sister pays the $1,000 bond. By this point, she's just only, and because I'm dating the stripper. And Denise bonds me out. The person that I call immediately is Elizabeth. I'm out and she's like, I'll be there. So this like 11 o'clock at night. I'm in the parking lot of the Charleston County jail.

Me and a Secret Service agent standing there. And 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. Cross-haw payment 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, is that your fiance? I'm like, yeah, he's like, I am so sorry. And I'm like, yeah. I had, well, she sounds fascinating. Yeah. Pull up an old memo. I was, I was, I was, yeah.

I had $30 in my name at that point. $30. The agent had to pay for my hotel room that first night. So he drops me off at repaying for the hotel room by 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 I get back to the hotel room call Elizabeth beggar to come see me

she comes to see me and we talk most the night and Convince her to give me a chance. I tell her that I either everything's gonna be all right They're gonna hire me. I'm gonna be this big consultant lies lies just so she get back with me and She's like okay and so we move from from Charleston the field offices in Columbia, South Carolina and I'm breaking the law before I start working with them. I'm breaking the law and

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 officers in the room at all times with a South Carolina law enforcement officer. My job is 46 hours a day, surfing the web, picking up targets, intel, teaching them how cybercrime operates, everything else like that. For the first two weeks, they are extremely diligent. They pay attention. Everything that's going on, ask questions, everything else. But the problem is that that shit gets boring real quick because I'm very fast online doing that. So 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 key logger and they've got Spectre Pro and Camtasia, key loggers and taking snapshots of everything that I'm doing. Every night it goes on a DVD rom, on a spindle. So I'm like, they're not gonna go through that shit.

So I'm like, fuck it. Start breaking all from inside the Secret Service offices while they're in the room. Why not? That continues for 10 months. At the same time, the relationship with Elizabeth Fellapart completely fell apart. 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've 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 before I got arrested, she told one of her friends and I was the only guy that ever asked her to stop using drugs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have to say that that part of the story. So it's so powerful. And then that she chose to do it. And she chose to stop. And she told me that there's one instance she told me that if she didn't marry me, she'd never be married. And as far as I know, she's never been married. And so it started to fall apart there. Yeah. Because I was a piece of shit.

Still, you didn't take a step 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 line. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, it's falling apart. She had, uh, she wants to start going to strip clubs and, uh, I'm like, fuck it. Why not? We'll go. So we start going to strip clubs and she'll come back and be get 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. 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, uh, 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 let the picture of herself in the bedroom on the floor. I'm like, okay, I guess I deserve that.

So, she's got, I'll let you. She's got, she's cool, she was cool. So, 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,

hey, some of the bitches still on 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 I she calls and she's like look I had that money and I was like well look I'm doing what I can't 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.

I'm like, your rent's behind? She's like, yeah, so I was like, okay, so I pick up the phone, call the rental office. And I was like, I just wanna make sure that, you know, I'm sorry I'm behind on the rent for the department number. Oh no, that rent's 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. And I was like, but look, I can't do it anymore. And I'm, that's the last time I spoke to her right there.

What happens is, as 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 had toa shot. I go missing right? I go missing for three months. I told him if I ever went missing, not to contact me. So I go missing, then I show back up online.

First day, he contacts. So he becomes a target. They identify him pretty quickly at that point. He's set to be arrested sometime in March of six, as when he's set to be arrested. Operation Rolling Stone was the name of the operation. Nine people were supposed to be arrested that night. So Secret Service 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 shillow stuff. So, secret service comes back, yeah.

They look at me and they're like, we need you to take 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 polygraph. I was like, well, good, I'm not going to.

He's like, but they will throw you back in jail. I was like, don't want to do that. He's like, have you done anything? 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. Okay, so I was like, let's take the polygraph. I asked three questions, the 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

or I was under the entire time? And then have you contacted or warned anybody about investigations? And I filled 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 the cell. It's Jim Ramacone and Bobby Kirby. And they were, I mean, honestly, I, they were good men. Then 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. Hey, I mean, he truly was. 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 a man. And I told him I was sorry for everything I did to him because I got him and another agent fired.

And I told him I was sorry for what happened and he told me that he's like, we were your friends, man. We were truly your friends. So they were good, they wanted to help. Yeah. They wanted you to be a good man. Yeah.

Yeah. What got me today I'm bad is, I told him I was like, man, I'm trying to be a better guy. And he's like, Brett, you always were a good guy. You just didn't know it. And, Fuck, people like that. Yeah.

We need people like that in this world. Yeah. You need somebody to basically believe Oh man, that you can be a good man. So Jim Ramacom pulls me out. He's a second in charge in South Carolina. He's got the Miranda waiver in front of him, right? And he looks at me. 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 where 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. 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 way 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 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 only under state charges. A week later, judge rules they revoke the bond and properly. state charges. A week later, judge rules they revoke the bond improperly. Wow. reinstates the bond. Nobody calls the secret service to tell them

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 called 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's like, what? And I was like, look, I said, give me a thousand dollars.

I'll give you back three thousand dollars in two weeks. She's 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. When I 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 Jeep Cherokee. And 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 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, and stolen 160K out of ATMs. Went in the next morning, I woke up, signed on to cartersmarket.com,

which was run by Max Butler, the iceman. And there's my name, USMOS wanted on it. And that gets your attention. That was my real name with the USMOS wanted beside of it. Nobody knew my real name in that environment at all. But then they did. And it was talking about maybe in part of the secret service, Operation Anglerfish, everything else. So of course, they're all, they're all like, everybody's after, they're like, oh yeah, we're gonna get this son of a bitch. So I sit 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. So literally, literally, set 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

Pay for a time share they were building these new time shares Right off the Universal Drive building these brand new time sharesairs, paid for a timeshare nine months. Cash. I was like, we take cash. Yeah, we take cash. There's $12,900. Then it 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. This is what they use. Nowadays it's called a stingray. To find me. So one day I was like 10, 30 in the morning on Saturday, September 16th was the day, 2006. 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 and you know the people who nobody's there. I was like, huh, open the door, step out into the hallway, walking down the hall as 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.

He walks in like those guys. He's like, have you got anything in here? And I was like, yeah, there's $120,000 in the bedroom. And he was like, seriously? And I was like, yeah, that and AK47. His face goes, why? 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, as you stop at every county jail you possibly can, go through the processing,

which is about six hours. Once you get to your buck, 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. Wow, it 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 the federal prison is the drug program. I was like, well man, I don't use drugs. And he's like, you can find drug problem, get ya? And I was like, I can find a drug problem.

So what happens is, is every county judge stop that 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 in County Joe, four hour interview, about halfway through. He looks at me, he's like, using his type of drugs. I was like, yeah, he's like, what do you use?

Cocaine, smoker snort, snort, how much an eight ball day. That's a lot. Yeah. Do you 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 Knights. Yeah. So I like it. And finally, I'm like, is that right?

And he was like, it could happen. I was like like that. And finally, I'm like, is that right? And he was like, it could happen. I was like, okay. 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 they have interviewed, I mean, they have sentencing. I'd pled guilty, they have sentencing.

They're the prosecutor. He stands up and this dude is screaming at this point. And he's like, Mr. Johnson's manipulated the secret service. He's manipulated the prosecutor. They need 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 we're 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, where 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, he's full of shit. So she's like, no, but I'll recommend he gets evaluated. I looked at total a he's full shit so she's like no but I'll recommend it's a value and I look at my lawyer and I was like what does that mean he was like your problem we're 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 get you there pretty quick my exact words were fuck the appeal get me to the camp I'll take it there. He looks at me like I'm the biggest idiot in the world I get sent to because 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 Six weeks later. I'm an Ashland Kentucky and pull up there 14 foot fence raise a 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 and I'm like I can run a weed eater He was like, well, you could do landscaping. I'm like, I can run a weed eater. So two days later, I walk into the landscaping office and the cop, and this is 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 wanna make sure Brett gets a good start.

He can live with me when he gets out, everything else. Looking back, the man met that. And I just thought his bullshit at the time. So he starts to visit me in prison. I mean, yeah, in prison, he starts to visit. 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.

I was like, yeah. He's like, you think you can teach somebody how to do that? And I'm like, 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. All right, the truth of the matter was, is that my dad hadn't really seen me, except in that frame of crime, 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 know, where you love, where you're interested in, where your addiction is essentially. And what I did is I manipulated the man and they helped me 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 given me that and to drop me off a change of clothes, a cell phone and a driver's license. The only driver's license he had was my driver's license of 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 mountain side with a broom, sweeping off the mountain. I'm like, yeah, we'll do that. Absolutely. So building trust to the guys there, they're working myself. Yeah. And in six weeks, I take off. And I lasted, I think two, three weeks, something like that. US marshals, I made it a hundred. You skate. Yes, skate, skate. US marshals, they're canvassing a three state area. They find me, I think 250 miles away. It's like Lexington, Kentucky. They find me in Lexington because I had to use my real driver's license. I had a

laptop. I had pre-paid debit cards and I had stolen identity information and kind of the way it got me was I died my hair this flaming red. You know, I had this deep tan. I didn't look anything like a cell this flaming red, you know, I had this deep tan, I didn't look anything like this. And I was at a hotel, had the curtains open. So this guy, I was on the laptop. So this guy walked 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, that 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'll open up the door. He's like, US Marshall service.

So they arrest me. I'm, how did they track you down? They can't miss that area. They talked to every hotel, everything else. I had, I was like traditional, like they were just track, please, please, what was what it was? So it wasn't like from the internet,

they kind of got something. I thought I'm just, just great good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good, good I'm initially held at a county jail in Morehead, Kentucky. And that's the 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 spend like I think two or three months at the county jail in Morehead, 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 at my sentencing, prosecutors there, secret services there, judge me and my attorney. Prosecutor stands up. He's like, your 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 and identity theft. Yeah, again

Judge looks at the prosecutor says no Says hey if you're gonna charge him with it, you should have charged him with it I'm only considering the escape. Then he looks at me. 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 precinct and reporting, 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, you're honor. And he's like, so here's what I wanted to do. He said, I'm

going to give you 18 months on the escape. It's like, okay, he said, I'm also going to give you, and I was 15 months on the escape. So I'm going to give you 15 months on this game. He said, and I'm also going to order the drug program for you. I was like, yes, you're honor. So the drug program gives you a year off and it gives you six months and half way house. So by escaping, I got out of prison three months earlier than what I should have gotten out. So the original thing about drugs worked in the long- Now, the long-

The interesting thing with that and this was the best lie I ever told. Honestly, the best lie I ever told. I spent eight months in solitary confinement. Okay. 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.

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 we think about even just going back to Elizabeth, you think about... Oh, you go through all that. The whole thing. Every bit. Your mom too. Yeah, you go through every single bit of that.

And so you're supposed to get out an hour a day. Law says 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 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 get in 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. And 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. I came to 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 send me out to a real prison. Big spring texts, West Texas, where... Have you been out there? No. Man. Get out. Prairie dogs and tarantulas. Yeah. As what it is, it got, no kidding. It gets so hot that warnings come on the radio, radio tell 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, Texas. That, that's hot. Yeah, very hot. So, and that's 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 here in there. So I get 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 a treasurer of the Arian brother of it. And first question out of his mouth is any more 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 because I'm like I got to worry is my answer was computer crimes smiled at him. 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 area in Brotherhood has like lines. They're like, Oh yeah, this, this is the child porn.

That's it. That's the bad guy. They circle around. They're like, what'd you say you're in here for. So I'm sitting there trying to explain it to them. They're like, you know, you dug a good story. You still said this now, oh 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. Right. 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,

you're not like, right? 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 benefit falls are. So none of the guards told them that it 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 Poston over at Wired magazine about Max Butler.

He does an article about that. It shows up in Wired magazine. So at the end of the first month, Wired magazine hits compound front cover. That's right. 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 melcal. Four o'clock is a stand-up count nationwide. After four o'clock is your melcal. They hand out all the meld happy about it. So what happens is, is four o'clock is milk call, four o'clock is a standup count nationwide. After four o'clock is your milk call, they hand out all the milk for the day. So the milk comes, I get the magazine, I'm reading through, I'm like, well, shit, 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. So you're now a snitch, which is right up there with the pedophiles. We go to dinner after that. At dinner, you can hear it. You can hear the chat. We got a snitch. I think they got there.

Warden next day shuts down the entire compound, calls me into his office. They got security there. Got the counselors there and everything else. Warden looks at me. He's like, did you give an interview to wire in magazine? I'm like, yeah, 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 gonna 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 Santa 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. And he's like, it's getting there. And I was like, I was like, let me save you the trouble. Take the magazine, turn it over to page. I was like, right there's 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 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, 6-8.30 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 630 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, immediately two groups of people, you know, who the bank robbers are immediately, just by them walking off the bus, you're like, that motherfucker's a bank robber, and you know who the pedophiles are immediately. So my job as the, 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's 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?

Petophile, ratist, anything that harms children, harms women, anything like that. There are, it's like the mom. 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 is hierarchy to very very much so what that looks like in prison depending on the it depends on the security class that you're in what what level prison But at that prison what that look 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 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 the way that works at that point. And everybody quickly learns this quickly, quickly. 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. I got to see while I was there

So 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 so we had a outside you had this track track, a third of a mile track, you walk at counterclockwise. And inside of the track you got two handball courts. So of an evening, having both times, you would 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 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 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, it makes walks into a room. They shut the door behind the inmate, guard asks them 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. Garden says, get the fuck out. And that's it. Anybody that stays in any longer than that is automatically suspect. So there was one incident I remember this Hispanic guy. He's in there for a few minutes. And everybody's like,

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 we're on. Yeah. And it happens like that. It's fascinating because you talked about the network of trust in the cyber crime community. And here's a network of trust. Absolutely. In the prison crime community. And here's a network of trusts. Absolutely.

In the prison crime community. Absolutely. And trust. Trust, trust, trust, trust drives everything at that. 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 almost always it's Hispanics and African Americans. So you get to you get to detect what is the motivation for the ride What's reason and that gives you some calm. That's exactly right. So the second ride you start to notice says hey, man This ain't me this ain't our group

Third ride no shit third ride you lay in your bunk You let him raise you let him wait for all around you and every now and then you have an inmate They'll run up to you And they'll point to a locker is that's 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 still everything out of it and go from there and That's what happens, but he did your time for five years five and a half five and a half You made it out made it out. I went through that the I told you it was a good lie that I told what 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 disc and everything and 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 at my buggy. He's 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, dilemma and everything else. He's like, will you teach a class? So I start teaching that. I start teaching inmates, public speaking, and to make friends with this counselor. So I get, it gets time

where I'm supposed to be transferring out to this drug program that they don't have, having 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. But I go into 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 pure, pure study stuff and CBT training and Honestly, it's the best thing that could ever happen truly is that part What is it? What was the thing that changed you as a man? Is it the solid-take 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 love 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 after I get arrested on the escape, 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, so that's really the first turnaround. Took me two and a half years in prison to accept responsibility. Two and a half years ago. That was amazing that she did that. Yeah, she jumped down. Yeah, she did that.

She's something. She's something. Yeah, she saw me for 10 minutes, tell me she loves me and then I don't see it. I landed the seed. Yeah, yeah. So, but yeah, you had time to think over those years. Took two and a half years 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 that's the first turnaround. Second turnaround is the CBT training. You know, 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 make it work, it doesn't work. hit while I was in prison. I went through it and they ingrained it in you, but until you choose to make it work, it doesn't work. So I got out in 2011, didn't want to break the law, did not. And I was under three years' probation. Couldn't touch computer. I had a job offer from Deloitte to run a cyber crime office in the UK, which that was a no. Now you're not moving and that's a computer idiot. So, then had a job offer from a no before a fishing company, couldn't take that, 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 waiter's 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. Doing food stamps. I had a roommate that pin half the rent. They tell you when you leave prison 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 I had enough money to feed that little guy and didn't have money to buy toilet paper for

the apartment. So 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 bank wrote 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 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, this guy, I've been dating the same type of

women I had been dating, you know, the unhealthy ones. The hot unhealthy ones. Yes. Love. Yeah, that's how that works. So I had a friend post an ad for me on plenty of fish, and this woman responds, my wife, she responds, and the pictures I had taken were these prison type pictures, you know, the series like, yeah, they were there.

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 we started dating. And she ends up, she's that second saving thing. And she, uh, I ended up moving in with her. I was going broke. I was about to get kicked out of the apartment, 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's like, come on down, 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.

He's like, can I ask you a question? 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, is what I've done. And he looks at me as like, man, I got to think about that. So he, he tells me to go on home. That was a Friday, Sunday evening, he gives me a call and he was like, Brett, he's 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. That's like, all right. So my job was to push along more 10 hours a day, five days a week for $400 a week and busted my ass. I hit it so hard I would I'd come in of a night and pass out, wake up the next morning and hit it again and it got to the point he ended up this dude ended up offering me to come in a partner with his business. His brother dropped out and he, but at that, I've not learned everything on the business and everything. And he's like, you know, if you'd like to come in, I'll cut you in half.

And I was like, that's not, I can't do it, man, because it wasn't making any money. He didn't want to pay me anymore until, you know, he was able to do more. And I thought I found another job doing something else. And in a speech, I say it got cold and the grass started to stop growing. And I thought I found another job doing something else. And in a speech, I say it got cold in the grass, started to stop growing the truth, the matter was, I thought I found another job. Guy was offering to pay me $1,500 a week,

doing the sales for oil rig training was what it was. And I accepted the job, I quit working for Dustin. And the guy, I told working for Dustin and the guy I Told him before he even offered me a job. I told him what I you know my criminal history because I was required to do that So I was supposed to start work. Well, he calls me and tells me 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 I'm that guy again, man. I... It's important for me to show value in a relationship. All right. So Michelle was all alone working. Now, I'm like, I gotta do something. And 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 that. I think she was, she was, I mean, we were head at hard. You know, it was just her working. And I was like, I'm, nothing else I can bring food in the house. And get on the dark web.

Get some stolen credit cards. Yeah. Start ordering food. Well, it gets worse than that. Get on the dark web get some stolen credit cards Start ordering food well it gets worse than that. It's you know, she's got two sons there So I'm like well they need clothes so these are stealing clothes and it continues like that. I get arrested I get arrested on a food war and Michelle didn't know what I was doing So she had to she had been to work and she was coming back from work. I get arrested and I'm like, they let me make a phone call. And I call her and I say, come to police station.

I've been arrested. And she shows up and she didn't know I've been doing that. My probation officer, of course, he didn't know or anything else. At my sentencing for that probation officer was air 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. But at that point I'm crying. But that point I'm crying. Probation officer stands up and he was like, 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, Mr. Johnson, Judge, if you... give Mr. Johnson a year and a day he can get the good time and get back to his family center so the judge amounts of sentence

to a year and a day so I served ten months they sent me back to Texas and that's what I find out that uh... Michelle didn't need me for what he gave 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 are 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, but no, you can't get a job selling cars. So, you can't get a job, cannot. And to this day, like I know what my triggers are, I know what it would take to get me back into committing crime. So, and I knew I'd go so far at that point, so I looked at my show and I was like,

let me see what I can do. Signed on to LinkedIn, reached out to this FBI super cop named Keith Malarsky out of the Pittsburgh office. He was involved with my arrest and some associates and everything else. And a sentinel message and 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 dude responded within two hours. Two hours he 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. Cardinal, present group hires me to speak. Microsoft hires me to consult with them. And the Microsoft hire established enough trust in the industry that 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 cybercrime? Today, and in the next five years, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, what advice do you have to individuals, the companies, the governments of what and also to Elizabeth, like the human being that love, that live, that are friends with

cybercriminals. There's so many lessons to really be had from that. You know, to me, the lesson, one of the big lessons to me is, you can't serve two masters. You know, if you're that guy that is committing crime or that person that's addicted or 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 to realize that. You have to know when to, you've got to know when to cut somebody off when and something that, that knowing that they're not going to change until they decide to change.

At the same time, you got to realize that the only reason I was able to turn my life around 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 Malarski hadn't responded, if I hadn't had my sister, my wife, these companies 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 no doubt about that at all. All right. So you have to realize that. You know, cybercrime, a lot of companies that I talk to, they don't really understand the or appreciate the, 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 cybercrime operates, that you've got a group of individuals that are working together to hit you, but not only hit you, but they share and exchange information freely. 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 criminals do. Criminals do that. You have to appreciate that. You have to understand that big statistic that 90% of their tax use known exploits. It's 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 cybercrime is like, there's a lot of low hanging fruit they should fix. A lot of that. A lot of that. A lot of basic stuff that's already going on their abilities, update the system 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's a big instance. But, I mean, it is. But in the full spectrum of, especially in the future,

because there's more and more companies that are coming online, they're becoming digital, and it's just more and more and more, and those vulnerabilities in terms of human nature, so the social engineering and the actual outdated systems, all of it. And some of the, I guess, is the,

I mean, you're exceptionally good at this, is educating on the social engineering side, is educating people and companies that, like, you got to do that. And companies have to, I made that point that they never report to law enforcement. That's companies and individuals. 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 shinn 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 idea, and I've talked about that before, of understanding your place in that cybercrime 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 salesmen. 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 around there.

We have to be open and honest about that kind of stuff. So, I guess defending defences, not just like one tool, it's a process of just like a diversity and just constant educating people. Absolutely. So it's the social side. It's constantly because there's so many probably attack vectors. Oh, it's the software that you have. If you 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, and 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, 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 hacking? Hacking for good testing systems and then giving companies the vulnerabilities as you find that... I think it's outstanding. I think that I think pen testing, white hat stuff is outstanding. I truly do. I think that I think pen testing white hat stuff is outstanding. I truly do. I think that that 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 our fed wallets But I don't know if many our fed hackers out there on the criminal side be honest with you Yeah, so some of it is just like a psychological safety blinker that's not actually providing any protection. By the way, you wrote on LinkedIn something about ID me. What is it? Why is it a problem? I was going down a rabbit hole with you.

I was wondering if you were going to mention that. They lost, I guess I was partially responsible for them losing an $86 million contract. What was the contract with the Goufers government? Yeah, just the IRS. So what is it? So IDME is an identity, okay, backtrack. IDME 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 just want to bring this up to see you get angry My I think what my issue is yeah, my issue is so yeah 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 fake your face or something like. So private information. They've got a, they've got a tiered system on 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 have 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. All right. The issue that I have with IDME 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 that citizens need to be forced into doing that in order to get a benefit or service that they're entitled to. So 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 certainly you've got a host of companies. ID means nothing 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 besides the revisiting and things like that, that's identity.

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. Directly, a direct-ly? Yeah. But the network indirectly is even larger, right? Oh, yeah.

Are you an epologist for this question? Are you ever worried for your life or 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 cybercrime bus, that world, violence wasn't there. It came in later. Now violence is inherent in the system to do the money Python, but it's it's part of it

You the mob the mafia are now part of this whole thing cartels are part of yeah, uh drugs are inherently In intertwined and cybercrime marketplaces because of the profit potential and would that comes a lot of violence as well Yeah, the cartels are already brought The violence that they're good at from the 20th century. Absolutely. And just the technology of the 21st century. Now, do I worry about that? It's interesting that my family worries about that.

All right. I think I'm maybe just too involved in it to appreciate that type 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 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. You're 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 advice 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 can 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 know, 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 spend 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, you know, 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? Looking into five, ten years, fifty years, I mean hope for human civilization. If we do, if we do alright, if we do, if we make it out of this century, what do you think would

be the reason? What would be the, that's a damn good question. Because I mean, we got a lot of bad stuff going on. We got a lot of reasons. If asked you the other question of how do you think human civilization will destroy itself, I'm sure you have a lot of answers. You know, what gives me hope is, you see people working together. The COVID has been a little bit different because I think that too many people wanted to play politics with it. That's been the hard breaking thing about

COVID. In many ways, people apart, I mean, 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 where it dusts your body. It's just the post people apart. And then you realize how fundamental that human connection is to human. Absolutely, absolutely. But 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. And there's injustice. Yeah, 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. All right. So, 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 what I think that, you know, we just need to.

Elizabeth was very good. She taught me one hell of a lesson because before I met her, I know, we just need to. Elizabeth was very good. She taught me one hell of a lesson because before I met her, I was a news host. News be on all the time, a couple of channels of it. And she was the woman who didn't watch the news at all. And I didn't understand that back then, man. But now I do. You know, now I'm like, it's pretty smart, you know? Don't

need to listen to that bullshit as it is. That's why I love reading history books. And people, you know, I just, I feel like that's the right perspective I take on modern times. You know, how will this time be written about in the history books? Yeah. And react to that. Don't the daily ups and downs of the outrageous, which is getting worse and worse in terms of how quick the turn around is in terms of the news. I'll tell you what, I'm sitting here. I appreciate you talking to me. I do. Because, you know, I'm talking about about that relationship and everything. It's really been this kind of realization for me on a lot of things.

So I really appreciate you asking those questions and everything. Maybe I will talk about that. I love it that you value, first of all, yourself 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. 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. Why the hell, 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. If you talk, you ask about security, how to get to say that, but, you know, 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. And however you take, whatever journey you take to discovering that point. Yeah. I mean, with me, I've been asked a few times, do you regret anything? Would you change anything? Mm-hmm. Now I've done a day, 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 my life. So when I change anything as bad as a lot of that should have been, I wouldn't. And made you who you are. Yeah. The whole of it. I mean, that's that's tried to say that, but it's true. That's that's the weird thing. It's true. Yeah. Also, you mentioned that you're you're thinking of launching a show. What's it gonna be called? Cause 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 broadcast with a friend of mine, Karees Hendrick. And that ended because of a difference of opinion. A-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha Brett Johnson show is launching. That's the new one. Absolutely. And, you know, what are you thinking of doing with it? Making a difference for one thing. But it's going to be talking about cybercrime security, helping people.

Interviews. Interviews. A lot of it's going to be solo. Now I'm calling it the Brett Johnson show. I mean, 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. Yeah. So figure it out. I can tell you good at this. I'm a fan already. I'm going to listen to the scribe. You should too. You'll launch it soon. Soon. Next week, but

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 feelable cybercrime. 100% I can tell you a good actor. It makes perfect sense. Anyway, I'm deeply honored to use plenty of time with me today. I am into it. It was amazing. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Brad 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. you