"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 ..."

"here's brett johnson you were convicted of 39 felonies for cyber crime placed on the us most wanted list in 2006 escaped from prison you built the first organized cyber crime community called shadow c..."

"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 b..."

"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..."

"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 ..."

"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 kn..."

"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..."

"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 shitloa..."

"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 wa..."

"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..."

"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 ..."

"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 te..."

"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 th..."

"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 no..."

"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 ..."

"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 fro..."

"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 mini..."

"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 t..."

"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..."

"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 th..."

"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..."

"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 up..."

"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 ca..."

"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 talkin..."

"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 o..."

"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 ..."

"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 i..."

"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 philos..."

"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 impo..."

"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 yo..."

"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 t..."

"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 fin..."

"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 ..."

"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 f..."

"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 a..."

"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 rela..."

"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 ..."

"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 wou..."

"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..."

"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 g..."

"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..."

"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 st..."

"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..."

"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 s..."

"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 rig..."

"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 ..."

"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 intros..."

"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 m..."

"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 onlin..."

"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 se..."

"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 ha..."

"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'..."

"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 w..."

"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 gi..."

"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 ..."

"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 c..."

"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 ..."

"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..."

"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 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..."

"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 ..."

"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 physi..."

"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 li..."

"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 o..."

"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 tha..."

"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..."

"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 b..."

"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 ..."

"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 a..."

"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 g..."

"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 so..."

"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 ..."

"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 we..."

"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 ta..."

"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 ..."

"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 s..."

"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..."

"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 ..."

"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 tr..."

"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 n..."

"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 l..."

"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 w..."

"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 did..."

"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 th..."

"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..."

"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 busine..."

"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 ..."

"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 d..."

"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 p..."

"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 psyc..."

"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 goin..."

"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 kn..."

"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 coun..."

"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 g..."

"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 throug..."

"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..."

"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 fiel..."

"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 than..."

"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 ok..."

"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..."

"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..."

"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 septembe..."

"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 th..."

"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 ps..."

"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 ..."

"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 se..."

"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 s..."

"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 o..."

"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..."

"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..."

"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 b..."

"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..."

"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 o..."

"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 therap..."

"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 ..."

"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'..."

"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 ..."

"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 judg..."

"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..."

"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 ..."

"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 o..."

"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..."

"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 ..."

"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 thin..."

"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 th..."

"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 large..."

"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 int..."

"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 ..."

"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 ..."

"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 th..."

"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 appreciat..."

"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 ..."

"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 ..."

"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 pu..."