Kind: captions
Language: en
i was on the run for four months stole
600 thousand dollars
i was in las vegas nevada one day i had
stolen the night before i stole 160k out
of atms
went in the next the next morning i woke
up signed on to carter's market dot com
which was ran by max butler the iceman
and there's my name us most wanted on it
and uh
that gets you attention
it was my real name with the us most
wanted beside of it nobody knew my real
name in that environment at all
but then they did and it was talking
about me being part of the secret
service
operation anglerfish everything else
so of course they're all they're all
like everybody's after they're like oh
yeah we're going to get this son of a
bitch
the following is a conversation with
brett johnson a former cyber criminal
who built the first organized cyber
crime community called shadow crew that
is the precursor to today's dark net and
dark knight markets
he's referred to by the united states
secret service as quote the original
internet godfather he has been the
central figure in the cyber crime 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'll never fully understand their mind
and their story but if you open the
heart too much you can be manipulated to
where the conversation reveals nothing
honest
or real
this requires skill and willingness to
take the risk
i don't know about the skill part
but i'd like to take the risk i always
wear my heart on my sleeve if i get hurt
for it
that's life
as i've said i want to understand what
makes a person do these crimes the
particular characteristics
of their temporary or permanent madness
their justifications
but also their humanity
i believe each of us have the capacity
to become both the criminal and the
victim
the predator and the prey
it's up to us to avoid these paths or to
find the path to redemption
it's on each of us
it's our responsibility and burden
of being human in a complicated and
dangerous world
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's brett
johnson
you were convicted of 39 felonies for
cyber crime
placed on the us most wanted list in
escaped from prison
you built the first organized cyber
crime community called shadow crew that
is the precursor to today's darknet and
darknet markets
and
for all this the us intelligence service
called you the 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
i you were probably playing the robots
when you were 10. you know usually kids
are doing a lego bit getting 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 um
it's like parts of texas parts of
louisiana that if you're not fortunate
enough have a job you may be involved in
a scam hustle fraud whatever you want to
call it man i was
my parents
my mom was basically the captain of the
entire fraud industry so this is a this
is a woman that at one point she's
stealing a 108 thousand pound
caterpillar d9 bulldozer tramming it
down the road you know at another point
she's taking a slip and phone 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
the neighbor acted as a pimp my mom
prostituted i mean she acted as a pimp
for a neighbor
her name was debbie and uh
my mom used to sell her out you know
debbie needed money and my mom would
find men for her to sleep with for cash
and she'd take a a part of the cash so
it sounds like she diversified the
methodologies by which she uh hustled
very
had that entrepreneurial spirit okay you
know we we see that a lot with with
cyber criminals you know that that sense
of being that entrepreneur so what was
the motivation you think for her
is it uh is it money
is it basically the uh the rush of
playing with the system of being able to
um
know the rules and break the rules and
get away with it my mom's a complex
character she is there's no one single
motivation so my mom was the individual
she's still alive
my mom was the individual who
tested people
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 uh she would cheat on the
men she was involved with she would
abuse the uh her children me and denise
she would uh
psychological physical oh it was mental
emotional
physical um everything everything i mean
she uh
she used to beat me and denise with uh
with belt buckles you know and that
ended
when
she was i forgot what we had done
it wasn't much i think that
it may have been the part where she 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 we
were on the bed trying to get away from
it and denise
kicks her through a closet
is what happens and uh denise stands up
and she said uh you're through hitting
me
and that was the last time that mom hit
us at that point
but
so sorry to take us there you're
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
a struggle there
there's a lot of darkness so
if you if you how did you feel if you go
back to the mind of the kid you were
with your mom was um
was there sadness was there things like
depression
self-doubt all those kinds of things or
did you see this crime this chaos
is ultimately exciting
you know i don't think
back then i didn't view it as exciting
now it becomes exciting when i started
being involved in cyber cyber crime all
right but back then it was simply a
means to an end was all it was so you
take a 10 year old kid and the way i get
involved in crime is
like i said my mom was the fraudster my
dad was 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 of her leaving so if she wanted to do
something commit crime cheat on him
whatever
he would pretty much just put up with it
um the the one instant so i mean this
woman used to she used to bring men home
in front of him
tell him that hey i'm leaving you i
don't love you anymore i want you to die
blah blah blah blah blah this was my mom
um
there were two instances where the man
where he can't take it anymore
and the first instance i was i guess i
was seven or eight my sister denise is a
year younger than i am my dad actually
files for divorce
files for divorce at that point my mom
um kind of goes crazy
uh my dad i was with my dad my sister
was with my mother because that's that
eastern kentucky mentality you know men
stay with men women stay with women
so um
he was filing for divorce me and my dad
we were living in an apartment
my mom was living with uh with her
grandparents and with her parents
bouncing back and forth between the two
and i remember i was sleeping in the bed
we had a single wide bed my dad slept on
on the sofa
i woke up one night and there was some
sort of ruckus in the living room
so i wake up and i walk into the living
room and my mom has a knife to my dad's
throat and basically you're not going to
steal my son from me
my mom was this individual that
when she knew she went so far like i
said she was always this person that
tested
what can i do this to you and you'll
still come
back she knew
she 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 went
too far so what does she do she gets up
crying
goes to the bathroom and pretends to
slit her wrists
so that my dad ray
will respond to that not respond to what
she's just done to him that was my mom
in a nutshell and she had a history of
doing this kind of stuff um
motivations as far as fraud with her
i think with her it was uh
she was an lpn she had a very good nurse
but she didn't want to work
was a lot of it so 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
she's buying over-the-counter capsules
and emptying the capsules out putting
some other crap in and they're in there
and selling at a speed and people are
buying it uh this she did anything she
could for money and of course i get
involved with that what happens is
my we were in east we were in panama
city at that point and uh
my mom leaves my dad
and the way she left my dad
my great-grandfather had died
my mom tells all three of us hey i'm
we're going i'm taking the kids and
we're going back to eastern kentucky to
attend the funeral
well
that was her leaving
me and denise didn't know she didn't
pack any of our clothes at all she stows
her clothes in the trunk of the car
and she leaves my dad and i don't get to
see my dad again for i think five six
years something like that
my mom like i said she used to bring men
home in front of my dad
she would
he'd sit there and cry and beg her not
to do it she'd do it anyway
when she leaves him
she kept up that so we were we were
living at my grandparents house my
grandfather he had converted the house
he had raised the house up and built
apartments underneath of it
so me and my sister and my mom lived in
one of the apartments underneath and uh
that whole sound 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 and bathe in two
inches of water
one time a week because he didn't want
to have to pay the water bill his rules
the rules you know if you couldn't have
the tv on
when he went to bed at night you had to
have the television the volume you could
watch it but without volume
because if he heard it he would he would
get up in the middle of the night and he
would kick the power breaker turn off
all the power on you this is my this is
my the family right so my mom
she used to leave me and denise at home
for uh for days man for days she'd go
out and you know party
and uh
i mean sometimes she'd take me to nice
with her we'd wait in the car
sometimes we'd uh wait in the living
room and she went and partied and
everything else
most times she left left us at home and
my entry into crime
denise walks in one day she's she's nine
years old man she walks in one day and
she's got a pack of pork chops in her
hand
and
looked at her and i said where'd you get
that she's like i stole it
and
you know it's like show me how you did
that so she takes me over and she shows
me how she steals food how she's
stuffing it down her pants
so we start stealing food i'm like hell
yeah let's do that shit so start
stealing food and we get to the point
where we're wanting a sandwich
well you can't stuff a loaf of bread
down your pants
so there was a kmart in the shopping
center i go over to the kmart
get a hoodie off the uh off the rack
take the tags off of it wear it out work
just fine and the way you steal bread is
you put the hoodie over your shoulder
stuff the loaf of bread down the sleeve
and you walk out with it so we started
doing that as you figure that out
just thought pattern so you so there's
there's like
strategic
thinking here yeah you know you can't
wear the hoodie and put the bread down
here because you might mash the bread
when you zip it up or yeah we have to
think through that you got to think
through it but but you got to realize
about by this point i'm well i'm already
seeing what my parents are doing
you know i'm already saying just to see
that
that kind of puzzle solving was
something you're already developing oh
yeah individuals they're pretty young
yeah 10 years old pretty young but but
seeing how they act how they respond to
things and 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 mind's 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
though you realize those rules are just
human-made but it gets worse than that
you 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
what's that she joins us
yeah she comes in you know i've got the
television i've got the atari 2600
player the hell out of it oh my gosh she
starts seeing this shit she's like
where'd this come from and i'm like well
we found it she's like he didn't find
that denise
denise stands up we stole it my mom
showed me how you did that
and she gets her mom too to join in and
she used to run me and denise's these
little shoplifters we'd take
you know we'd steal stuff for her or we
would distract security
and her and my grandmother would steal
stuff they got caught doing that
but that's that's the entry into crime
and denise you know i'm i'm adamant and
i
i kind of mean it
but
the the truth is i say and i i do i do
mean it that i'm responsible for my
choices as an adult
all right i believe that when you're a
child you can't control that the adults
in your environment control what you do
all right once you're an adult though
your choices are yours now that being
said
there's some
you can't dismiss that childhood
influencing what i did as an adult you
can't do that i mean it was kind of
written on on slate that hey this guy's
going to be this guy
when he grows up that said 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 uh was in
panama city florida my mom was in you
know we were in hazard kentucky
she uh
she was dating this guy she and my mom
was this guy this woman that uh
the abuse would
it was it was crazy abuse man just crazy
stuff you she would
tell me and my sister you know that
she gave up her life for us that she was
going to leave one day and never come
back that we'd find her dead in a ditch
someplace she'd go out and date these
men and she'd come back and she'd talk
about how these men were abusing her
you know so she'd be dating this guy
and uh
she'd come back and she'd you know start
talking about how he had tried to rape
her you know trying to get me to respond
to that and i would respond to that make
no doubt i would respond to that well
what happens is and i knew that
i don't know if i knew it was abuse at
that age all right but i knew things
were fucked up and
i was talking to my dad in panama city
and i really had it in my head that
that i was going to go down and live
with my dad
and
i called my dad one day
i was set to go to uh me and my cousins
were going to go see a return of the
jedi that it 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 to florida you know i was going
i was going to stay in hazard
i had to call my dad from payphone but
the result of that was i walked into a
uh
into a hospital
got in an
elevator and a woman got in the elevator
at the same time and i snapped and beat
the hell out of her
right there
and i was 15.
didn't really know what the fuck
happened
didn't really know but uh just anger
came from somewhere yeah yeah
and uh
you know the elevator beat the hell out
of this lady
turned out she looked a shitload like my
mom
but
the elevator door was open
one of the security guards i played
basketball with his son so he he saw me
immediately i knocked the hell out of
him took off running
made it back to the house where my
granddad grandparents were they didn't
know what had happened so
i didn't say anything
about an hour later kentucky state
police they pull up in the front yard
and uh two of them get out and i'm
sitting on the front porch and me and my
cousins are and they start walking up
where everybody starts walking out of
the house and i'm like i just remember
saying what do you want what do you want
well you knew what they wanted they
wanted
to arrest brett johnson and then
they arrested me i went in and i told
them everything
spent three months in a county jail they
didn't have
juvenile facilities
in that county so i spent three months
in solitary
went to trial uh pled guilty to assault
in the first degree the the judge
sentenced me to time served in a
psychological evaluation where they sent
me to louisville kentucky
and spent 30 days up there they cut me
loose they wanted me to
have counseling after that
and uh
never went 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
uh
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 and what happens is is uh
you know you're 15. fuck man you're 15.
so i go back to the the high school that
i was in
and um
i'm this piece of shit
to everybody
everybody out there everybody knows
so i moved we moved we were in
whitesburg at that point
i finished up the year there
and moved to uh back to perry county
where which is where hazard is
so we moved there and they've got three
high schools here they've got m.c napier
they've got hazard high school and
they've got dills combs high school
so
i was within mandanese were within
a half mile of mcnapier
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 helen i'm like nah
let's just go let's go so from there it
was uh we went down to the city school
hazard
and the principal tells my mom
denise can come
he can't
so
my mom wants to raise her and i'm like
no let's just uh just take me to this
other school so this other school was
like 15 miles away
and uh
you know country country school 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
handed her the paper she was my homeroom
teacher and
she heard this voice as the way she
explains it to me she heard this voice
and she looks up and she was like
son have you ever done any drama before
like
no ma'am but i'm interested in the
academic team i was this quick recall
guy right
and she's like no she's like
drama
[Laughter]
i'm like 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 um
around there i was captain of the team i
was this this just just scourge across
all the counties in that part of
kentucky if you know we had had a meet
it was like jesus christ that's brett
johnson
and you know it was like
she used to tell people they would
the the high school that i came from was
whitesburg and the first time that
weisberg came against us uh she 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 twiceberg
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
and 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 god ever do that in the state
so um
did pretty well man did pretty well had
had scholarships coming out out of high
school and everything else and i'm the
idiot that turned him down ask you a
funny question yeah
you'd make a hell of a i mean of all the
many things you could probably do you
make a hell of a
actor i'm very good on stage i'm very
good on stage have you acted
professionally anywhere or not not not
professionally we've done the you know
the college circuit and stuff like that
what happened was is uh
so i turned down the um
turned down the scholarships you know
scared of leaving i guess is what it 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 ninjas movie remember that the
three little ninja kids back in the 80s
he had written this for damn film and it
made a shitload of money
so he invites ed emanuel to come down
and see the play and ed had written this
civil war piece
so we put that on
i was doing like it was a multiple role
thing i was doing like 18 different
roles in the show
so ed sees the show and he's like
scholarship he said look he said right
now you're a big fish in a small pond
we'll make you a big fish in a big pot
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 in he
drives down to where where i'm living
i'm out shooting ball with with my
cousins and friends
he pulls up
and he gets out of the car and i was
like um walk 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 out white 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
it 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 uh
kind of broke my spirit at that point
you know i was like
okay
so um
went into just full-fledged into
scams crimes everything else i had
already been when i was a minor
i'd already been kind of brought up on
that side of the family with the crimes
that they were doing my mom was you know
drug trafficking the pimp stuff uh
illegally mining coal
um charity fraud illegally mining yeah
wildcatting coal so you um can you
explain that yeah so
to to properly mine coal you have to get
a permit all right
eastern kentucky a lot of people don't
they can't afford the permits you know
they can they can get them a piece of
equipment you know you get a dozen or
loader or whatever you're going to get
or an auger or what have you
so you start mining but you don't get
the permit so you don't have to find do
the you don't have to pay back then it
was like thirty five hundred dollars for
a two acre per minute or five thousand
dollars for a two acre per minute let
you strip mine the the coal on that then
you have to pay for the reclamation on
top of that so once you uncover the pit
take the coal out you have to cover back
up the pit
sow grass make sure everything is
environmentally friendly you got a silt
pond everything else at that point so
the whole idea is you buy an acre of
land or some area of land and then you
can there's a whole process you're
supposed to go through the entire
process how many people are involved in
a mining the smallest number of people
required for mining operations you can
do with three or four people okay so
you've got your loader operator you've
got your dozer operator you need uh you
can you can farm out the trucking to
someone if you need another trucking
company if you need to do that
um 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 that's what what
two thousand pounds of coal weighs if
you're in eastern kentucky because it's
that the weight of the bituminous coal
and everything the fact that you know
this is awesome
the fact that you know exactly
the volume of a ton of coal i mean
yeah you learn this shit right you
rattle this shit off so uh so you
uncover the pit and you've got to sell
the pit well the thing is is that where
are you going to sell the coal well you
sell it to one of these other coal
tipples that knows that they're buying
the shit illegally so back then a ton of
coal was they'd give you like 36 bucks
per ton is what that is and you'd have
to go out and you'd test the btus on you
take a sample to the lab test the btus
you take that into the company uh
british thermal unit so you test how
what the btu on the coal was how bad you
are the coal how pure the coal is what
what what btu it burns at back then a
good a good btu was around 12.9
was what you'd get all right so 12 9
coal 36 dollars a ton you'd take that
sample over to the into the cold tipple
they'd say okay we'll buy this for you
how many trucks you got or how many tons
you got and you say this is what what
we've got then you'd hire the trucking
company and where you get it out because
you know you've got the agents that are
that are looking for you by this point
because the people that you know you've
you've you've bought the rights to
whoever the landowner is you said you're
going to give them you know 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 ass
is mining it illegally they're going to
report you well all of a sudden you've
got all these inspectors that are coming
around and everything that hey we know
what you're doing so they're looking for
you to get the pit out so when do you
get the pit out right in the dead of
night so you know you're loading it up
two o'clock in the morning hauling this
ass out is what you're doing you sell it
out from there so
and your mom ran operations like this
yeah yeah and you said you worked the
mine too yeah you were younger learn 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 uh
so knew how to do charity fraud as well
um insurance fraud so charity fraud can
we can we break down some 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
yeah 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 called my dad yesterday my
dad he's uh he's dying now he's got a
heart condition he's not going to get
the operation to fix it so he's like
fuck it i'm ready to go and i'm like i
look down because hell i'm 52 now and
prior to 52 i'd have been like no you
need to do this but i looked at him and
i was like
i understand i understand you're done
and uh so he's not going to get the
operation i was talking to him yesterday
he asked me he's like have you seen your
mom and i was like dad i've not talked
to her 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 abused like that especially my
dad my dad came from a good family
everything else and
you know upstanding family and
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 in
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 you
know so it took me a long time
to
come to terms with that my sister came
to terms with it long before i did you
know my sister she she's been a decade
without talking to my mom
like she had tried to commit suicide i
didn't know that what got me so bad is
she said at one point
that she always thought
someone was going to come in and save us
and my response just immediate response
not even thinking about it my response
was well denise i knew no one ever was
and
looking at things now
i think that's that's where our paths
diverged
me it was
if you want to do it
if anybody's going to take care of you
you got to take care of yourself you're
on your own you're on your own
you know it's up to you
and denise has always been that that
child
that has expected someone to come in and
save her
well and almost like it's all going to
be okay somebody yeah and i knew it
wasn't
no no unless you unless you make it okay
it ain't going to be okay so
you know
are you able to
forgive
her your mom
my my boundary with my mom the reason
i've not spoken with her
over two years ago i started um
this this legal career of mine
i i've been the guy who has
i spent a lot of time
thinking about my past and those choices
and what brought brought those choices
around so i'm big about taking
responsibility for my actions i truly am
i think it's really important you have
to do that
well my mom
not so much
so i was talking to her you know and i
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 and my response started to become
well because you were the abuser
and you spent your life doing that to
her so it's more healthy for her not to
talk to you so she's still not able to
see the flaws in in
her ways of the past no not at all so my
ultimatum to my mom was look
when you're able to admit that you abuse
the people in your life
accept that responsibility and be able
to discuss it with me
we'll have a talk other than that i
don't want to talk to you anymore
so for the first year it was you know
calling cussing my wife out cussing me
out um
you know i don't need you blah blah blah
blah blah and then finally it started to
taper off and she's never
really contacted me after that
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 uh you know like i told him
i told my dad about the about the abuse
and everything else and uh there was a
point so you know i told you about the
elevator stuff but before that man it
was
it took me 40 years to talk about that
but it also took me 40 years
to
to talk about there was a point
that
my mom and dad would leave the house
and i would urinate in the floor
all right and uh
there's a like um
out of anger
no no idea why all right but i would
piss on the carpet carpet pistors like
the lebowski right
[Laughter]
that really tied the room together they
really tied the room together i was
talking about that this lady comes up to
me after the after the presentation
and she had she had a career previous to
that where she dealt with abused kids
and she told me she'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 um
that you know
this whole history of abuse denise dealt
with it by drinking
by trying to commit suicide things like
that and then finally she escapes i'm
the kid that didn't and not only that my
wife pointed out to me that
it's against that eastern kentucky
mentality stuff you know the males
expected to do things so with with me it
was it was almost like i stepped up
to to take part in those crimes so that
denise didn't didn't have to and she was
able to avoid all that other than that
one shoplifting stuff denise doesn't
break the law anymore she goes off to be
a
she's a she's a good parent she's an
angry parent she's a good parent she's a
teacher
good citizen overall i was just the guy
that kept right on going with it
kept on going so let me ask you about
that so um
your life of cybercrime
and describing some of the things you
did or knew about you said
quote i once stole several thousand
dollars worth of coins from a family
trying to sell them
to put a new roof on their home another
time i sent a counterfeit cashier's
check to a victim and he ended up being
arrested 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 enemies email
addresses with child pornography then
call the police on them
that's some stories can you tell some of
these stories that stand out to you
that are particularly despicable or
representative or interesting when you
look back at that that defined
your approach and who you were at that
time let me say that i did not care
about my victim
all right i cared about me
is what i cared about um it's rough to
it's rough to admit that
you know that uh
you don't give a shit what you're doing
anybody else you only care about you but
that's that's the truth of the matter i
didn't care about the victims um the
lady that was that wasn't even at the
beginning of my uh career as a cyber
criminal that was right at the last of
it which lady the coin lady i was uh by
that point shadow crew had made the
front cover of forbes august of 04
october 26 though for secret service had
to shut us down 33 people rested six
countries in six hours
i was the guy that was publicly
mentioned as getting away um what
happened was is i was the guy who was
i'd
kind of invented this crime called tax
return identity theft and
was stealing a lot of money
i went through all my stateside savings
and shadow crew gets shut down i don't
have any way to come in with any money
so i start running counterfeit cashiers
checks
defrauding people with that uh having
them send products or bullion
collections what have you buy cod
collect on delivery and i would pay with
it with a counterfeit cashier's check
this lady
was on ebay
she had been collecting these silver
coins all of her life you know the u.s
currency used to be the coins used to be
silver so she had a whole collection of
these things like i don't know 80 90
pounds of this stuff
and
i'm a very good social engineer
so
convinced her that i was a legitimate
person that
you know hey send it to cld you can use
my fedex account to do that for 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 would 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 uh i didn't give a damn i
didn't give a damn it was more important
was me at that point can i ask you a
question about the social engineering
aspect so maybe specifics like
the methodology email you said phone
maybe you could discuss
this process
from a bigger philosophical perspective
of
what is it about human beings that makes
impossible to be social engineer to be
uh to be victims of fraud so
first let me say that that i became a
social engineer as a child
all right because the adults in my 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 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
and yet
in order to do cybercrime you have to
not care
about the pain
that might cause them once you
manipulate them so you have to empathize
and yet not care
exactly and i would argue i would argue
that that is not a sociopath because a
cyber criminal and i was no different
most cyber criminals justify those
actions so the justification becomes
what's important with me the
justification was why i did it for my
family did it for my wife did it from a
stripper girlfriend yeah so and i
believed those justices
because i care about love a lot yeah so
the the the big
the big picture of that
is trust
how do you establish trust
with a potential victim
all right now i would argue online that
that trust is established through a
combination of technology tools social
engineering all right so we trust our
tech
you know we trust our cell phones we
trust our laptops a lot of times we
don't understand how they operate but we
trust the news that comes across the
line we trust the phone numbers that
show up we trust ip addresses if we're
advanced enough to look at an ip address
or a domain or anything else like that
criminals use tools to manipulate that
spoofed phone numbers 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 the 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 is 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 uh you have a lot of
conspiracy theories now about
distrusting institutions and thinking
like everything around us it's like i've
been listening to uh 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
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 gonna get burned so you have
to find some kind of balance in terms of
optimizing happiness
where
you
trust i mean
but verify and on the internet that
becomes really tricky you're almost too
afraid to distrust everything because
you'll never get anything done 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
so and a lot of the times that social
engineering is just feeding into
what the victim wants to believe yeah
all right it's it's not really coming up
with a brand new story at all it's just
knowing what that victim is what the
motivations of that victim is
feeding into it at that point so you
have to again that social engineer has
to
almost immediately know what's driving
that person that they're talking about
if i'm so if i'm working on a phone
talking to someone over the phone i have
to know within seconds
what i need to say how i need to act to
interact with that customer service
agent or whoever i'm talking to i know
they're in the line so fascinating
because you truly are empathizing with
the other person um what is it this this
businessman stephen schwartzman um
uh i've talked to 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
like what what they want and uh
what they're bothered by what are their
big problems in their lives because
everybody's saying that all the time and
most of us are just ignoring it right
you're right if you take the time to
listen yeah you know somebody at that
point yeah absolutely you do
then you have to be able to dismiss it
after you know you're you're looking for
that just to see how i can manipulate
that is what you're trying to do
so that the the lady was one story
another truly despicable story we'll get
to script in a second
but another truly despicable story we
had um
we were one of the really first groups
that started phishing attacks so
phishing 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 phishing attack
so you could ask for all the information
you were getting just complete identity
profiles on a phishing email nowadays
you can't do that nowadays you look for
basically credentials because everyone
is aware of phishing
but back then it was complete
information we had fished out i don't
know 200 000 e-trade accounts
that's what we had the login login
password yeah login password complete
you know social date of birth mother's
maiden
account information everything else
so we had access to those e-trade
accounts e-trade initially had no
security in place so you could cash out
the account ach the money out to whoever
to whatever account you wanted to went
through just fine
ate them alive on that for four to six
months
e-trade got to the to the point where
they 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
it's a good question yeah so what you do
is you find some fat cat that's got his
retirement
you know invested in blue chips same
time you find a penny stock
you open up a brand new account buy into
that penny stock cash the fat cat out
buy into that same penny stock pump and
dump schemes all of a sudden so you're
destroying people's retirement accounts
for just a few thousand dollars
bam bam bam and of course e-trade's
response is
not our problem
it's your problem you shouldn't give up
your password or what have you at that
point
and you still see that issue today with
zell scams and things like that
which scam zell so you know the instant
payment that that so it's the same kind
of operation some type of difference
with this mechanism you find an easy way
to exploit a system
and typically the financial organization
not our problem our system's secure it's
the humans it's their errors well
not really you know you've got some
culpability in that and you're just
trying to avoid paying the part of the
bill that's what's going on one of the
things just to stand fishing for a bit
is um
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
um 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 right which i
suppose is
it seems more authentic to those people
so they send them an email from
what looks like me
and with this kind like like loving me
it's the the interesting thing the
emails 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 uh there's a human
in the loop that's really fine-tuning it
to 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 phishing 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 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 phishing attack
looks like
we have people that are sitting down now
and making sure that language is proper
it gets worse than that though if you
look at business email compromise all
right so the way a business email
compromise typically works is the
attacker
will find a payroll person find a ceo
he will he will fashion a spear phishing
email which is that's a phishing attack
that's targeting one specific individual
all right
so he'll fashion a spearfishing 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 login
credentials to their email just to read
the emails and he'll he'll go in there
and he'll start reading all these emails
he'll specifically read the emails to
the to the payroll department see what
that relationship is are they talking
about their kids talking about
relationships talking about vacation
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 them gets those
credentials
at the same time he creates a unicode
domain in whatever the company name is
all right so instead of that english
alphabet i he's got that russian letter
that looks like an eye but without the
dot on top all right
comes back into the email into the
payroll email
blocks the real ceo's email replaces
that with the unicode email that he's
got and then sends out
a message using the correct language the
correct relationships everything else
and says hey you know we're updating our
account status i need you to send this
payment instead of over here
they've set up a new account send all
payments over here now and that is
business email compromise in a nutshell
all right works great
probably the larger the organization the
more uh susceptible to that kind of
attack because there's a um
like a distribution of responsibility to
where you're more likely to believe that
okay this other person is responsible
i'm sure they they uh secured that
absolutely i should i'm okay listening
to this
so that that's business email compromise
and it's it those crimes and it's one
thing you see about cybercrime
cybercrime's not really sophisticated
it's not the attacks are not
sophisticated the stat is 90 of every
single attack uses a known exploit it's
not the stuff it's not zero day attacks
yeah they're out there but if you're a
criminal waiting on a zero date of
profit you're going to starve to death
the the meat and potatoes are at 90
known exploits and then the rest is
well you're saying it's uh
maybe you mean it's not technically
sophisticated but it's social
engineering stuff is together 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 because you're
able to tell these stories now because
it is
studying human nature
by exploiting it but you get to
understand like our weak points are
um 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
it's fascinating is um this is a weird
question um asking for a friend
uh
is is spear phishing itself illegal
what's the legality here oh it's always
legal absolutely it is but is it
absolutely so here here's what okay let
me let me construct an example
so
i if if my friend were to spearfish
like a a a ceo right
and get their information
and after they get controls they have
their twitter account
they
tweet something loving and positive
what's the crime unauthorized access of
advice what would be the punishment
do you think
that becomes questionable so so
no monetary laws 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 whose account you took over
takes
you know exception to that
no monetary loss there's not really
standard like fines probably that's not
going to happen right right right so
i mean that that's kind of interesting
because it's
so when i got the ransomware um when i
got uh with the zero day attack on the
qnap mass
you know
they they basically say the the criminal
is
qnap the company
for having so many security
vulnerabilities
they're
uh like you are the victim of qnap's
incompetence that's the way they kind of
phrase it and see i don't agree with
that
i don't agree with that at all
so
solarwinds
[Laughter]
let's so i've got a 130 page class
action lawsuit printed out at the house
i've been going through it that catalogs
how solarwinds lied for years about
their vulnerabilities and they lied to
investors the the people who came in the
auditors who would who they would hire
would you know they would uh
not pay attention to them when they said
you know you've got these issues they
would say go away
shit like that for years until
solarwinds you know the attacks become
apparent um
my view on that is that the only person
responsible for the crime
are the criminals who did the attacking
the actual criminals not not solarwinds
now does that mean the solarwinds isn't
isn't all fucked up they are and there
needs to be some accounting in place
but the the the only individual the only
people responsible for crime
are the criminals and that's either
online in the physical world what have
you could be it's
being an idiot
is not a crime
you know
being
being criminally negligent is yeah and i
think that that solarwinds is certainly
responsible
not not responsible they're culpable
for what happened can you actually uh
tell folks about solarwinds what is it
um
what what what was what are some
interesting things that you're aware of
solarwinds was very it was
it provided a background a backbone of
security for
hundreds thousands of different
companies um if you looked at a lot of
security companies were using solar
winds that would that would allow you to
get a snapshot of the entire system
that they were working on so what
happens is you get a russian group that
comes in
and they
basically they hack into solarwinds and
get access to it and it allows them to
view every single thing
i mean every single thing
about every single client
that
solarwinds had at that point so entire
snapshots of all the iep that weren't
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 um
you know there's not been a lot of news
lately about it but the fact of the
matter is is that's the type of attack
that's a catastrophic attack so there's
a huge amount of information
that was read saved elsewhere probably
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
go through it line by line
what are the 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 it's a
completely catastrophic attack once all
the chips are down everything's tallied
up people are going to be like yeah
we're done we're done
all right this whole computer thing
we're trying we're walking away wait
what's that
that's terrifying because so you're
saying that there's not been
obvious uh big
negative impact from that yet so but
like there's been a lot of negative
impact but we're just starting right so
that's starting the capacity for
destruction is huge here how much
involve involvement from nation states
do you think there is
on this you know it's interesting um
so you've got iran you've got north
korea china russia you got the big four
you also got brazil
you've got all these other countries
that are interested in the united states
as well um
nation states are interesting depending
on who the nation state is
all right so russia is very good about
working with the type of criminal i used
to be you know they'll enlist these guys
and steal information and what have you
then russia will take the information
they want to and they'll basically go
off and sell whatever you want to make
some money
china's all about ip
uh north korea is about stealing money
because they really don't know what what
the hell else to do right now
but uh
so north korea is actively involved in
cybercrime absolutely they've stolen a
shitload of bitcoin and everything else
so absolutely they're actively involved
with that
very very skilled attackers very skilled
but even if you look at you know i told
you that stat about 90
all right
so even though solarwinds is going to
be the number one attack
the the follow-up to that is this not
pedia attack that happened and so that
was the most sophisticated attack
launched by the russian sand worm group
using all known exploits throughout so
it's not again it's not
your right in the sophistication is
typically not technical sophistication
but it's that social engineering
sophistication how do you get these
things put together in line to attack
and
succeed but when you get access to the
source code that's where technical
sophistication could really do a lot of
damage and that's when you find out real
quick
that's what separates the men from the
boys in this game all right because all
of a sudden it's not i don't have to
worry about social engineering i've got
source codes and i've got professionals
that are looking at that
and that's your ass
which then enables probably even more
powerful social engineering methods too
i mean it's just cascade of
i um
is this terrifying to you by the way
this that this world that we're living
in
as we put more and more of ourselves on
the
the internet into the metaverse
there is so many more attack vectors on
our well-being what's terrifying to me
uh 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
yeah 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
um 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 we need human interaction and
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
uh 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 the problem is i mean maybe
believing that is counterproductive
maybe human civilization is an ongoing
process of consensus and so it's always
going to be everything is shrouded and
you can call them lies or you can call
them inaccuracies or you can call them
delusions
it's constantly going to be it's going
to be a sea of lies and
and uh
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 call it a stable
uh consensus that creates a high quality
of life for the inhabitants of the
island
i mean i like it
we're going to agree and then don't use
no i'm just kidding
so maybe a step back you mentioned uh uh
i'd love to talk about shadow crew maybe
this is the right time to actually yeah
let's go to shadow code because it's
such a fascinating story so tell me the
story of building shadow crew the
precursor to today's dark net and dark
net markets you're this is why you're
the original godfather this is it this
is it so i um i get married i i faked a
car accident to get married got the
money from that you're romantic i
remember like my dad man i'm the guy
that you know i get from mom i get the
criminal mindset from that i get that
don't want him to leave
to get married uh
i
how did you fall in love there my my
first girlfriend was a preacher's
daughter and uh crazy over her dated her
for five years and uh
she figured out pretty quickly that well
not quickly it took her five years to
figure out that brett johnson is not the
man of god
you know i i could i could talk it but
you know
more that agnostic than anything she
breaks up with me
so i was uh i was at the community
college you'd make one hell of a
preacher by the way
yeah
but you know so yeah i've got that
langston hughes problem you know i'm
looking for jesus to show up and he just
doesn't
so i was i was at the community college
and i was i was a straight asshole i was
arrogant conceited everything else and i
had posted an advertisement
on one of the billboards looking for an
adult babysitter hot blonde you know
come come visit me in the library
buddy mine 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 i was like let's go see
walk over and there's these two guys
that are hitting on her so i'm i just
walk up and uh me and todd that was my
buddy walk up and i'm just
sitting there and listening and they're
you know they're giving the spill and
everything and she's just kind of taking
it in finally i looked over and i was
like
you want to get out of here
and uh
one of the guys looks at me it'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 save her ass
from you yeah that's a smooth pickup
line by the way if i ever heard one
that's good you want to get out of here
so
start dating and uh
she was the girl that screwed my brains
out man
and i fell f i head over heels we got
married six months later
six months that's what love does that's
what it does and um
i had
i was she didn't know i was a crook she
had no idea
you know she knew i was very bright
she knew i did a lot of theater stuff
like that
got a job at uh 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 uh to uk
got a job in lexington at uh lexmark
testing printer boards uh circuit boards
so i would leave on a thursday night
work uh three 18-hour shifts at lexmark
come back home on on monday
um
got married faked a 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 uh
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
chiropractor make sure you get the
insurance where they'll pay for a rental
car they'll pay lost wages now it's like
they pay lost wages she's like yeah they
pay lost wages i was like
she's like by the way you work for me
and i was like i work for you
i think you get to define the with the
wage and you can also define how long
you were unable to work exactly exactly
and the chiropractor will sign off on
any damn thing all right so uh
my cousin ronnie he figures out that i'm
going he finds out i'm gonna fake this
car accident so he comes to me he's like
hey man can i get in on that i was like
yeah man you get on that so this kid
he's five days younger than i am this
kid he goes to the dentist the day that
we're faking it has a tooth pulled tells
the dentist not to numb it not to stitch
it just pull it
so he shows up
he shows up the day that we're driving
out to fake the accident he's got blood
all over his shirt he's still bleeding
out of the mouth and everything else i'm
like are you okay he's like yeah man
it's gonna be good it's gonna be good
i'm like okay so
my mom by this point i'm living with my
grandparents my mom is up in the head of
a hollow
so we're like we'll just do it up there
we'll go act like we're visiting my mom
on the way back out
ran over a mountain
okay so we go visit everything
come back out that night run over the
side of the hill
me and ronnie walk back up of course it
totals the car
walk back to my mom's acting like we've
wrecked she knows what time it is and
everything else and follow the claims so
that gets the money to uh to get married
and me and my wife move from hazard to
lexington
and i'm the kid that
my crime usually if i was a single guy
wouldn't break the law wouldn't i would
be all right you know but
females involved oh yeah oh yeah i got
to spend the money got to show them
gifts everything else was never enough
to show love in some sort of healthy way
i always had to go overboard and
typically it was buying some or stealing
some sort of expensive friends so that
was that was the thing that was the way
you show love
is by buying expensive gifts or
something overboard back then with with
susan initially it was don't worry about
working i got it
you just worry about going to school she
was a music major
i was like you just worry about going to
school
so
don't worry about cooking and cleaning i
got it i got it so not only was i this
this guy that was going overboard but
it's kind of a control freak too right
so now i got it i got it i got it so
here i am you know
60 hour a week job
18 hour class load cooking cleaning
something had to give
i quit the job i couldn't do it quit the
job and start uh back in fraud and
trying to hide that from her at the same
time
so it was initially telemarketing fraud
um started uh
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 shriners
circus shriners hospital and
there was a third-party company that was
doing all the telemarketing made really
good money doing that
that job ended
and then they pivoted over to uh working
with kiwanis clubs selling food baskets
to the uh the food banks and everything
so
i stole the the phone list
and started at my own kiwanis club
and would do the telemarketing
go out twice a week and pick up checks
well what happened was is
i'm going out picking up jacks
go knock on a door turns out one of the
persons that i called was a law
enforcement officer
so he was like
who are you
i'm like i'm with the kiwanis club he's
like no you're
not so got arrested spent three months
in a county jail for theft by deception
got out
and
we had to move from from
lexington back to hazard and live with
susan's parents
they had gotten a desktop computer
hp
and
i started surfing around online
found ebay
and didn't really know how to make money
on ebay
about the same time
i'm
committing low-level frauds online i
don't really talk about that in the past
the first time i've really talked about
that but i would
uh pay for it with bad checks
so
some more uh person so not using a
platform like ebay anymore i would find
somebody that had like a stereo system
on ebay something like that and i'd pay
for it with bad jack and uh would rely
on them not to chase me or because they
were out of state at that point and the
dollar amounts were very low
so
got the money to move to finally did
those schemes enough to get the money to
move back to
lexington
got to lexington and by this point i'm
doing this like i said these schemes on
ebay
and i'm like there's got to be a better
way to make money on ebay got to be so
didn't really know how
one night i'm watching inside edition
with bill o'reilly and they're profiling
beanie babies so i'm sitting there
watching the one they're profiling is
this one called peanut the royal blue
elephant
selling for fifteen hundred dollars on
ebay i'm sitting there going like shit i
need to find me a peanut
so my initial thought was well there's
gotta be one in one of these hallmark
stores in kentucky someplace so i
skipped class the next day went out
around all the hallmark stores looking
for peanut no idiot he's on ebay for
1500.
so
after a few hours of that i'm like
turns out they had little gray beanie
baby elephants for eight dollars
picked up one of those for eight dollars
stopped by kroger on the way home picked
up a pack of blue red dye
went home tried to dye the little guy so
that was a nightmare turns out they're
made out of polyester
get them out of the bath looks like
they've got the mange
and what happens is i so i'm trying to
dye the damn thing i'm like well that's
not going to work that's just not going
to work so i got online found a picture
of a real one posted it on ebay
and i was like well what i can do is
i can
claim that's the one i've got
and then maybe claim that it got messed
up in the mail and work out like that so
i posted a picture of a real one online
woman thought i had the real thing she
wins the bid
that social engineering kicks in
immediately i didn't want to i didn't
want to be on the defensive i wanted to
put her on the defensive so as soon as
she wins the bid i send her a message
hey we've not done any business before i
don't even know if i can trust you what
i need you to do
protect us both
go down the u.s postal service get two
money orders totaling fifteen hundred
dollars 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
sent me the money orders i cashed them
out
senator 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 the fir
really the first lesson of cyber crime
that most these criminals including self
learns 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 complain to law enforcement
they eat it
so it's a
it's a mixture of like you're 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 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 were all very good about
blaming the victim for crimes why would
you click on the link why would you send
money to someone you don't know blah
blah blah so you've got that that's
going on you've got the issue of who do
you complain to
back then you didn't know do you
complain local police because she's in
another state so which local police do
you complain to
do you complain to the feds well it's
not the dollar amounts aren't high
enough to complain to fed's fez you're
going to tell you to go local local is
going to tell you hey it happened in
kentucky complain to them kentucky is
going to tell you well shit you're over
there we need you to come in so
there's this this whole issue the
jurisdiction of the blame factor
everything else um 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 one
well you had to have a mod chip in those
to play the pirated discs so i started
selling and installing mod chips
that led him to installing mod chips
into cable television boxes so you could
watch all the pay-per-view which in turn
led into programming satellite dss cards
those 18-inch rca satellite systems pull
the card out of it program it turns on
all the channels
started doing that
can we just pause
that is
very
entrepreneurial so
just technically
so
there's laws and rules that you're
breaking nonstop
so there's also legitimate
ways of doing that which is break the
rules of the conventions of the past
that's the first principles thing that's
what elon musk and his ilk do all the
time right
that is
guts and brilliance
but when it's crossing the lines of the
law
actually sometimes the law
is outdated the the thing is as a human
being you have to then compute the
ethical
damage you're doing like ethically the
damage you're doing about other human
beings that is fundamentally the thing
that you're breaking is you're you're
adding to the suffering in the world in
one way way or another and you're
justifying it but in terms of me sort of
as an engineer
that is some gutsy thinking that's how
waz and steve jobs thought sure it
that's 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
this in hp
uh
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
alone when you were thinking through
these problems
is there
this is a strange question to ask but
you know
what
uh what is your thinking process what is
your approach to solving these problems
so so the approach is 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 like later on it becomes
that once once you once you lay that
groundwork of the way these schemes are
working all right it becomes that and
you can apply that to other things in in
cyber crime as a whole all right but
initially it's basically trial and error
you know you've got a problem how do you
solve that problem all right so how do i
i'm committing these crimes under my
name how do i solve that
well one of the first principles that we
started to teach on shadow crew is all
crime should begin
with identity theft
that's one of the main first principles
that a lot of people to this day still
don't really get all right why would i
commit a crime under my name if i can do
it under your name so that's that's one
of the big buffers and that takes trial
and error to get to that point where you
start to understand that's the way crime
should operate if you're a criminal
all right but uh with me it was i mean
it's it's trial and error it's it's that
childhood where that mindset is kind of
ingrained in you where you're you're
looking for ways
non-tradition let's say non-traditional
ways of getting around things or getting
through things i mean one of the
questions i'll 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 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
all crime probably should
to be effective just start with identity
theft right i like that identity thought
because identity thought can take so
many forms right right
so yes so shadow crew uh 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
cards canadian judge comes out and says
hey
it's legal for my citizens to pirate
those signals and his reasoning was is
since rca doesn't sell the systems up
here my citizens can pirate it
okay
so what happens is overnight about the
same time paypal comes into play so
paypal is coming right online at about
the same time
overnight
little cottage industry pops up in the
united states you go down to best buy
buy the system for a hundred dollars
take it out in the parking lot open
system up pull it open box up pull the
system out pull the card out throw the
system away program the card ship its
ass to canada 500 a pop started doing
that
business is good
making you know three four thousand
dollars 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 questioning candidates
especially in canada
and i'm i'm having them send money
that's when paypal is 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 by yeah you
can pay all day long by paypal and
paypal had no clue what they were doing
with security
so
it's like okay
so they're sending money to paypal i'm
having the paypal cashed out to uh to
bank accounts in my name at that point
and i get scared because by that point
i'm still in four to six thousand
dollars a week
and i'm like somebody's gonna be looking
at money laundering
so getting into 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 at
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
sending my picture dude rips me off
oh i got played he had he had a little a
website set up with reviews and i'm like
oh it's all legitimate he's building
that trust that i talked about
so
the end result i got pissed and
there was no sight
that dealt with anything criminal or
cybercrime related the only real avenue
you had was an irc chat session internet
relay chat and that if i'm sure you've
been on that this it's this rolling chat
board you don't know who the hell you're
talking to most of them are full of shit
you can't trust anybody and you're
sitting there trying to conduct business
so you know if somebody claims they've
got a product or service do they have it
does it work or they just want to rip
you off because in those channels
everyone's 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 degree 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 know what to do
about the same time i start doing that
two other guys show up one's named mr x
he's out of los angeles the other guy's
named beelzebub he's out of uh moose jaw
saskatchewan
and we all become buddies
so you know a few weeks of me bitching a
few weeks of them responding
bl's above gets me on icq and he sends
me a message he's like i went by the
screen name of gollum at that point got
him fun and he's like got him i can make
you a fake driver's license and i was
like well motherfucker do it and he's
like well i'm going to charge you for it
i'm like yeah you are
he's like i am
i was like no you're not
and he's like look man he said
this business if you're going to do this
you have to trust people
or you're going to fail he said so i
want to charge you 200
but i'm going to send you a driver's
license
well by this point i'm friends with the
people who own counterfeit library where
email and chat and everything else
and i tell him i'm like okay
i'm gonna 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
sending my picture
two weeks later i get a driver's license
name was stephen schwecke out of ohio
and uh real guy worked at adp payroll to
this day works at adp is where the guy
works
got the driver's license
and to me at that point in time it was
the prettiest thing that i'd ever seen
you know i'd never seen a fake id before
i thought it was great turns out you
know looking back it's like
so but it is a
kind of a strong first step in creating
a
fake identity very strong very strong so
this so that was like
gasco just
on
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 oh he's absolutely
right
he's absolutely so you have to have this
is like mob
you have to you have to have an inner
circle that you trust you know i'm sure
you've probably heard me say this before
successful cybercrime
all right
there are three necessities to being
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 you've got the
people who gather the data basically the
the general store sells people who sell
pii credit card logins uh data tools
they always sell the spoofed phone
numbers or the rdps stuff like that
a lot of the times those people don't
know how to commit the crime and those
people certainly don't know how to
launder the money out put cash in pocket
so you've got
either because of a skill level
sometimes a geographic location
limits what that individual can do all
right so you have to rely
on people who are good in areas where
you are not
in order for that crime to succeed and
that
means you have to
trust those people
so what happens with shadow crew all
right 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 golabov he was a spammer at that
point in time he saw what we were doing
with with counterfeit library and he
liked it
he was getting all these credit card
details and this kid i mean he's a kid
this kid has an idea and his idea was i
wonder if people would buy stolen credit
card details it's pretty good uh ukraine
russian accent so yeah 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
launch this idea this launches a website
called carter planet which is the
genesis of all modern credit card theft
as we know it alright so
remember i mentioned those three
necessities of cybercrime
dimitri 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 is 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 dimitri 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 that's what we
were and fake driver's licenses
so then and we had i guess we had two
three thousand members of that point so
the response from the members
was
that can't be real you've got to be law
enforcement it's got to be in trying to
get us arrested and everything else
what
let me backtrack a little bit so
the driver's license that i had got
beelzebub had an idea what he wanted to
do
is he wanted to sell
driver's licenses
mr x wanted to sell social security
cards he made a very passable social
security card
me i didn't i had no skill level on that
i knew paypal fraud and ebay fraud so
beelzebub was like tell you what
you be the reviewer
that way you get every product or
service that comes in they'll have to
send it to you or let you have access to
it you can learn the entire game
and because you're not selling anything
it gives you legitimacy on the reviews
all right
so i started out as a reviewer the only
reviewer on counterfeit library
so over the next year
beelzebub turns out he was a pot grower
he goes back to growing pot because he
wasn't making shit selling driver's
licenses mr x
about a year and a half in he gets
arrested cashing out
driver's credit card not credit cards
cashing out to casinos doing some shit
with that
so i'm the only guy left standing and
i'm at the top of the heap so and it
becomes this thing where if i review
somebody
they make a lot of money if i don't you
don't do business here so script shows
up saying he's got this i'm the only
reviewer on site
people think he's 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 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 five thousand dollars the order
fails i get back on icq hey man it
didn't work he's like give me one more
chance i was like look i'll give you one
more chance but it's your ass after that
he's like one more chance like okay give
him another address another phone number
wait another five business days
hit thompson's computer warehouse for
four thousand dollars dell for five
thousand dollars 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 now it's called
cmp fraud card not present fraud so you
hit you use hit an online merchant with
stolen credit card data
back then a a fairly experienced
fraudster could profit 30 to 40 000 a
month
okay
just buying you know laptops what have
you and cashing out you know put them on
ebay for sale and sell them like that
and 30 to 40k a month was the profit on
that
script had a lot of buddies he had
people like roman vega these other guys
that would sell not just credit card
data but counterfeit physical credit
cards as well
we had um counterfeit not stolen so
constantly counterfeit
that that must be tough to do
so the connections must be harder than
crazy drivers crazy so you know you're
back so what's what boa initially had
and i became the the united states
salesperson for boa
but what he had was is he was the first
dumps provider
in the united states so on the back of
your credit or debit card there's a
magnetic stripe
three data tracks on the stripe there is
the first data track is customer's name
second data track is the card number
forward slash 16-digit algorithm outside
of that that's important we'll get back
to that in a few minutes third data
track is called indiscriminate data no
one uses it all right
so what's bought and sold
is the second data track it's called the
dump and the reason that's sold is when
you go into a shop you insert the card
or you swipe the card the only
information that's sent out for
verification is the second data track
all right that goes to the processor
bank for verification
the first data track that customer's
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
in code track 2 on all 10 cards track
one you create one fake driver's license
track one is just the name of that one
fake driver's license that way when you
go in the shop swipe the card track two
sent off a verification track one shows
up on the screen in front of the cashier
if you ever ask for id you pull out the
fake id everyone's a nice warm fuzzy you
walk out with cameras rolex and track
one could be
it doesn't have to be connected it's not
connected attractive not connected at
all all right
that's 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 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 it's what they call it
so what happens is remember i told you
of track two
card number
forward slash
sixteen digit algorithm you gotta know
the algorithm to encode it so you can
swipe the card or take it to the atm
machine all right atm
you got to know it now we were fishing
data from hell i mean we were we were
doing a lot of fishing a lot we were
getting pins we were getting card
numbers but you can't get that algorithm
so ukrainians start testing stuff
what they found out was
no bank
had implemented the hash on track two
so you take the card number forward
slash any 16 digits it would encode
take it to the atm pull cash out because
you got the pin all right
started doing that
well wait uh sorry i'm trying to
understand so
that means so if there's no
ha
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 too
so it's a valid track too
that doesn't
matter so the pin
is the thing that gets you in right so
back then all right back then what we're
talking about is you need to typically
today you need a whole track too you
need that valid track too all right you
need the you need the 16 digit card
number
forward slash and then whatever that
algorithm is out of the side of it all
right
back then none of the banks had
implemented that algorithm
so while the algorithm was there
you didn't need it to encode
interesting interesting
so you can't make a lot of money
uh with uh physical of
that
debit
card not present fraud remember i told
you it 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 by western
union or what have you to ukrainian
contact that's before cryptocurrency
came into play now you had a couple of
forerunners with e-gold and liberty
reserve things like that
but back then it starts out with western
union then it becomes prepaid cards
sending track information over loading
the card up like that and then finally
you get to e-gold liberty reserve and
today it's with crypto that's that's
used um
started stealing a lot of money
a lot and that got law enforcement
attention
so we started to see
i mean this it's a crazy-ass story we
started to see uh
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
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
that made a lot of news
not only did he do that but it turned
out that the los angeles secret service
agency was using t-mobile phones so he's
getting text messages of the secret
service investigating shadow crew and he
posts those damn things on shadow crew
so i'm sitting there going head of the
pile i'm sitting there going
this is not going to end well this is
not going to end well so at the same
time i had access i
started out with access to the indiana
state sex offenders registry and i was
using that to create bank accounts a lot
of the money out and i would sell the
bank accounts and stuff like that
they shut that down the next database i
had access to was the texas driver's
license database and started using that
to create fake driver's licenses what
have you and then finally we happened
upon the california death index
all right
complete information mother's maiden
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 death
benefit not death benefits but social
security benefits for that individual
and get that recurring paycheck in so
that takes a lot of research to start
seeing if you can do that how does the
federal government know if you're dead
do federal indexes reference state
indexes you've got all these questions
that pop up well it turns out federal
indexes don't reference state indexes
it's against the law so it also turns
out the only way the federal government
knows you're dead
is prior to 1998
the family had to file a social security
death benefit
for that person
all right
prior to 98 of course most people don't
right prior to 98 it took the family
after 98 the hospital can do it
funeral home can do it or the family can
do it so a lot more people have it filed
after if they've died but it's still
there's a lot of people probably a lot
of people
because that death benefit's only like
yeah okay nobody's thinking about that
shit
so i started to apply for social
security
benefits
nope
number's 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
i wonder if you could file income tax
returns on these people
turns out you can
all day long
so i started doing that and i started to
steal once i got ramped up because you
test everything you know your testing
make sure you got to figure out what the
deposit instrument is and everything
else and once you get all that lined out
i started to steal 160 000 a week every
week for 10 months out of the year
by
paying taxes
by filing fake
yeah filing fake tax returns so you find
a business yes 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 works like that today
all right so and you're keeping the
amounts relatively low keep them at
three thousand dollars
all right amounts are very low but
you're still able to achieve scale
because this large index
and i was manual later on a couple
buddies of mine went automated with it
wait you would go doing this by hand so
there's no code involved
all manual wow i'd follow return once
every six minutes
work 10 hours a day
three days a week so clicking on so to
typing fast and click one return every
six minutes
that's changing ip that's uh changing
address everything else will 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
um turns out that a backpack i don't see
any sitting around here but a backpack
will hold 150 000 of 20s is what it'll
hold so i'd put 150k and 20s in a
backpack i had a spare bedroom i'd come
in
toss the backpack in the bedroom this is
very very important information and the
fact that you know it is is also very
first we started with the volume of coal
that weighs a ton and now a backpack
holds a hundred fifty thousand dollars
and then you can multiply that by five
for hundreds
yeah uh
most of the time it's 20 it's coming out
atm right these 20 ways a gram each 20
weighs a gram so those actually go by
weight which is what federal authorities
do when they get a pallet of cash they
just weigh it oh
they just they just weigh it so 150 k is
seven and a half keys of cash
fp50 oh that's pretty light
that's bad yeah did you get big backpack
go do a good uh run with david goggins
with it nice i like it
you know this is great so wait uh where
does that come in with a backpack so
what happens is i didn't know how to
launder money all right so you know i'm
throwing cash in in the spare bedroom
one day you open up the bedroom and
you're like
gotta do something with those backpacks
and that's when you start learning how
to launder money you know cash-based
businesses things like that i had a
production company i had a couple of
detailing company i was thinking about
going into food trucks
things like that in charleston actually
can you pause on that to take a tangent
there how does my money
laundering uh work i mean at that time
and what years are we talking about this
is uh
by the time the tax return schemes
go into play we're talking uh 2002 2003
is when tax returns start and so what uh
at that time and what you're aware of
now how it evolved how does monday money
laundering work
you know it's not that much different
it's really not
you 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 my thing was is
have bank accounts 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 uh so cash-based businesses you know
when you say sorry to interrupt the
cash-based businesses so you have
money
that needs to
be moved to other people uh so how does
that work what's what's the business
your service and you're giving them
money right so you you do the ozark
thing if you want to do that so you can
gamble cash out something like that so
our trips to whatever casinos you've got
you've got your production company or
your detail company so how many cars you
cleaning today how many companies have
you got to do that
all right
whatever that company is it's got to be
cash based somebody's paying you in cash
is what you're doing you have to have
enough of those cash-based businesses
where it doesn't look funny
all right because if you're a detail
company making a hundred thousand
dollars a month
that's a problem
yeah okay so then you start depositing
into that well
because of the patriot act as a
suspicious activity report sars
came in at 2 500 instead of the 10k that
it used to be so all of a sudden you've
got multiple bank accounts that you've
got to set up all right
fortunately what you also had is you had
a bunch of prepaid debit cards that were
coming into play at the same time so a
combination of
bank accounts
prepaid debits that had ach abilities
attach 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 letico and estonia at that point
that's what you've got um so much 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
took them
they got it
but it took them that long to get to it
so so
how do stories like with script that
come into play here where
he uh had someone who owed him money
kidnapped and tortured so
when does it turn
darker
it turns darker when the more the the
more money you make
script was a kid that
he was stealing enough money that he was
able to buy whatever state he wanted to
and he would brag about touring the
countryside and if he saw a property
that he liked he would buy it and that
was not just to brag he was doing that
so this kid is stealing a lot of money
at the same time he's got connections
politically because of his family he's
got connections and that family's got
connections with the ukrainian mob all
right so he's got these inroads and
people are looking out for him and he's
stealing a lot of money at the same time
somebody doesn't pay him
a decent amount of money somebody
doesn't pay him now we had never
with shadow crew with carter planet with
counterfeit library we were basically
the geeks
all right we were the 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
um
script someone rips the guy off
and uh
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
round and 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 that's the first time
that violence came into play at that
point that's when things got
you start realizing things are getting a
little serious
how does that make you feel
the first response is
can't be real he's he's just that's
he's just doing that
you know he's wanting to send a message
then you're like
no that's real
that's real
and uh were you afraid in your own heart
that you might uh 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 the joke i give the joke i tell my
wife is you know but i knew some guy
that had 8 000 bitcoins
i might be persuaded to ask him
for access to that and she was like how
and i was like well hammer and toes 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 that's
and i think that's what was scripps
issue
is he it was a lot of money to him this
is the money and then there's
you know violence can also be gradual so
every time you do a little more a little
more a little more a little more
yeah you get used to what's going on and
then i can desensitize and you figure
you take somebody like uh like ross
ulbrick the the silk road guy all right
ross was not a violent guy
he's he was not but at that point in
time you know he was sitting on 24 24
million in bitcoin he was the only game
in town
and that 24 now is like i don't know 20
to 24 billion some crap like that but uh
he
felt in danger
of
this guy was going to turn him in you
know it was a black mountain and
everything so ross
thinks he hires a couple hit men to kill
the guy
so it's it's it becomes that thing and i
saw that over and over again and i'd
like to say i wasn't like that but
given the same circumstances i would
have probably done the same thing
and also when you're it's not just about
money there's a lot of other forces like
if you're threatened
um for your well-being or for your
wealth or for your power all 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 do i need to do so what do you make
of silk roast the shadow crew started
something that today you can call dark
net and dark net markets
so these markets that operate that trade
uh trade things everything from child
pornography to drugs to
i mean what else
everything what are the dark things that
humans want to do that they don't want
anyone to know about all of those things
right
um
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 let's
let's backtrack a little bit more before
we get to that all right um what shadow
crew
did
other than
you know dealing in all these
stolen wares
what shadow crew did that's really
important remember those three
necessities that i talked about
but the important thing is is it
established trust among criminals all
right because that's a necessity you
have to be able to trust who you're
dealing with because you have to deal
with somebody you have to
all right so how do you know you're not
dealing with a cop how do you know
you're dealing with somebody that's
skilled how you know you're going to
deal with somebody that's not going to
rip you off you have to be able to trust
that individual shadow crew provided
that trust mechanism for criminals you
had that communication channel the
forums where you could reference
conversations weeks months old take part
and learn from those conversations
you had vouching systems and review
systems in place escrow systems in place
you had you could knew by looking at
someone's screen name
if you could trust the individual
network with the individual all right
and that community
of just humans
provided
that backbone of trust and that's that's
really interesting when you think about
it you
you had the trust that was there but you
also had this
almost this instantaneous
information that was available
about the community or about cybercrime
at large and that's that's still in play
today all right so when
that that was the way things were until
a couple of things happen and one was
cryptocurrency
the other one was
the tour browser the dark web now i was
working with the secret service ripping
the cigarette service off
when tor comes into play all right so we
got we got a memo in one day and it was
talking about the tor 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 tor browser and it
turns out it was this was 2005 early 6.
turns out it was completely unusable
could not use it at all simply because
no one was using it and it was extremely
slow so uh 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
interest u.s 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 the origins
are
developed so that operatives
could communicate with each other
without being identified all right
that then goes open source they release
it eff comes in starts sponsoring and
everything else like that
the next idea was well you know people
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 ullbrick runs with it
ross albert decides he's going to start
up silk road so initially the people who
were using tor which later was the dark
web
people were using tor were just
talking with each other visiting
websites communicating like that someone
figured out hey man we could host
websites
on this thing and they have a lot of
trouble finding the box
so that
is the advent of silk road all of a
sudden ross obrecht has this idea that
he's going to change the world
by becoming the largest drug dealer on
the planet
so he opens up the silk road and the
only payment instrument he allows
is bitcoin
so if those people out there are
wondering why bitcoin is going at what
44k today
yeah yeah by the time this is out it
could be a hundred thousand or ten
thousand 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
right
people 100 years from now i'll be
laughing wait it was that low
so he only accepts bitcoin and that's of
course the the initial use case of
crypto is no one wants to admit it today
but the initial use case is we're going
to buy a bunch of pot
we need somebody we need a way to pay
for it
so that's that's what happens uh ross
it's it's really interesting to me if
you um
if you look at motivations of cyber
criminals
the motivations are status cash
ideology all right
my guys all cash across the board all
cash
ross is ideology
he really believed he was going to
change the world he really didn't i've
been fortunate
i uh i actually know the guy who ran
silk road 2
and have talked to the kid
everything else and
i will tell you that those those guys
who
are motivated by ideology
they are a completely different breed
they really are it's not you know the
cash guy it's it's it's low-hanging
fruit the the ease of
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 silk road 2 guy he's still got it
you know he's not breaking the law but
you can see it's like he wants to
he he wants to
so it's it's uh
that's fascinating that i i mean the the
worst atrocities in human history are
committed
with people that operate under ideology
all the other motivations are much
weaker but you know you think about it
with ross i mean
very bright guy
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 it certainly i mean
could he have changed the world yeah
could he have done it like that
probably not
like i could steal man those arguments i
said i listened to quite a few
uh libertarians and you could push that
to anarchists and
you know there's a lot of people that
argue um
so i actually talked to uh to fac a
professor columbia who actually argues
that all drugs should be legalized and
not at a philosophical level political
level but the fact that um all the
negative consequences of drugs that
people talk about
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 uh
um
the government or any other institution
shouldn't be
the uh
the rule setters the constraints for how
you live your life and so that i could i
could see that argument being made and
ultimately if you
uh like
create an open market for drugs how that
could build a better society it might
break down the outdated
the corrupt the bureaucratic
institutions i mean you can make you can
make that argument there's an argument
and let's be fair i want to be fair with
it i mean
could did he change the world
we do have this whole thing called
cryptocurrency yeah in the long arc of
history perhaps yeah we do have that
that's a biggie 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
how it pans out
shadow crew
we had this guy
albert gonzalez this kid's name
we had we were growing so big that
i had to start farming things out so the
first thing i started farming i i
instituted this review system
kind of establishing that trust
mechanism even further for criminals to
use
we needed somebody to take care of our
tech aspects of the forum so um
associate of mine by the name of kim
taylor
we were looking for a forum techie he
comes to me one night and he's like a
founder forum techie i was like who's
that he's like it's this kid and i was
like is it 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 cumba johnny was his
screen name and uh
he starts selling credit cards after a
while under his screen name with
scarface
and that cbv1 breach where you're
cashing out
the track twos at atms
you know forty thousand dollars a day
so albertson new jersey one day
broad daylight
and stands at an atm for 40 minutes
just standing there
feeding in one atm card after another
point out cash taking the 20s out stuff
them in that backpack
meanwhile just across the street a
couple cops just happen to be there
and they start noticing
this kid's 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 for the secret service
at that point in time secret service
i referred to and i i want to make sure
i i don't say that it's not like that
anymore
but back then they were fucking idiots
all right they had no clue what was
going on so there was a competence issue
that they were working through is one
way to put it that's a nice that's a
nice euphemism
poor fucking idiots there's another way
to say it
so they're just like not aware of this
digital world they have no clue no clue
the way that uh albert tells them how to
catch us because they looked at him how
do we catch them and alfred's like
i'm serious i'm serious so albert's like
well you could try a vpn
what's a vpn yeah 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 that was coming in
everything like that i'm stealing 160k a
week i didn't know albert had been
arrested
i'm worried about being arrested i know
the writing's on the wall and i'm like
i'm quitting
where did you see the writing like the
ips that were coming in yeah the uh text
messages about the secret service
investigations and their buildings
precious buildings and this is not going
to end well this is this is this is
going to be bad so uh i announced my
retirement of february 15th
i'm sorry april 15th
that's my retirement i think that's
2004.
and uh 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 that's a
nightmare story in and of itself
so my second in charge kim taylor this
guy
there was this guy named david
oh what was his name
he was el mariachi was was the guy's
name david thomas
david yeah yeah he was a film guy so
scarface yeah yeah so el mariachi real
name david thomas
he's on the run out of nebraska for
check fraud he comes to us on shadow
crew telling us this sad story we take
up a collection for this guy
send it to him all right i get him a job
working with a low-level carter
trying to make him some money all right
el mariachi 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
buyer he um a real friend of mine and i
contacted him i was like look man i got
a guy who wants to do some work can you
help the guy out he's like i got him i
was like okay
so he sends thomas enough money to go
thomas is in texas at that point sends
thomas enough money to go from texas
to issaquah washington and rent an
office space all right
so thomas goes up there rents his office
space him and his girlfriend rents an
office space
and the plan is this big buyer is going
to
place an order
get product sent
mariachi is going to get the product
listed on ebay cash out 50 50. easy
enough all right
so big buyer places an order first order
is outpost.com 18 000.
the largest order outpost.com had ever
received at that point in time
order goes through because the stuff
goes through he gets the product all
right
mariachi comes back tells me tells my
second in charge kim taylor kim taylor
at this point he's i'm i'm 33 34.
kim taylor is 46 he works at the
tattered covered bookstore in denver
colorado that's where he works at this
point and he fancies himself jason
bourne
all right he's even got one of the
screen names of jason bourne
so i'm like alright so
mariachi's telling us how much 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 issaquah and i was like
why he's like to make some money i'm
like you're making money he's like i
want to go to issaquah i was like all
right go be careful so he gets in the
car
saturn is what he's driving he drives
his little piece a piece of saturn all
the way up to issaquah gets there you
know midnight
they party all night long because
they've never met each other they're
just celebrating partying drinking
everything else like that
meanwhile big buyer
has placed another order
with outpost.com
17 000.
the second largest order outpost.com had
ever received at that point in time
by this point in time outpost knows the
first order was fraudulent guess where
it's going the exact same address the
first order goes
so outpost picks up the phone calls
issaquah pd hey we got a fraudster
issaquah is like
would you mind sending some empty boxes
and the outpost is like be happy to
so the rule was
is on credit card fraud if you've got
full account access
you place the order the morning 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 big buyer was the guy who placed
the order
mariachi in my second in charge are
partying all right so they're supposed
to contact big buyer
they don't
meanwhile big buyer is raising hell
getting up with me like hey
where are 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
mariachi's got a cadillac old 70s
cadillac he's got a cadillac
pulls into the complex
now mariachi's driving
kim taylor's in the passenger seat
david thomas's girlfriend's in the back
seat as they pull into the complex going
through the parking lot mariachi just
happens to glance over and he sees a van
with a guy sitting sideways in the van
and he looks at kim taylor and he's like
that's an undercover
and kim's like ah it's fine so they pull
up to the office complex
kim's like i'll go in and get the
packages
so he walks in
looks at the guy behind the counter i
believe he has some packages for us guys
like one second
so he
disappears around the wall out pops the
issaquah pd arrest kim
david thomas is in the car watching all
this happen he bugs out
and they arrest him on the interstate
where he has three fake driver's
licenses in his wallet along with his
real driver's license another no-no but
they get him so
david thomas had outstanding warrants
out of nebraska we couldn't bond him out
kim taylor didn't have any warrants so
we bonded him out um
my third in-charge kid
um seth sanders was his name
he bonds him out uses his girlfriend's
account to bond them out and uh i get
married i get kim taylor
to go to utah
where he
uh another friend of mine agrees to
house him him and his wife
so i think everything's fine and all
that
about three weeks later
this guy in utah gets me on the phone
hey
he's got to go
i'm like what's going on
he's like well
the only thing he's doing is popping
ecstasy tablets every day all day and
i'm like seriously he's like yeah i was
like okay he's got to go so we kick him
out of there by this point i've got
another crew that's coming through i
mean i had all these crews running had
another crew that's coming through
denver
send kim back to denver to partner up
with these guys
kim gets these guys arrested so by this
point in time i'm exasperated i just
want to throw my hands up in the air and
walk away
so my retirement's coming up at the same
time
so i'm like fuck it i'm done
so i tell everybody the rest of the
admins and the mods there i'm like this
is what's going on you guys need to
watch out for this we need to ban kim
not let him back in be careful what's
going on i walk away
at the same time i walk away
cumber 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 seven
million dollars worth of transactions
over the next four or five months
shadow crew makes the front cover of
forbes
august 2004 headline who's stealing your
identity
october 26 2004 united states secret
service arrest 33 people six countries
six hours
i was in charleston south carolina when
i saw it happen and i'm like
[Laughter]
you're you're 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 uh his his
name was tron
he was a um in the zero yeah exactly but
uh
he went by the screen name tron he had
access
almost unfettered access to bank of
america
um
so what happens is they identified the
guy
secret service is in the air to go get
him they call the ukrainian police hey
we're coming down to rest this guy
ukrainian cops are like oh come on down
so as soon as they get off the phone
ukrainian cops get in the car
go down and tell tron hey they're
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
caught him eventually he caught him
eventually well let me actually ask you
on this point
you've said that
if you do cyber crime eventually it's
not going to end well it does not end
well why is that
so i don't want to say that's because
you're going to be arrested because
honestly very few people are arrested
all right
but it doesn't end well because of the
type of person that that you become
you you quoted me earlier you you lie
to everybody
around you you lie to yourself you lie
to your friends you like 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 um you can't truly
trust you don't trust anybody you don't
trust anybody you know i had uh
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 uh
to give up on me to realize that i was
that piece of shit
and uh
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 freaking kids man
you're that person you're that person so
you're also lying to yourself
and 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 right so you know i went to
prison of course
one of the things that one of the most
important lessons that i that i've
learned in prison
because cyber 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
script 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 other end and you're not
you're not so those lies become
part of it everything else and uh
you know it's yeah you get the higher
ups are usually arrested they are but
you know you've got millions of cyber
criminals these days so most guys are
not going to be arrested
so you may be arrested you may
you may be like
freaking jonathan james he was a minor a
very very talented individual
very competent he had
as a kid he had broken into nasa dod
pentagon he shut the nasa computers down
for six weeks this is that kid
then he decides he wants to go into
credit card theft
partners with albert he's arrested with
albert
law enforcement
they were going on they were going to
blame him he was the only competent
individual
so this kid gets up one day he wasn't in
prison yet he gets up one day goes in
his dad's bedroom gets out as 45
walks in the bathroom and blows his
brains out
you know you've got you've got things
like that um
or you're going to rip somebody off and
you're going to end up like scripted
with that guy the
the guy who hit
who ran evolution marketplace no one
knew who two people ran that guy and
girl
and no wonder who they were
he ends up stealing about 24 million
dollars a lot of from ukrainian mob and
they found him about a year later on a
beach without his head and hands
but
you know it always goes south but more
than anything to me the uh
the negative thing is is you really
become somebody
that i mean just truly a despicable
human being when you get to the point
when you're you're still you're you're
destroying people's retirement accounts
you're stealing money from a woman that
simply wants to do
something good for her family when you
when you become that individual and
you're okay with that my god man it got
to the point i had one guy ripped off
it's like for nine hundred dollars is
when i first started the cyber crime
stuff that's when i was becoming
competent and
i ripped him off for like nine hundred
dollars
and he sent me an email
and
he was like
the email said something like
i guess you needed the money and it's
okay
you know you keep it
and uh
i'm getting chills right now thinking
about it but it's that uh
where you become that individual
yeah
can i actually backtrack i listen i love
love okay
and there's a story uh
that you fell in love with the stripper
i mean you you have to tell the story so
how did you fall in love
um
with somebody not there's anything wrong
with that profession but it's it's it's
romantic it's like a true romance by the
way great movie it is a great film it's
truly a great film and even even brad
pitt um who makes a brief appearance is
genius there's so much good acting there
anyway uh so tell me that love story all
right so you know what uh 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 uh
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 her computer and she
would minimize the screens and i'm like
well
got to figure out what the hell is going
on
so uh put a key logger on our system as
any
uh anybody should in the relationship
well absolutely because you trust them
you know
why not you should be tracking all their
movements all their exactly exactly like
i said i was the control freak too it's
romantic so um
found out she had been cheating on me
and she was um here you go they had 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 and i was like well
shit
so 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 uh
took about a week
of both of us crying and arguing
and everything else and she she finally
left
and uh
i went through this depression i went uh
i was in charleston south south carolina
i would just walk around the house kind
of stumbling in a daze
realized i was getting suicidal
and uh was smart enough to do something
about it and picked up the phone book
and uh that's where there's always this
sense of humor so i picked up the phone
book i'm going through the yellow pages
i'm like psychologist criminal
psychologist because i need that
called this psychologist crying to her
i'm crying on the phone told her
everything i'm this criminal this is
what's happened she's like come in now i
was like go in spill my guts and uh
saw her for about four months and i joke
about it it's true she she was trying to
get me to stop breaking the law and to
go into real estate and i remember
telling her is there a difference
she was like yes there's a difference
so sorry for about four months i was
i was 34.
i didn't start drinking until i was 34.
i'd never done drugs anything else like
that because my mom was an addict as
well
so i i was this guy i always wanted to
be in control didn't want to
you know
lose control of myself
and
had never been to a strip club
so uh one night i was getting lonely
so i walked into the strip club actually
i was researched this strip club and it
was uh joe's roundup
in charleston south carolina
joe's roundup a little bitty hole in the
wall stuff i was yeah real classy so i
walked in
and i'm literally that guy man
that fell in love with the first the
first stripper that he sees
she walks by i'm like
that one so i didn't know i didn't know
the strip club game again criminal naive
as hell so uh
belly up at the bar
order the beer i'm sitting there
drinking it
she comes over to me
and we start talking and she's like uh
would you like to get a bottle of
champagne i was like does that mean
going in back or what she's like well
yeah you need to do bottles going back
and i was like sure let's buy a bottle
of champagne 400 bottle of corvail wow
like all right then 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
the strippers are their therapist most
the time all right so i'm sitting there
talking we're talking of course she's
she's sizing me up she's looking at the
watch she's like what kind of car you
drive
you know everything else and i'm like
telling her i'm talking so at the end of
the night i'm like
really nice meeting she's like it's so
nice meeting you too
so i leave
she you guys just talked and just talked
and there's no damn feeling of love and
all of that yeah so just talk just you
know got along pretty good i'm like
i like her i like her so
come back in a week later
walk in
and uh call her over and i was like look
i said i'm not uh i said it was my first
time to a strip club i said don't know
yeah i like you i'd like to know you
more would you like to go out to dinner
and she was like
yeah i was like where would you like to
go so she says rude to john and i was
like don't know what it is that's where
we'll go so i go back and i was uh i had
a theater buddy at that point in time
because i was trying to get my life
yeah i tried to get my life together uh
jc was his name and i was like i got a
date he's like he got a date i was like
yeah man i got a date and he's like
okay where are you going and i was like
rude jean and he's like
take your wallet
i'm like yeah he's like take your wallet
that's like all right
so uh
we start
you know doing the the lunch and the
dinner thing and uh
i get to where i really like her she's
uh
i was 34 she was 23
and uh got along really well listen you
know had common interest in music and
arts and stuff like that she had i mean
a stereotypical she was she had
graduated college
with a degree
in religious studies
well yeah
so i was like all right so um
so yeah you just fell in love yeah we we
got along really well really well so i
ended up moving her in with me
she hadn't quit her job
and uh
what was happening was she's working
weekends
and uh you know the club would close at
three or four
she wouldn't come home until 10 or 11 in
the morning and most the time it would
be a phone call
saying come and pick me up i can't drive
home
and uh
then i'd never use drugs had never been
around my mom valium and pot and things
like that but as far as interacting with
her i've never done anything like that
by this point of time i'm kind of
getting head over heels with her i've
moved around with me and everything and
i had never i was 34 i'd never went
through a woman's purse in my entire
life
and so she comes in passes out
and i'm like i gotta know what the
fuck's going on
and uh
went over and went through her purse
found cocaine
and you know the straw cut off straws
and all that stuff and i'm like broke my
heart i just sat there and started
crying
got online and uh i'm the guy that can
find information so i started looking
for forums on strip clubs
found a forum
i found that one found where it was
talking about her
prostituting herself
to support the habit
and uh
that got me man that got me talking
about everything she was doing to uh
to do that
and that broke your heart there oh man
yeah
so uh
went like i could i didn't have the
heart to tell her that i knew she was
prostitute
but i went to her and i was like she was
waking up and i was like look i found
this in your purse
i can't have that and she's like well
you think i'm prostituting i was like no
no i don't think that i knew it but i
didn't mention it to her
and uh
i was like i can't have that well i i
don't do that it's just a one-time thing
i was like all right
so um she went back to work
and continued to do it for a couple more
weeks and then finally i was like i
can't
so i picked her up one morning as like
she was she was
she couldn't drive home
before i picked her up i'd written her a
note left it on the pillow
so i brought her home tucked her in the
bed and uh
told her i'd be back that night told her
she had a letter when she woke up i woke
up and the letter was basically uh you
know i love you
if you can't stop this
don't be here when i get back
and
i went to uh columbia that day
came back that night
and uh
should quit her job
and she quit drugs that night
really acquittal
and uh
i got it in my head
that i needed to do whatever i needed to
do
to make sure she didn't go back to that
that became
that to me
because of my background that meant
spending a lot of money
and uh
so every night was you know three to six
hundred dollars for dinner it was uh
thousand dollar shoes every week
two thousand dollar purse every week all
that i had most of my money laundered
out to uh
to estonia
and uh elizabeth at the same time
she had
she quit
but uh
she didn't want me to go anywhere
all right she wanted me there all the
time i guess that was that connection
you know she i guess she was scared she
might go back to something
so
shadow crew
gets busted i start i go through
basically all my us funds
can't get anything from overseas shadow
crew gets busted october i can't go into
committing tax fraud because season's
over
can't go back into credit fraud because
shadow crew has been busted i don't know
who to trust online
i'm left with running counterfeit
cashiers checks to get money in trying
to make it until you know i can start
back with some other fraud
and uh lying to her the entire time she
knows about none of this no no
none of it
and she's got she thinks i've got a
shitload of money and uh
she's got expensive tastes
so um
and at the same time
she couldn't be intimate
i mean the girl loved me i that's first
time i've really said that
so there's deep love there both ways
yeah
the things we do
so uh
she couldn't be intimate unless she was
stone cold drunk
i mean just shit stones go drunk
and i you know i said i didn't mind her
drinking alcohol i'd rather have that
than cocaine
so uh
that was the intimacy there and i kept i
had this
i kept thinking if i continued to invest
that it would work out
you know that just keep going
she'll be all right
we'll be all right
and what happens is uh
like i said she thought i had money she
thought i had money
she wanted a couple of tiffany
engagement rings so i said we can get
married you know i figured marriage
show her that i love her sure it's going
to be all right so
i was like oh let's get married she's
like well i've always wanted a tiffany
ring shit i didn't have money to buy the
tiffany ring because all my money was
overseas so here i am i've defraud
says counterfeit cashiers i
find a like a three carat ring on ebay
for 20 grand and
pay for it with a counterfeit cashier's
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 cashiers chase
to get the money to
to live in everything
get the
get the engagement ring we were
scheduled to be married
our wedding date was february 26
2005.
february 8 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 she
didn't know
i told her i said i've got to go pick up
those rings she didn't she thought i was
just having them sent in
so i got to get those rings and i said
we'll go out to dinner after that
and uh
i left at uh like eight o'clock in the
morning
and i was arrested at uh i think 11 30
something like that
of course i wanted to call her you know
and uh the fbi got me it turns out it
was it was controlled delivery there
were like 30 agents in the parking lot
fbi got me charleston pd got me within
45 minutes the secret service comes in
takes over that investigation they knew
exactly who they had
along about seven o'clock at night
they're like we want to search your
house
and i was like look i'll sign off on the
search if you let me go with you so i
can see her
and uh
they were like okay so i got to see my
phone at that point i had like 140 calls
that she where she'd been trying to call
that time just way yeah
and uh
so they load me up in 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 want to shoot the
dog and
it was dark
and they had me walk up and they're all
behind me
i knock on the door and tell her the
police are there and she needs to put
the dog up
so she does and uh
they come in and just start ransacking
them put me in cuffs set me down start
berating her with questions she had no
idea what the hell was going on
were you able to say a word or two to
help her understand yeah i was trying to
tell her and at the same time they're
they take a watch off her wrist they let
her keep the ring uh 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 uh i tell her i was like look
they're gonna arraign me tomorrow don't
come
don't come i said i'll
see what's going on but don't show up of
course she's there the next morning her
dad
and she's she's back in the back crying
they're reading off the charges i'm
under 300 000.
bond
everything else
and uh
that's it i
they throw me in a cell
meanwhile more charges keep coming in
you know
and uh it's like 10 12 charges a day at
that point
and i'm trying to call her to make sure
she's all right and uh
just get through
so i spent three months in jail
and during that three months she visits
twice i get like three or four phone
calls to her
um
i'm just looking back now i understand
why you know back then it was like i'm
the victim you know why doesn't she talk
to me but uh
you know now i understand why
hell the girl loved me too you know and
she found out i was this piece of shit
and uh
after a week in county jail
two agents fly in from new jersey two
secret service guys pulled me out of
cell
looked at me and they were like we got
your laptop and i was like yeah and uh
he's like well if you got anything on
your laptop i was like yeah he's like
you're going to be charged for it that's
like i figured
and then he looks at me as 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 going
to get you out i was like all right so
they let me sit there for three months
to get a taste of it
and uh
get me out my sister they have the bond
reduced to a thousand dollars
my sister pays the thousand dollar bond
by this point she's disowned me 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 i was like okay
so
it's like 11 o'clock at night
i'm in the parking lot of the charleston
police 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
drops off the pavement 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 uh
well she sounds fascinating yes yeah
pull up in a limo
i had thirty dollars my name at that
point thirty dollars uh the agent had to
pay for my hotel room that first night
so he drops me off after paying for the
hotel room buy me something to eat as
soon as he drops me off i take that
thirty dollars
walk a half mile to walmart buy a
prepaid debit card so i can start back
in tax fraud
as soon as i get back to hotel room call
elizabeth beggar to come see me
she comes to see me and we talk most of
the night
and uh convince her to give me a chance
i tell her that
everything's going to be all right
they're going to hire me i'm going to be
this big consultant
lies lies just so she get back with me
and
she's like okay
and
so we moved from from charleston the
field office is in columbia south
carolina
and uh
i'm breaking the law
even before i start working with them
i'm breaking the law
and
so they've got me in the office
the field office they got this big war
room in there i'm on a laptop outside
line laptops hooked up to a 50-inch
plasma monitor on the wall
they've got
a desktop sitting directly next to me
outside line two secret service offices
officers in the room at all times with a
south carolina law enforcement officer
my job is four to six hours a day
surfing the web
picking up targets intel teaching them
how cyber crime operates everything else
like that
for the first two weeks
they are extremely diligent
they pay attention to everything that's
going on ask questions everything else
but the problem is is that
that shit gets boring
real quick
because i'm i'm very fast online doing
that
so they're they're like what the hell is
he doing and it gets tiring looking at a
guy just doing that shit
so after two weeks they get lazy
and bored and they start
watching porn
instead of watching me
at the same time they've got a key
logger
and they've got they've got spectre pro
and camtasia key loggers and taking
snapshots of everything that i'm doing
go every night it goes on a dvd rom on a
spindle so i'm like
they're not going to go through that
shit
so i'm like fuck it
start breaking all from inside the
secret service offices while they're in
the room why not
um
that continues for 10 months
at the same time
the relationship with elizabeth fell
apart
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 truth like she did a
lot yeah to uh sacrifice for the liver
you've got
you got a woman there that uh
she had even said it she was like uh
she had told one of her friends we were
out having dinner one night
and this is before i got arrested she
told one of her friends and i was the
only guy
that ever asked her to stop using drugs
yeah
yeah i mean i 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 uh
there was one instance she told me that
if she didn't marry me she'd never be
married and uh
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 yeah thank you thank you for being
that person
but at that time you
there's still that lying oh man yeah
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's you know she'll come back and get
wasted and we'll
have sex what have you and uh 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 uh
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
uh
she knew something was going on
and uh
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 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 uh
i said not only that but uh
i'll make sure you got money
for for several months so you're all
right
and uh i was like just leave me uh you
know leave my tv and leave
leave me some some plates and stuff
so i go to work that day
at the secret service come back that
night
and she's taken everything
and left a picture of herself in the
bedroom on the floor i'm like
okay i guess i deserve that so
he's got i
i like her yeah she's cool she was cool
so
i i i'm giving her a thousand dollars
like every two weeks for some shit like
this and uh
it gets to the point because i'm doing
this tax fraud from inside the offices
well the debit card companies
are pinging the cards they start to
realize that hey some son of a bitch is
stealing money using our debit card so
they start to shut down the cards before
i can pull cash out so i start not to
have the money to send to her and i'm
like
so i she calls and she's like look i
have to have money and i was like well
look i'm doing what i can
you promised money i was like look if
you knew what i was doing to get this
money you wouldn't be asking that
and she's like i need money my rent's
behind by a month right now and i'm like
your rent's behind she's like yeah so
i was like okay so i'll pick up the
phone
call the rental office and i was like
i just want to make sure that uh you
know i'm sorry i'm behind on the rent
for this apartment 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 i was like but look i i
can't do it anymore and uh
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 shawn mims out of los
angeles
i had taught him how to do tax return
fraud
i told sean i go missing right i go
missing for three months i told him if i
ever went missing not to contact me and
so i go missing then i show back up
online
first day he contacts so he becomes a
target and they identify him pretty
quickly at that point
he's set to be arrested sometime in
march of uh
of six that's when he said 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 in a re goes and arrests 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 thirty
thousand dollars worth of italian tile
to put in the apartment that he's
renting and by the way last night he had
a u-haul out here and took out a whole
shitload of stuff
secret service comes back in
they look at me and they're like we need
you to take a polygraph
and my answer was
i ain't taking a polygraph
so they're like well we'll throw you
back in jail if you don't i was like
call my lawyer lawyer gets me on the
phone he's like
you don't have to take 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
they asked three questions the questions
were
have you talked to anybody
have you have you been on a computer
outside of the offices have you talked
to the press which i was interviewing
with a new york times writer the entire
time and then have you contacted or
warned anybody about investigations and
i failed polygraph completely
so they revoked the bond
take me back down to charleston county
throw me into jail
three days later
secret service shows back up
and uh pulled me out of the cell it's
jim ramichon and bobby kirby and they
were i mean honestly i i
they were good men
and they gave me chances upon chances to
do the right thing and
i was not ready to do that and uh
jim ramacon and bobby's in there and
bobby i mean bobby was a friend
yeah i mean he truly was i later on a
couple years ago i had a chance to uh
a couple years ago i had a chance to uh
to have lunch with the man and uh
i told him i was sorry for everything i
did to him because i got him and him and
another agent fired
and
told him i was sorry for what happened
and uh
he told me then he's like we were your
friends man we were truly your friends
so they were good they wanted to help
yeah they want they wanted you to be a
good man yeah yeah what what got me
today i'm bad is uh
i told him i was like man i'm trying to
be a better guy yeah and uh he's like
brett you always were a good guy you
just didn't know it and uh fuck people
like that yes 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 uh jim ramacan pulls me out he's the
second in charles 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 the way 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 it 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 waiver over
and he's like now you want to talk
and i looked at him i was like
nope
he was like
he gets up gets all red in the face
storms out as on the way out he's like
fuck you very much
so i go back to the cell a week later i
was on only under under state charges a
week later judge
rules they revoke the bond improperly
properly
oh
reinstates the bond nobody calls the
secret service to tell them i walk out
i walk out i was dating the stripper and
i i told my mom i was like well if
they're going to fuck me they're going
to have to find me
she just went on the move yeah i 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 was like
what i was like look i said give me a
thousand dollars
i'll give you back three thousand
dollars in two weeks she was like okay
so i met her in augusta georgia
and uh
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 went in walked in the office
convinced the guy social engineering
convinced the guy to give me 60 prepaid
debit cards without a driver's license
without payment anything else he did
and
that started the run i ended up stealing
from that i stole like 160k profit used
that to buy a jeep cherokee
and
the idea was to steal enough money to
bug out to uh florianopolis brazil
and set up shop down there
and
do it again that was the dream that was
it that was it so uh
i was on the run for four months stole
600 thousand dollars i was in las vegas
nevada one day i had stolen the night
before i stole 160 k out of atms
went in the next the next morning i woke
up signed on to carter's market dot com
which was ran by max butler the iceman
and there's my name us most wanted on it
and
that gets you attention
it was my real name with the us most
wanted beside of it nobody knew my real
name in that environment at all
but then they did and it was talking
about me being part of the secret
service
operation anglerfish everything else
so of course they're all they're all
like everybody's after they're like oh
yeah we're going to get this son of a
bitch
so i sit there looking at it and i was
like said it out loud i was like well mr
johnson you've made the united states
most wanted list what do you do now and
i was like
i'm going to disney world
literally literally literally said that
out loud
so loaded up the jeep drove from las
vegas to orlando florida
and
got the two annual passes one to disney
world the other one to universal studios
paid
paid for a time share they were building
these new time shares
right off universal drive building these
brand new time shares
paid for a time share nine months cash
yeah i was like we take cash yeah we
take cash there's twelve thousand nine
hundred dollars
then it wasn't furnished so i went down
to a furniture store bought thirty
thousand dollars in furniture they had
seized a dvd collection of mine worth
thirty grand bought that back
and proceeded to go to disney world
every day and that lasted about
six weeks
they used a trigger fish is what they
use nowadays it's called a stingray
to find me
so one day i was uh it was like 10 30 in
the morning on saturday september 16th
was the day 2006 so yeah 2006 september
16th
i was used to the builders coming around
knocking making sure everything was all
right so i was asleep
heard this knock at the door
and uh get up look through the keyhole
nobody's there you know people nobody's
there i was like huh
open the door step out into the hallway
walking down the hall is bobby kirby
another south carolina guy and a uh
orlando orange county cop and uh 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 out 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 i was like
yeah that an ak-47
his face goes white he's like you've got
a rifle and i was like no i'm kidding
with you
it 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 you
stop at every county jail you possibly
can
go through the processing which is about
six hours once you get to your bunk hey
time to transport you
they
they do that on purpose on purpose on
purpose wears you down mentally and
physically and everything
i get to uh columbia south carolina now
while i was at orange county what
happens is this inmate because we were
in federal holding this inmate he looks
at me his name was yeti
and he's like hey man you know the only
time you get off in federal prison is
the drug program i was like well man i
don't use drugs and he's like
you can find a drug problem can't you
and i was like
i can find a drug problem
so what happens is is every county jail
i stop at on the way to columbia i tell
them i'm alcoholic
and cocaine
so by the time i get to columbia south
carolina they've got this paper trail of
mr johnson requesting help for drugs
i had hired strom thurman's son
as an attorney they make me drop him
because i paid for him with illegal
funds so they give me a public defender
he gets a psychological evaluation order
for me
so psychologist comes in county jail
four hour interview about halfway
through he looks at me as like using
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 nights
so i'm like
and finally i'm like is that right and
he was like it could happen i was like
okay
so
that makes it into
my pre-sentence report so all federal
inmates
probation office and prosecutor they do
this detailed background check
to basically tell the judge how much
time to give you all right so that drug
bit with that interview makes it into
the psr
so day of interview
i mean day of sentencing i'd pled guilty
day of sentencing
they're what the prosecutor he stands up
and this this dude is screaming at this
point and he's like mr johnson's
manipulated the secret service he's
manipulated the prosecutor then he
points at the judge and he's
manipulating you today your honor we
insist on the upper limits of the
guidelines well i've been telling
everybody in the jail that if they give
me any more than 60 months i am not
staying
so they were like okay sure so the judge
looks at me and she's like i agree i'm
like and 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 i'll ask so he stands
up
your honor will you order the drug
program for mr johnson the judge says no
but i'll recommend he gets evaluated so
the secret service had told her hey he's
full of shit yeah so she's like no but i
recommend he gets evaluated i looked at
my lawyer and i was like what does that
mean he was like you're probably not
going to get it and i was like
how soon can you get me to the camp
and he was like well if you don't appeal
i can get you there pretty quick my
exact words were fuck the appeal get me
to the camp i'll take it from there he
looks at me like i'm the biggest idiot
in the world
i get sent to 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 in ashland kentucky
and
pull up there 14 foot fence razor wire
on top and i'm like
i don't climb fences
so i go in first question i ask is are
there any jobs outside of the fence and
he was like uh guard's like well you can
work in the national forest and i'm like
no i'll die out there
he was like well you could do
landscaping i'm like
i can run a weed eater
two days later i walk into the
landscaping office and the cop this is
this this genius of some of these people
and institutions the cop behind his desk
the entire wall
is a blown-up photo
of the compound and the outlying area so
i can literally sit there and plot
where i'm going
all right
my dad
i hadn't spoken to that man in years
and
he shows up at my sentencing
and stands up in front of the judge and
he's like your honor i want to make sure
brett gets a good start he can live with
me when he gets out everything else
looking back the man meant that
and uh i just thought it was bullshit at
the time
so he starts to visit me in prison
i mean yeah in prison he starts to visit
and uh
about the third visit in he looks at me
he's like
i've been reading about you online i was
like yeah he's like yeah
he's like that's a lot of money you made
and i was like yeah
he's like
you think you can teach somebody how to
do that
and i'm like
so what i used to say and again that
it's this i 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 that frame of crime you
know being that criminal
with my mom
everything else i really think that's
how the man was trying to communicate
with me
he wanted to connect with you in the
places where you know where you love
where you're interested in
where your addiction is essentially and
what i did
is i manipulated the man
into helping 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 four
thousand dollars cash
so i manipulated him and 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 brett johnson so
i was at the camp for uh i don't know
six eight weeks
and the hardest worker that landscaping
had ever seen
at one point the cops got me on a
mountainside with a broom sweeping off
the mountain i'm like yeah we'll do that
absolutely
so building trust to the guys yeah there
yeah work them out yeah and within six
weeks i'd take off and uh
i lasted i think two three weeks
something like that uh u.s marshals i
made it of you escaped yeah escaped
escape
u.s marshals they're canvassing a
three-state area they find me i think
250 miles away it's like lexington
kentucky they found me in lexington
because i had to use my real driver's
license i had a laptop i had prepaid
debit cards and i had stolen identity
information and
kind of the way it got me was i had dyed
my hair this flaming red you know i had
this deep tan i didn't look anything
like myself
and
i was at a hotel had had the curtains
open
saw the scout
i was on the laptop saw this guy walk by
he walks by the window
and he stops
and then he backs up
he looks inside he knocks on the window
i look up at him he's like you i was
like me and he's like you then he pulls
out this badge and he points at he's
like
and then he points at the door now
so i was like oh okay so i opened up the
door he's like u.s marshals service
so they arrest me and uh how did they
track you down they canvassed that area
they talked to every hotel everything
else
i had
i uh traditional like the traditional
policework is what it was so it wasn't
like from the internet they kind of got
something just just straight good good
us are outstanding yeah everything they
do
so they arrest me i go to a
i'm initially held at a county jail in
moorhead kentucky
and uh that ban that was one hell of an
experience there
but then i'm transferred after
sentencing on that so sentencing here's
the weird thing
so i spent like i think two or three
months at the county jail in moorhead
kentucky
get sentenced at my sentencing
it happens so quickly after the initial
sentencing that they use the exact same
pre-sentence report they report that's
got all that drug shit in there
so i'm a sentencing
prosecutor's there secret service is
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 in
identity theft yet again
judge looks at the prosecutor says no
says hey if you were going to charge him
with it you should have charged him with
him 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 pre-sentence report he's
fingering through and he's like it also
looks like before you got involved with
all these drugs
you were a pretty good citizen i was
like
yes your honor
and he's like so here's what i'm going
to do he said i'm going to give him
18 months on the escape i was like okay
he said i'm also going to give you and i
was 15 months on this 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 your honor
so the drug program
gives you a year off
and it gives you six months and halfway
house
so by escaping
i got out of prison three months earlier
than what i should have gotten out of
so the original thing about drugs worked
in the long run now now the long term
the interesting thing with that and it's
the best lie ever told honestly the best
lie 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
this is a pretty small and six by nine
room six by nine yeah
no books no books no paper no pen no
pencils 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
were you thinking about um
even just going back to like elizabeth
you think oh yeah you go through all
that the whole through all that every
bit your mom too yeah going through
every single bit of that and uh
so you're supposed to get out an hour a
day uh 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 get 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 uh takes about a week
the first week is the roughest
you're bouncing off the walls the first
week because you can't sleep you can't
do anything else then you start to adapt
to it after a while
when that book does arrive you're happy
as hell to have it i'm well versed in
the king james bible
so
you're happy to have it then finally you
get other books that are coming that
come in from that point um spent eight
months at that
and uh they send me out to a real prison
uh big spring texas west texas
where
have you been out there
prairie dogs and tarantulas yeah that's
what it is it got no kidding it gets so
hot
that uh warnings come on the radio radio
telling you not to drive on certain
streets because they're melted
that's that's big spring
so if you've seen the movie uh
uh from dusk till dawn the opening scene
is in big spring texas
that uh it's hot
very hot so and that's where i find out
what a real prison is and uh 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 that are in there
so i get uh
i go through processing
and i'm walking up to the unit and i met
at the door
by a guy named nick sandofer he's the
treasurer of the aryan brotherhood and
uh
first question out of his mouth is any
more white guys come in and shit i
didn't know i was like i don't know four
or five
next question is
what are you in here for
my answer was because i'm like i got no
worries my answer was computer crime
smiled at him
and it turns out wrong thing to say
because computer crime is not credit
card theft or hacking or any bullshit
like that computer crime in prison is
child pornography
so tell him that he looks at me like i'm
a piece of shit
goes and gets his buddies they circle
around
what are you in here for i like how the
aryan brotherhood has like
lines they're like oh yeah yeah this is
the child porn
that's it that's the bad guy they circle
rather like what did you say you're in
here for
so i'm sitting there trying to explain
it to them
they're like you know you tell a good
story you still said this
now computer crime basically really does
mean
usually child pornography in prison yeah
yeah yeah and what you see and that's
one thing you find out that the guys
that are going in there for child porn
they will tell them it's credit card
theft
so
yeah right they've learned so i'm that
guy but you also don't i mean for people
who are just listening to this you don't
exactly look
like the 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 a hoodie and you're
you're not like
emo dark
you know the way it actually works in
prison
they won't attack you
until they know
all right so they have to see paperwork
which now in federal prison you don't
get transported with paperwork because
of that
so they have to see paperwork or a guard
will tell them what you're in there for
guards will tell who the benefits are so
none of the guards told them that was
anything so for the first month they
think i am but they're not doing
anything because they don't know for
sure at the end of the first month i had
been talking to kevin poulsen over at
wired magazine about max butler
he does an article about that shows up
in wired magazine so at the end of the
first month wired magazine hits compound
front cover all the story you would
think you would think it saved me so i'm
reading the article really happy about
it
so what happens is four o'clock is mail
call four o'clock is a stand-up count
nationwide after four o'clock is your
mail call they hand out all the mail for
the day so the mail comes i get the
magazine i'm like 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 snitch
which is right up there with the
pedophiles
so
we go to dinner after that at dinner you
can hear it you can hear the channel we
got a snitch i think it's that guy over
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 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 yeah 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
sanders laying on his bunk magazine wide
open reading it i'm like oh shit
walked up to him i was like
hey nick what are you doing he's like oh
doing some reading i was like anything
interesting he's like it's getting there
i was like i was like let me save you
the trouble
take the magazine turn it over the page
i was like right there is what you're
looking for
he was like man i already knew
i was like
do we have a problem
and he looks at me it's like
is anyone on the compound you told on i
was like no he's like until someone gets
here you snitched on
we're okay
i was like
okay
he's like but
i need you to do something for me
all right so in federal prison you got
to have a job everybody works doesn't
matter what you do but you got to work i
got a job in education
teaching a lit class
every wednesday 6 8 30 p.m
lit and uh
had all
every area of 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 talk fraud every wednesday 6 8 30 pm
that's how i didn't get my ass beaten
and my other job i had two jobs with
them the other job
you get to the point it's weird man you
get to the point
people walking off the bus
you know immediately two groups of
people you know who the bank robbers are
immediately just by them walking off the
bus they'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 enter 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 other things pedophile
pedophile rapist anything that harms
children harms women anything like that
there are it's like the mob there's
rules there's 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 too very very
much so what that looks like in prison
depending on the uh it depends on the
security class that you're in what what
what level prison but at that prison
what that looked like
was
you're not allowed to talk to anybody
you're not allowed to watch television
you can go to the library
you don't associate with anyone except
your own type
if you do anything like this we will
kill you
if we if someone wants to extort you
we will do that too
and you won't tell on us
or we'll kill you
so that's that's the way that works at
that point and everybody
quickly learns this quickly quickly and
uh 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 um
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
i saw two people murdered
saw went through three prison riots and
through my entire tenure in prison saw
four suicides
the people who got killed
it was uh so we had outside you have
this track a third of a mile track you
walk it counterclockwise
and inside of the track you got two
handball courts so
of an evening it happened both times you
all of us would be walking you know
doing our exercises
and at the top of the key like a flock
of birds you'd see all the inmates start
to migrate down
toward the gate
so the first time you see that you see
that migration you look up in the
distance and this other one inmates got
another inmate down
and he's just hammering his head right
into the pavement like that right there
well guards don't stop that because the
guard may get hurt
so a guard is 15 minutes coming out to
stop that
until everything's over by that point
the guy doesn't have a head
they shut the compound down and this is
what happens so you shut the entire
compound down
they make two lines of the inmates and
what happens is inmate walks into a room
they shut the door behind the inmate
guard 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 the
answer is no guard then says get the
fuck out and that's it
anybody that stays in any longer than
that
is automatically suspect so there was
there was one incident i remember this
hispanic guy he's in there for a few
minutes
and everybody's like
what's going on
so his people then call him over explain
to us what went on yeah and it happens
like that it's fascinating that because
he talked about the network of trust
in the in the cyber crime community and
here's a network of trusts absolutely in
the prison crime community absolutely
and trust
trust trust matters
trust drives everything at the end of
the day the riots that i went through
the uh 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 uh the rubber
bullets the tear gas canisters all that
crap you got the inmates that are
raising hell hell
scared to death
the second riot
you calm down
second right you start to notice
this is racial riot this is
typically and almost always it's
hispanics and african-americans so you
get to you get to detect what is the uh
motivation for the riot what's the
reason and that gives you some calm
that's exactly right so second round you
start to notice this hey man
this ain't me this ain't our group yeah
third right no shit third right you're
laying your bunk
and you let them rain you let them wake
war 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 and
say is that your locker and if you tell
them yes they leave it alone if you say
it's not my locker they'll break into it
and steal everything out of it and go
from there
and that's what happens but uh so you
did your time for five years five and a
half five and a half
you made it out made it out i went
through uh the the i told you it was a
good lie that i told i went through the
residential drug abuse program it's a
nine month intensive therapy and uh the
way i got to that
this counselor at big spring he uh 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 discounted and
everything and he's he's asking does
anybody on the compound know anything
about game theory and somebody says if
anybody does it'll be brett johnson so
he comes up to me one day at my bug 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 the class so i start
teaching that i start teaching inmates
public speaking
and to make friends with this counselor
so i i get it gets time where i'm
supposed to be transferring out to this
drug program that they only had in fort
worth
and
the transfers are taking like four or
five months and 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 keeley i
was like look man i said is there any
way
that i can get transferred out any
sooner and he looks at me he's like
brett i cannot help you
and i was like i appreciate that thank
you so much for even trying
so uh he said that a week later i'm on a
bus by going to fort worth so he got the
support i got it yeah i love it so it
was a nine month program uh 24 hours a
day of cognitive behavioral therapy had
nothing to do with drugs it was all peer
peer study stuff and cbt training and uh
honestly it's the best thing that could
ever happen it truly is that part what
what is it what was the thing that
changed you as a man is it the solitary
confinement was it the years was it
losing
uh the the people you loved or was it
that behavioral therapy it's a
combination man it's a combination it
was uh
so my sister disowns me the only person
i had in my life you know i mean me and
my sister that's it you know i mean yeah
i loved elizabeth i love my wife now but
you know it's
me and my sister we went through all
that shit together
so denise disowns me she doesn't talk to
me for an entire year
when all this stuff happens and uh
after i get arrested on the escape
she uh she ends up driving seven hours
to come see me to tell me she loves me
and i don't see her again for five and a
half years
yeah yeah so that's that's really the
first turnaround took me two and a half
years in prison
to accept responsibility
that was amazing that she did that yeah
she drove you down
yeah she did that yeah she's something
she's something yeah she uh saw me for
10 minutes tell me she loves me and
then i planted the seed
[Laughter]
so uh but yeah you had time to think
yeah over those years it took two and a
half years to uh to realize that you
know i didn't commit crime because of
stripper girlfriends or wives or family
i committed it because i wanted to
chose to
and
that's the first turn around
second turn around is like the cbt
training
you know that uh it didn't it didn't
really hit
while i was in prison you know i went
through it and they ingrained it in you
but
until you choose to to make it work it
doesn't work
so i got out 2011 didn't want to break
the law did not and
i was under three years probation
couldn't touch a computer
i had a job offer from uh deloitte
to run a cyber crime office in the uk
which that was a no no you're not moving
and that's a computer idiot so yeah then
had a job offer from know before a
fishing company couldn't take that i 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 um
doing food stamps i had a roommate that
paying half the rent they tell you when
you leave prison to 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
and uh monster the cat that was the
cat's name
and uh good name yeah i had had enough
money to feed that little guy
and didn't have money to buy toilet
paper for the apartment
so uh there's i was on panama city beach
were you living like this
it was a steady decline because remember
i taught my dad how to commit tax fraud
so he bankrolled a lot of that until he
couldn't and then from there it's like
what the fuck do you do
so i didn't want to go into computer
crime at all and um
i ended up shoplifting toilet paper man
shoplifting toilet paper just like for
the basics yeah the basics of survival
so about the same time i had a friend
that uh
this guy i i've been dating the same
type of women i had been dating you know
these yeah you know the unhealthy ones
the hot unhealthy ones yes
love yeah that's how that works
so i had a friend post uh an ad for me
on plenty of fish
and uh this woman responds my wife she
responds and
the pictures i i had taken were these
prison type pictures you know the
serious 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 started talking
and
we started dating
and she ends up she's that second saving
thing man she uh
i ended up moving in with her i was
going broke i was about to get kicked
out of the apartment 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 let me have a cell
phone i was going through craigslist
this guy was advertising for landscaping
called him up his name was dustin
deramus 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 like man i got to think
about that
so he uh
he tells me 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
he'll give me a job i promise i'll work
my ass off
and he's like show up six o'clock i was
like all right so my job was to push a
lawnmower 10 hours a day
five days a week for 400 a week and
busted my ass i i hit it so hard i would
uh
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 his brother dropped out and
he uh by that point i 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
dustin i don't i can't do it man because
i wasn't making any money when he didn't
pay me anymore until you know he was
able to do more
and uh
i thought i found another job
doing something else i and in a speech i
say it got cold in the grass started to
stop growing the truth of the matter was
is i thought i found another job
a guy was offering to pay me 1500 a week
doing the
sales for uh
oil rig training was what it was
and
i accepted the job i quit working for
dustin
and the guy um
i told him before he even offered me the
job i told him what 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 uh
i'm that guy again man i
it's important for me to uh
to show value in a relationship
all right
so uh
michelle was only one working
i'm like i gotta do something and uh
i get it in my head i was like you know
what if nothing else i can just bring
food in the house
she was only making that i think she was
she was she i mean we were headed hard
you know it was just her working
and i was like 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 it uh you know she's got
two sons there so i'm like well they
need clothes so he starts stealing
clothes
and it continues like that i get
arrested i get arrested uh on a food
order
and
michelle didn't know what i was doing
so she had 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 said come to the
police station i've been arrested
and uh
she shows up and uh 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 there prosecutor
the judge u.s marshals michelle and me
michelle stands up and she tells the
judge that i'm a better dad to her kids
than their actual father is
and
by that point i'm crying
probation officer stands up and he was
like uh
we think mr johnson is a good guy
we think this is a one time thing
prosecutor says the same thing
judge sentences sentences me to one year
probation officer stands back up and
he's like uh
mr johnson
the judge if you can uh give mr johnson
a year and a day he can get the good
time
and get back to his family center
so the judge amends the sentence to a
year and a day so i served 10 months
they sent me back to texas
and that's when i find out that
michelle didn't need me for what i could
give her
she just wanted me for me that entire
time she stands by me the entire time
i do my 10 months get out we get married
after that and they kill probation
so i can touch a computer and they tell
you they tell you they were like you
know inmates a felon if nothing else he
can sell cars
well it turns out you can't
you can sell cars if you're a drug
dealer
if you're the guy that steals all the
money and people's information no fuck
no you can't get a job selling cars
so i can't get a job cannot and uh
to this day lex i know what my what my
triggers are i know what it would take
to get me back into committing crime
and i knew i'd go so far at that point
so i looked at michelle and i was like
let me see what i can do
signed on to linkedin reached out to
this fbi super cop named keith milarski
out of the pittsburgh office he was
involved with my arrest and
some associates and everything else and
sent him a message and the message was
you know hey i respect everything you
did think you did a great job
by the way
i'd like to be legal and
dude responded within two hours
two hours he uh gives me references
advice takes me in under his wing
everything else like that and from that
point man it was the head of the
identity theft council did the same
thing
um
card not 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 cyber crime today and in
the next five years 10 years 20 years 50
years what advice do you have to
individuals to companies to
governments of
what and also
to uh
elizabeth
like
the
humans
human beings yes that
love that live that are friends with
cyber criminals there's so many lessons
to really be had
from that
you know
to me the the lesson one of the big
lessons to me is is
you can't serve two masters
you know if you're if you're that guy
that is committing crime or
that person that's addicted or you're
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
uh
you gotta know when to cut somebody off
when to end something that knowing that
they're not gonna
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
is because people took that chance on me
yeah you know that's really the only
reason they believe that there's a good
person in there yeah
if if molarsky hadn't responded if i
hadn't had my sister my wife these
companies that that initially gave me
that chance my ass would be back in
prison for 20 years i have no doubt
about that at all all right
so you have to realize that um you know
cyber crime
a lot of companies that i talk to they
don't really understand the or
appreciate the uh
that networking aspect that that trust
aspect of how criminals establish trust
with each other how they work together a
lot of companies think that it's a
single player that's out victimizing
them and when you really break down how
cyber crime operates that you've got a
group of individuals
that are working together to hit you but
not only hit you but they share and
exchange information freely you know
companies don't do that you've got
privacy concerns you've got competitive
edge concerns everything else companies
don't share information across the board
like like criminals do criminals do that
um you have to appreciate that you have
to understand that that big statistic
that ninety percent of your 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 it so the way to defend against
cybercrime is like there's a lot of
low-hanging fruit that you should fix a
lot of that a lot of that so a lot of
basic stuff that's already
vulnerabilities update the system
security now that doesn't take care of
solar winds right or cnap or anything
like that it doesn't
but those instances i mean okay that's a
big instance
but i mean it is but in the full
spectrum of especially in the future
uh
because there's more and more companies
are coming online right becoming digital
and it's just more and more and more
and those vulnerabilities in terms of
human nature so for social engineering
and the actual outdated systems
all of it and some of it i guess is the
uh i mean you're exceptionally good at
this is educating on the social
engineering side right is educating
people in companies that like they've
got to do that you've got and companies
have to you know i made that point that
they never report to law enforcement
that's companies and individuals you
know i've worked with fortune 50
companies
that will not press charges
instead
they'll have that insider or that
criminal sign an nda they'll pay them
off and we won't mention this shit
anymore
you have to be you have to press charges
you have to report you have to raise the
awareness of everyone in the group
you have to be it's that it's that idea
and i've talked about that before of
understanding your place
in that cyber crime spectrum the way a
criminal will victimize you
depends on who you are and what you do
as a person and as a business so you
have to understand that design security
around that you know we've got 7 500
security companies out there a whole lot
of them are snake oil 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
that are out there and we have we have
to be open and honest about that kind of
stuff
so i guess defending defense is not just
like one tool
it's it's a process of just uh like a
diversity and just constantly educating
uh people absolutely so it's the social
side it's constantly
because there's so many probably attack
vectors oh this is 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 the idea
and arcos is big about that but the 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 that's
the idea that you want you want it to be
not worth the criminals time
to hit your company
what about uh white hat hacking so like
um
you know hacking for good
sort of testing systems and then giving
companies the vulnerabilities
as you find i think it's outstanding i
do i think that i think pen testing
white hat stuff is outstanding i truly
do i think that that 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
that i don't know of many are fit
hackers out there on the criminal side
be honest with you yeah so some of it is
just like a psychological safety blanket
that's not actually
providing any protection by the way you
uh wrote on linkedin uh something about
id me
[Music]
what is it
why is it a problem
i was going down a rabbit hole i was
wondering if you were gonna mention that
you know they lost
i guess i was partially responsible for
them losing an 86 million dollar
contract
what was the contract with the
government the irs government yeah the
irs so what is it so id me is an
identity
okay backtrack id me is a marketing
company that wants to say they're an
identity verification coach i just want
to bring this up to see you get angry
i'll tell you what my issue is yeah my
issue here so it's a company that's used
for authentication by the irs i guess
irs social security administration va
uh
at one point 23 state unemployment
offices few other services so i guess
the idea is that you would be able to
unlock
your account or get get you know uh
authenticate yourself as a human being
by uh using fake your face or something
like that so private information they've
got a they've got a tiered system with
verification they've got you can do uh
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 right all right um
the the issue that i have with idme is
that
their policies are somewhat questionable
um 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 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 idm is not the only one but
you've got some of these companies that
say well we strip out the pii of the
individual we're just using the
biometrics and the sites they're
visiting and things like that that's
identity that is you can still ping that
one unique individual out of all using
that information stripping out the pii
you can still ping who that individual
is so having lived a life of crime for
many years i'm sure you've connected
indirectly
to a large number of very dangerous
people
directly and directly yeah
but the network indirectly is is even
larger right oh yeah oh yeah are you and
i apologize for this question
um
are you ever
worried for your life for your
well-being like having seen a world
that's really dangerous in ways that's
not
that operates in the shadows
you know
like i said when i when we started
shadow crew and started that initial
cyber crime business that world
violence wasn't there it came in later
now violence is inherent in the system
to do the monty python but it's it's
part of it um
the mob the mafia are now part of this
whole thing cartels are part of it yeah
drugs are inherently intertwined in
cyber crime marketplaces because of the
profit potential and with that comes a
lot of violence as well the cartels
already brought
the violence that they're good at from
the 20th century absolutely which is the
technology of the 21st century now uh
do i worry about that
it's interesting that that
my family worries about that
all right i think i may be just too
involved in it to appreciate that type
of uh
of danger but uh
my family worries about that they do uh
do i think it's a possibility
i'm the guy that says what needs to be
said i've made uh i've built my trust in
this industry
by not being scared
of calling out companies
and individuals
and not being scared of targeting
criminals or criminal groups your
honesty
as a human being emotionally
and until actually is really refreshing
it's a gift and thank you thank you for
doing that
is there 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 uh break the rules legally
and live a life that's uh something they
could be really proud of what would you
say
biggest lesson i've learned um
you you want your life
to be one where you're helping people
and not hurting people
and uh
that that really hit me the first time i
walked into quantico
you know that you see the the brightest
minds in the united states who give up
a lot of money the opportunities a lot
of money because they believe in helping
people
where i spent a career just hurting and
harming individuals that's
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 5 10 years 50 years i mean
hope for human civilization if we do
if we uh if we do all right
if we do uh
if we make it out of this century um
what do you think would be the reason
what would be well that's a damn good
question because i mean we got a lot of
bad stuff going on we've got a lot of
reasons
if asked if i asked you the other
question of how do you think human
civilization would destroy itself i'm
sure you have a lot of things oh yes you
know what what gives me hope is
you see people working together the
covets have been a little bit different
because i think that too many people
wanted to play politics with it that's
been the heartbreaking thing about covet
is it's in many ways
pull people apart i mean because a virus
involves kind of um
being
afraid of each other because i mean that
was a scary thing people talk about
pandemics in that way
that you're afraid of other humans that
is the most terrifying thing it's not
the destructive nature of what it does
to your body
it's just that it pulls people apart and
then you realize
how fundamental that human connection is
to humans absolutely absolutely but you
know we uh
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 uh we see it we rise up i
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 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 helpful lesson because before i met
her i was a newshound
news beyond all the time a couple
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 uh
history books and people you know i just
uh
i feel like that's the right perspective
on 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 uh the daily
ups and downs of the outrages um which
is getting worse and worse in terms of
how quick the turnaround is in terms of
the news i'll tell you what uh i'm
sitting here
i appreciate you talking to me i do
because uh you know i'm talking about
about that relationship and everything
it's it's really been this kind of
realization
for me on a lot of things so i i really
appreciate you asking those questions
and everything may be able to talk about
that i look i love it that uh
that you value
first of all you're self-aware how
important love is in a human being's
life
it can make you do some of the best and
some of the worst things in this world
and it's good to think about that it's
good to think about that that's that is
what makes us human is that connection
and that love for each other
um
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 i i
to me that meaning life is finding out
that lesson
that we need to help each other if you
you talk you ask about security i didn't
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 i've been asked a few times
do you regret anything would you change
anything
i've done a
shitload of despicable things
in my life
but i am at a point in my life where i
like who i am
and i know that i am doing exactly what
i'm supposed to be doing with my life so
when i change anything
as bad as a lot of that shit has been i
wouldn't it made you who you are yeah
the whole of it i mean let's try to say
that but it's true that's that's the
weird thing it's true
yeah also you mentioned that you're uh
you're thinking of launching a show
what's it gonna be called because you've
done it uh you've done a couple of
podcasts you're incredibly good at this
you're 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 karise hendrick
and that ended because of a difference
of opinion
depending on who you ask one of us was
an asshole yes it may have been me yeah
but then i did the the anglerfish
podcast which that was i got to be
honest with lex it was completely
directionless and it was brett johnson
getting lazy yeah um so i ended that
the brett johnson show is launching
that's the new one absolutely
and
you know i what are you thinking of
doing with it
making a difference for one thing but uh
it's going to be talking about cyber
crime security helping people um
interviews interviews a lot of it's
going to be solo now i'm calling it the
brett johnson show i mean i 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're good at this
i'm a fan already i'm going to listen
i'm going to subscribe you should too uh
you're launching it soon soon next week
uh brett you're an incredible human
being the the honesty the
the the love i could just see
how much of yourself you put out there
one of the best public speakers i've
ever heard uh definitely you should be
in a scorsese field about cyber crime uh
100 i could tell you you're a good actor
it makes perfect sense
anyway i really i'm deeply honored that
you spend your time with me today
thank you it was amazing
thanks for listening to this
conversation with brad johnson to
support this podcast please check out
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and now let me leave you with some words
from george rr 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