834 - Don Jose Ruiz: The Fifth Agreement!

Transcript

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From day 1, enormous amounts of cybercrime having committed on the Internet, whether it was credit card fraud, eBay fraud, tax fraud, phishing attacks, and identity theft, and so on. The guy who was at the center of it, the king front of it, from the beginning was Brett Johnson. Brett then was caught, escaped from prison, caught again, worked with the government, and now advises people, speaks about it, gives counsel to large numbers of people about cybercrime and how to avoid it. So happy to have him tell his story in detail, and it's incredible. Let's get to it. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. So, Brett, you were at one point the most wanted cybercriminal maybe on the planet. Right? And we're gonna talk about all that and your your history, but and this is has nothing to do with the story you're gonna tell me. But how do you react when people say, oh, all the criminal activity is happening in crypto now? It seems to me all the criminal activity is happening in the US dollar, but I'm I'm just curious about your opinion. So what what I say to that, and I've been asked that before, what I say is is you can't buy your weed or your stolen credit cards with US cash. Alright? You have to buy it with a token. These days, it's Monero. More more more often than not, it's Monero. Now that being said, if I'm out there buying those stolen credit cards and I get my laptops in, I, yeah, I may want to convert it finally to Bitcoin. But as a criminal, I'll want cash because I can't go out and buy cars and watches and all that stuff with Bitcoin usually. So I'll need cash on that. So I would say that tokens exist for those criminal transactions, on the marketplaces, whether you're on Telegram, whether you're on, Dredd, Alphabay, what have you. Those crypto tokens exist for that. But, ultimately, criminals are looking for cash. So you're right. It all circulates around the US dollar, but the vehicle for those transactions is absolutely crypto right now. So it's interesting. It reminds me of, like, the early days of the Internet where the biggest users were, let's say, criminals or the United States doing criminal activity. Oh, oh, we're going there, are we? Like like, take Zcash. I mean, Zcash was a great way instead of sending, like, 747s filled with $100 bills to Afghan warlords, it was a great way to, oh, just get them crypto wallets and then transfer it on the crypto wallet. But, okay, this is another discussion. Brett, you've committed every crime possible in cyberspace. We're gonna have a fun time, but it started off. You were like your childhood was like chaos. Your dad was like basically a failed criminal. Well, there were a couple of instances he was not successful. That's true. Right. So Like, what were some of that I mean, I've read about some of this and heard you talking about some of it, but what what were some of the the capers he was in? You know, my dad, he, my dad, honestly, he he only really tried that. I remember back in my childhood. He he really only came up with 2 criminal ideas on his own. It was always my mom that came up with the ideas. The 2 ideas for him so the first is he, he was a helicopter pilot in the military. He decided once he got out of the military that he wanted to fly dope back and forth across the the Mexican Texas line. So he he ends up talking to a guy in eastern Kentucky that was, part of the cornbread mafia over there. Guy signs him on, and the reason that that didn't take place is this guy had served, like, 20 years in a penitentiary, had never ratted on anyone. So the law enforcement in Perry County, Kentucky, they were all after him. You know, they all had this hard on for the guy. So the sheriff there, Pearl Kouchi, calls him up one day and he's like, Tommy, we got a warrant for you. I need you to come on down and, you know, check-in. And Tommy's like, nah. I don't think I'll come. And Pearl's like, well, we're gonna come and get you. And Tommy Allen comes. He's like, oh, come on then. So, 2 law enforcement officers show up there. He kills 1, puts the other in a wheelchair for life, and a 6 hour shootout ensues from that point in time. And that that left a bad taste in my father's mouth. So he decided he wasn't going to transport illegal drugs back and forth. The second thing was my dad was watching, 60 Minutes 1 night, and they had a segment on there about the drug trade in Miami. And they were showing the pallets of cash, the cocaine bundles, everything else. And my dad's just sitting there locked into it. My mom is looking at my dad like, what the hell is he watching? So my dad gets through watching the segment. He looks at my mom, and he's like, I think I need to go down to Miami and be a cop. And my mom's like, I think maybe you do. So based on based on that alone, they sell everything they possibly can, rent a U Haul truck, and go trucking from Hazard, Kentucky down to Miami. We arrive in Miami the night that the Miami riots broke out in 1980. That same night is when we arrived. We checked into a hotel there as the riots are going on. The next day, my dad starts cop school. He comes back that day, and he's like, you know, I think it's gonna work. He goes to the cop school. The next day he comes back, he's like, we gotta leave this freaking place. My mom's like, what's going on? My dad's like and what had happened was all these real police officers had burst into the room. They had arrested, like, 6 people. The 6 people they had arrested had the exact same idea that my dad had, which was, you know, I'll come across a drug deal. I'll let them keep the drugs. I'll keep the cash. Everyone will be happy. And I kept thinking, they're just gonna shoot your ass, but that was my dad's, close How did the how did the police know the other I mean, those cops were still in school. They weren't cops yet that they arrested. They weren't cops. They were they who were applying to, to become police officers. And it come to find out, not there's been a few stories over the years that have been like that. You get these people who have outstanding warrants who decide that they're going to try to apply to be police officers. And a lot of the times They fraudulently signed up for police school and didn't admit their warrant their their past criminal activity. Right. Some activity, some outstanding warrant, and sometimes the police department doesn't check. I mean, we've seen that pop up in the news over and over, whether it be school systems or police stations or hospitals, things like that. And and you said your mom was the mastermind, though. Like, what was what was your mom mom up to? So my mom was basically the captain of the entire fraud industry in Hazard, Kentucky. I mean, no no crime too big or too small for this woman. She still is a, she still is a £108,000 caterpillar d nine bulldozer at one point. Another point, she's taken a slip and fall in a convenience store. She, we had a neighbor she acted as a pimp for. That's my mom. I mean, no crime to this so So you how old are you? Like, you were seeing this happen? Like, for instance I started when I was 10. My mom used to leave me and my sister home alone. And so just to kind of backtrack, I get the worst parts from my mom and my dad. My dad, he was so scared of my mom leaving that he would cosign on to whatever she wanted to do. If she wanted to break a crime, break a law, he would he would go ahead and agree with that. If she wanted to abuse someone, he wouldn't stop that. And this my mom was an abusive parent. She was a very abusive parent. So that was my dad's problem. And I I get the worst part from my mom and my dad. My dad, I get that fear of the people that I love leaving. And my mom, of course, I get that criminal mindset. And the way I began my life of crime, my mom leaves my dad. We went back to Hazard, Kentucky, and my mom used to go out and party a lot. And I was a kid who was scared she wasn't going to come back. And Denise I was 10. My sister Denise was 9. Denise was the kid who was just angry all the time. So mom had been gone for a few days. We didn't have any food. Denise walks in. She's got this pack of pork chops in her hand. And I'm like, where'd you get that? And she's like, I stole it. I was like, show me how you did that. So she, she takes me over to AMP and she shows me how she shop flips food. She's stuffing it down her pants. You know? Don't they look for that? Like, if you you don't the for for what? A 9 year old? No. They don't look for that. I see. For a 9 year old. Yeah. So that's where crime started. Mom comes home because we started with food. There's a Kmart there. We started stealing games and toys and everything else. Mom comes home and sees it, asks where it came from. I stand up. We found it. She's like, you didn't find that. My sister stands up. We stole it. My mom looks at my sister. Show me how you did that. She starts running us as little shoplifters, and that's where my that's where my crimes begin is right there. And, also, this was like a way like, you knew this would make your mom happy, and you knew this is like, you had a reason now for your mom to come back, which is that you were a source of income a little bit for her. Well, you know what? I I talk about my mom a lot. And and anytime that I do that, it it really feels to me like I'm minimizing just how bad that environment was. Now that's not to say that she didn't show love toward us. She did. But this is a woman who, she would tell me and Denise constantly that, you know, she'd given up her life for us, that she was gonna leave and not come back, that we'd find her dead somewhere. That's scary. When you're a kid, like, for those days. Old, you believe that. This is Yeah. For example, when I was like 8 or 9, my mom calls me and my sister. My dad was off to work. My mom calls me and my sister into the living room. She's got all the lights doused out. She's got these candles and incense sticks burning and she looks at us and she she informs us that she sold her soul to Satan so that we have a good life. And, we had to prove that we were worth it. And the way we proved that we were worth it, we sat across from her for we took hours doing that. Just sat across from her, and, the game was, keep eye contact, not blink. We were supposed to think wholesome Jesus thoughts, and she was gonna let Satan come out. And, hopefully, we wouldn't get possessed. And you know, that sounds ludicrous when you're an adult, but when you're 8, 9 years old, that sounds pretty serious. And that's the type of environment that I grew up in. I don't want people out there that are listening to your show to think that I'm blaming that on my adult choices, though. You know, when you're a kid, you can't help that. You're gonna do what the adults in your circle are doing. But when I became an adult, I chose to commit crime. I chose to victimize people. So I just I just wanna make that clear on that. No. I I I understand that completely, and, you know, but but part of it is, you know, there's sort of there's sort of like what what is the right mix of nature versus nurture that makes the adult? And, obviously, there's a lot of evidence that it's much more than just the parents. It's your peers that you grow up with. It's then, of course, the decisions you make and the and the peers you hang out with as you're entering adulthood. So there's a there's a lot of factors, but definitely you kind of saw that this was a way to almost purchase affection that you Well, sure. I mean, you you're you're doing something that makes your mom happy. You're doing so I was, so my sister, other than that one shoplifting experience, she doesn't break the law. She goes off to, be a good teacher, a good parent, everything else, and and she gets away from home as soon as she could. I was the kid that always wanted to be by my mom. And and part of that Eastern Kentucky mentality, that male based society is it's the male's job to do that. So I grew up in that type of environment. And in a you you talk about my peers and everything. My entire environment, that side of the family, every single one of them was involved in some sort of scam or fraud. Every single one. So, I grew up in that environment. I I I've talked about it on my show before. I I didn't meet my first really decent person until I was a junior in, in high school. That's the first one. That really, influenced you and had a good strong effect? That was a teacher by the name of Carol Combs. She was a, high school English teacher. And I walked in and she heard this, this nice voice that I've got. And she's like, son, have you ever tried theater? And I'm like, no, but I'd be interested in the academic team. So she signed me up for theater, signed me up for the academic team and I excelled under. And, for those 2 years, I I did really well. I I came out making I was best actor in the state. I was, one of the top academic people in the state and, had all these scholarships and all that, but, it fell apart again. You know, normally, I don't go so much into, like, the early stages of life, but everything kind of, like, led to your story and some of the initial things that you were doing and and, of course, the reversal that happened afterwards. But Right. What changed? You were doing well academically. You were getting these scholarships. I had, I had scholarships. I didn't take them. My first thing, I got a girlfriend. But, what really happened was is I was, I was at the community college, and I was doing some shows. And, this theater director by the name of Edward Emmanuel, he was the head of theater at San Jose State. His claim to fame was is he wrote the 3 Ninjas movie. And, he comes down to see a a show that I was doing because he had written the show. He sees the show. As soon as it's over, he offers me a full ride scholarship. He's like, hey. You know, you're a big fish in a small pond. We'll make you a big fish in a big pond out of San Jose. And I was like, absolutely. Let let's do that. So he's like, great. I'll get everything going. I'll come back in a few weeks. We'll sit down and talk us more about it. I was like, fine. So, he goes back home, comes back a few weeks later. And I'm I remember I was out on the street shooting some basketball with my friends. He pulls up, I walk over to his car and I'm like, Hey, I'll go in and introduce you to my mom. He's like, No, man. I got it. And I was like, okay. So he walks in. He's in there. I don't know. No more than 15 minutes. Walks out, doesn't say a word to me, gets in the car, leaves, and I never see the man again. And Oh my gosh. Yeah. So I went in and my mom wouldn't tell me what had happened. Oh, nothing happened. He just left. Took me a couple weeks to find out that what had happened was and excuse my language. But what had happened was she pulls a knife on him and, says, you're not gonna steal my g*****n son from me. I'll kill you. And that that right there, I was a I was a very competent actor. I'm I'm I'm very good on stage. Anyone who sees me speak these things will tell you that. But that kind of broke my spirit. You know, I was I was ready to to go and, and do that. And, at that point, I was just like, you know, screw it. I just kinda meander along until, But like like like, when when you heard about that that what had happened, of course, that's disheartening. What options did you see in front of you? Did you say to yourself, okay. Well, I can maybe leave now and go somewhere else, get a job, build up some money, and then do acting or theater or whatever. Did you see any range of options or did you think, man, this is just I'm stuck? I think it was just, just that breaking of the will was what that was. You know, my mom, again, it feels like I minimize it when I talk about it because I just tell these stories, and then I I don't want people to think it's just those types of stories. But, you know, when like like me or Denise would get a, a boyfriend or a girlfriend, like my sister would get get a boyfriend. She was at Berea College, had a full ride. You know, Berea is a free school, but she she got a scholarship there and everything else. And, my mom found out she had a boyfriend. My mom loads up in the vehicle, goes down there, walks into the president's office and proceeds to tell the president that, my sister is addicted to drugs, that she's prostituting herself to support her habit, that her, quote unquote boyfriend is actually her pimp trying to get her thrown out of school. It almost does get her thrown out of school. I my first real girlfriend was a was a preacher's daughter and they were an outstanding family. And, my mom calls them, finds out what their number is. She calls them up, starts cussing them out. You know, it's your your devil worshipers, bam, bam, bam, trying to destroy that. And that was always, that was always what my mom was doing as as she viewed us more as property than anything else. You know, we're her children. And and, you know, like, on the one hand, you can ask why, but there's not really an answer to that question ever. When someone's doing things like that, there's one thing I've learned is there's no answer to the question, why is she doing that? You just can't ask that, and there's no answer. It it took me a long time to to accept that that, you know, you and my sister still has not accepted that. My sister wants an answer for why that kind of stuff happened, for why my father never stepped in and saved us. But, you'll never get that answer. And at some point, you've got to learn to accept that and to move on. And unless you can do that, I really don't see how you can ever overcome anything like that. And so what was your how did you separate from this family situation? Well, it took some time. So with with me, you know, I went into I faked a car accident to get the money to get married, moved to, Lexington, Kentucky to go to UK. And at that point, I'm doing these little scams and frauds around the Lexington area and finally get involved in the cybercrime. What year was this? So this would have been got married in 90, 94. Yeah. 94. Got married. Started cybercrime 96, 97. Maybe maybe it's not So 96, there wasn't a lot of credit cards on the Internet at that time. So you're talking about the beginnings of eBay and maybe the beginnings of Amazon? I don't even know. So Amazon had been around a bit. EBay had just transitioned from being a PEZ sales site over to an auction site is is when we're talking about it. And I I found eBay. So my my first, my first cybercrime is on eBay doing eBay fraud. And it it's so funny because, you know, I've had on you know, for instance, Peter Thiel has been on the podcast. He started PayPal. So I've talked to people who are the basically, on the complete opposite side of the equation, like PayPal's entire jobs. This their their first group of customers were eBay buyers and sellers. So his entire job of of PayPal was basically how do you identify fraud and avoid it. And they couldn't. Honestly Right. They could you can't in in in any case. All you could do is maybe best efforts. But Right. But so so what would happen? Like, how did you identify eBay as I guess because it was the only place where there was really a large number of transactions, and they were Yeah. So it's relatively small that scams wouldn't be it so often wouldn't be worth it to pursue the the you know, your money back if it's a $50, you know, baseball card or whatever. The way that I identified it and and you gotta you gotta look at that history of crime that I've got. So I grew up with experience in insurance fraud and drug trafficking and illegally car accident. You that was like a nor you didn't even we we just glossed over it, but, like yeah. So this was like, it wasn't necessarily I mean, of course, you probably thought, okay. Some things are wrong, some things are right because, obviously, when you're faking a car accident, you realize you have to make sure you don't go to jail. Right. So so but it's not like, maybe you had rationalizations like, okay. The insurance company's got 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars. I don't need to really think about this too much. It's just, you know, this is how I know how to do it. So, you know, the the that moral compass as a criminal is very situational. All right. There are, there are some things that, that I was willing to do and some things that I was not willing to do. Turns out that as one, as a criminal becomes as I, as a criminal became more desperate, that moral compass becomes even more situational. You start to justify things. And I always justified my crimes by saying I did it for my sister, for my wife, for my stripper girlfriend. That's that was my justification that, I had no other choice. And I I think what's important is that while a criminal, me, while I justify that, it's also important that I believe those justifications. I I can't just say it and not believe it. I have to convince myself that that's true too, and I had. It took me a couple years behind the fence to really understand that, no. I didn't do it because of any of those things. I committed crime because I chose to. I certainly had other opportunities I could have taken. I just didn't. So I think that's that's that's an important thing to understand there. And I forgot your question. So so please forgive me on that. But that answers it, which is understanding what the where where is the moral compass when these things are happening? I don't think there ultimately, I don't think there is one. You know, in prison, you see a so there's a hierarchy of morality in prison. At the bottom of the pile are the pedophiles, the rapists, those who hurt people. Alright? At the top of the pile, you've got the hedge fund fraud people. You've got, big tier drug traffickers, things like that, and you've got a hierarchy in between. It's no different in cybercrime either. If you're looking at at these cybercrime communities like ShadowCrew or Dread or or AlphaBay or anything else like that or Telegram, which is a new one these days. But if you look there, you've got that hierarchy in place as well. You've got the people who defraud governments and banks, and they're at the top of the tier. Then you've got the people who are who are scamming, just individuals, you know, mom and pop shops, things like that. And those are the bottom feeders. And as such, you you justify how good of a person you are by the type of crime that you're committing, and you'll actually look down on those other fraudsters. Hey. At least I'm not the person who's out there stealing from some old woman someplace, which sounds great until you realize that, hey. Yeah. I know for a fact that even though you're stealing from a government right now or a bank, you started your career by doing that. So you're really no better. And at the end of the day, everyone becomes a victim. That justification is is very strong, and it's a necessity for a lot of these people to commit crime. You know, there's there's a lot of people that say that, criminals are sociopaths. I would disagree. I think that the majority of criminals are not sociopaths, that they they have to have that justification in place that allows them to set that moral compass to the side sometimes and commit these crimes. That's very interesting because I I always you know, you see in movies, obviously, good guy the good guys and the bad guys. And I appreciate the shows the most where the bad guys aren't aren't just black and white, where I I don't think anybody does things because they don't sit around saying, I'm evil. What does an evil person do here? Like, you have, like, the breaking bad type of guys where it's just like this slippery slope. It's the analogy is, you know, a a frog doesn't realize it's being boiled until it's too late to jump out. And it's just getting hotter and hotter, and then suddenly it's dead. But And and for those you know, you mentioned Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad, that that entire character arc is extremely truthful. I think that's a lot of the reason this thing starts. You know, Walter White, he he wants to support his family. So he figures that the only way he has to do that is to become a drug dealer. Now we see that type of logic. I had that type of damn logic, but you see that almost very frequently in these criminal environments. Someone who who has that cognitive dissonance, who convinces themselves, this is what I have to do, and they shut every other option out that's out there. So they start with that thought process in mind and they commit that crime. But as they go along, as they get better, they become that dedicated criminal. And I've talked about that a few different times. There's a difference. I use the analogy of there being a difference between you're hungry and stealing baloney to feed yourself and steak to feed yourself. One of them is the criminal mindset. The other one is just maybe out of necessity sometimes. So so when you first start okay. So you first start getting involved in eBay. What was, like, the very first cybercrime? You know? And I know there was, like, you you you there was also a baseball card thing. Was that related to eBay? Or There were there were base autograph baseballs. The the first one was that I've I've people may have heard the story before, but what happened was is I I found eBay. I liked eBay a lot. I knew I was gonna be able to make money on eBay. I just didn't know how yet. So I was watching Inside Edition 1 night. Bill O'Reilly's on there, and they're doing a segment on Beanie Babies, These high dollar, you know, stuffed animals. The one they were profiling was peanut royal blue elephant, sold for $1500 on eBay. And I'm sitting there watching like, man, I need to find me a peanut. So I skip class the next day, go around all the little Hallmark shops. I figure, oh, they've there's gotta be 1 in a bin someplace. Naive. Just stupid. And, takes me about 3 hours to go around Lexington and all the outline areas to figure out what dude, he's not in a bin. They've got all the peanuts on eBay for 1500. So what happened was is that I I was looking around. I was like, oh, what am I gonna do? Well, they have these little gray elephants for $8. So I'm like, So I bought a gray elephant for $8, stopped by Kroger on the way home, picked up a pack of blue Rit dye, went home, tried to dye the little guy, Found out pretty quickly he was made out of polyester. You'd get him out of the bath, and all the dye would run off. It looked like he had the mange. And, oh, it was horrible. It was horrible. And and what happened was is I ripped a lady off. I found a picture of a real one online, posted it. She thought I had the real thing. She wins the bid. Soon as she wins the bid, social engineering kicks in. And that's one of the things you find about cybercrime. Cybercrime really cannot succeed without social engineering. As a the more skilled cyber criminals and scammers that are out there, and I'm no exception, I became a social engineer as a child because I had to navigate that adult environment that I was in. I'd use those tools as an adult later on to victimize other people. So this lady wins the bid. I wanna I I don't wanna be on the defensive. I want her on the defensive. So I sent her a message. Hey. Congratulations. You win. By the way, we've never done any business before. I don't even know if I can trust you. What I need you to do, go down to the US Postal Service, pick up a couple of money orders totaling $1500. They're issued by the US government. They protect you. They protect me. Send those to me. Once I get them, I'll send the animal to you. She believed that. She sent me the money orders. I cashed them out. I sent her this thing in the mail. I did it under my own name. So she immediately gives me a call. Hey. I didn't order this. My response was, you know, you ordered a blue elephant. I sent you a blue ish elephant. And what happened was is that's where I learned the real first lesson of cybercrime. If you delay a victim long enough, you just keep putting them off. Just keep stringing them along. A lot of them, they get exasperated, they throw their hands in the air, they walk away. You don't hear from them again. And none of them complain to law enforcement. And that's, that's one of the fundamental lessons that most online criminals learn. Law enforcement, most of the time it's never filed. If it's an individual you're scamming, most of the time they don't report and you don't have to worry about anything. You just keep stringing them along and you're free. They forget about it. That was the first online crime I committed. And if you think about it, that type of fraud is is almost a microcosm of every, the way most scams work online. You've got a victim or a potential victim. You have to establish trust with that potential victim. How do you do that? Well, eBay is a trusted platform. We we anticipate that eBay is going to try to vet the other members that are coming in there, that the the items that are for sale that are on eBay are on eBay. So that establishes a base level of trust. Once she wins the bid, I come in and I start layering more trust. I put her on the defensive. I don't trust you. So she has to try to prove that she's trustworthy. I give her an avenue of how to establish that trust. Well, you can go down and get a US postal money order. It's issued by the US government. Everyone trusts them. She believes that. She sends me that. What makes all of that work is that potential victim is desiring something. They want something. In this case, an animal, but it could be a PlayStation 5. It could be concert tickets. It could be anything. So you that desire allows me to to manipulate that victim enough to get them to react emotionally, not logically, not rationally. And that's typically the way that you're looking at romance scams working, PlayStation 5 scams, ticket scams, Zelle scams, everything else across the board. That that's interesting. So, I mean and it was interesting this almost instinctive technique you used where you say, hey. I have to you have to get me to trust you. So you kinda, like, throwing it on her. Right. It almost, like, wipes out of her mind whether she should trust you because now she's so her mind is so busy getting you to trust her. Right. And and that's that's that's one of these techniques. You know? Put put the onus on the victim. Instead of you coming out of the gate and having to worry about how am I going to convince someone to trust me, no. Make them trust you. So that's, that's, that's the way that these things typically operate. You take like, you know, Zelle fraud is a big one right now. You, you, you're sent an SMS message that looks like it comes from your bank. Well, because people, technology online is established through techno I mean, trust online is established through technology tools and finally social engineering. We trust our tech. So we get that text message that looks like it comes from the bank. What we don't understand is that criminals are using tools to manipulate that technology, spoof phone calls, maybe Socks5 proxy, something like that. That opens the door of trust, and then finally, social engineering comes in. So you get a text message. Your bank has approved this wire transfer. If you didn't approve it, press n. If you're gonna press n, you immediately get a spoofed phone call that looks like it comes from your bank, but it's not. What you don't know is that the criminal on the other end end of the line, he's actually already went to the dark web or one of these criminal marketplaces, and he's bought some of your financial information. So he gets you online, social engineering you at this point in time. He starts quoting back your social, your date of birth, maybe some of the transactions that are actually on that bank account pretending that he is customer service. And that right there is enough to convince you that he is. From there, it's very easy to manipulate you into sending some money over to Zelle, giving access to the account, anything else like that. What kind of people do you think are the most susceptible to cybercrimes? I think everyone is. I I I've had people in conferences and, in meetings that say, well, I would never fall for that. In my experience as a criminal, it's those type of people that are most susceptible. Me, myself, I I used to get scammed all the time. I just chalked it up as part of the cost of doing business. I think that everyone is susceptible to being scammed or defrauded. It's so interesting that you would get scammed. Like, what how would someone like, what would what was the time you got scammed? Oh, I so I was the head of so at one point, I was the head of all these criminal organizations online. And someone would have a product or service. If I wanted it, I would go ahead and pay them for for it. And, you know, about, I don't know, maybe 30% of the time it never existed. But I just chalk that up as a cost of doing business. This is just one of these things that happens in this environment. Now on the legal side of things, 1 year, it was like my 2nd or 3rd year in as a consultant and speaker. I was hit with credit card fraud like 4 times. And, at that point you're like, okay, this is karma coming back to get me. But it's, it's, it's one of these things where you have to understand that no human is perfect, that it's very easy to, to trick a human into thinking that you are that legitimate source. It's as easy as a spoof phone call. It's as easy as stealing some of your or getting your background check and stealing some of your identity information to convince you that I am who I say I am. You have and because of that, we have to rely on the companies that are out there on, tools that are in place to help protect us because we as humans are very fallible on these things. And so okay. So you're starting off small with the with and and like you like you alluded to later, just earlier, you later, you would become head of all these Right. Cybercrime organizations like ShadowCrew and all these places. But so you did this $1500 Ebay scam. How did that escalate? Well, it I once I got through with that or got away with that, I and I did it under my own name, So very unsophisticated. But since law enforcement was not notified, I had no knocks at the door or anything else and the and the lady went away finally, I kept going. And as I kept going with more eBay scams and PayPal scams, I got better at understanding the way that those dynamics online should operate. I got to where I was selling pirated software. Pirated software finally led into, programming satellite DSS cards. So those 18 inch RCA satellite systems, you can take the card out of it, program it, turn on all the pay per view, all the channels. Started doing that at about the same time a Canadian judge. This dude actually ruled that it was legal for Canadian citizens to pirate those signals. So what that caused was is in the United States, almost overnight, little industry pops up. You go down to Best Buy. You buy the system for a $100, take it out in the parking lot, open it up, pull the system out, pull the card out, throw the system away, program the card, ship it to Canada, $500 a pop. Started doing that, making a lot of money. I had, so many orders. How much a lot? About 4,000 a week at that point. So, you know, when you're in college, that's a lot of money. So Yeah. Of course. I had, like, $100 in my bank account when I was in college. That's a lot of money in school. Making 200,000 a year. I know. I know. So started doing that, and, I had so many orders I couldn't fill them all. And That that criminal mindset kicks in. Hell, why do I need to fill any of them? They're in Canada. I'm down here. Who who are they gonna complain to? So I didn't fill any of the orders. PayPal you mentioned PayPal before. PayPal was the avenue to get people to pay you. For some reason, people trusted that platform and you could wipe out I mean, you could get people to send money through PayPal all day long all day long on that. So I start and and PayPal would not shut you down if you were defrauding people. And even if they did shut down, they got to where they shut down the accounts. And when they shut down the accounts, they would actually cut a check and send to the fraudster at that point in time. So I started doing that. Why would they do that? Just because They had no idea what you gotta figure this is at a point in time when cybercrime and online fraud was brand new. They really had no idea what to do, how it was happening, anything else like that. So they were doing the best possible job that they could. Now finally, what PayPal ended up doing, and that's still in place to this day, is if you've got a cumulative series of transactions that hits $1500, PayPal at that point in time, more security kicks in and they want you to verify your account. What they, what they did against cyber criminals back then is they would, they would, they finally got to the point where they would freeze the account at that $1500 level. They would freeze it. You'd contact PayPal and PayPal would tell you, well, we need a copy of your driver's license, copy the credit card that's on file and proof of address. Well, you'd fax that into them and you wouldn't hear from them again. So then you'd call them up again a couple of weeks later and you'd be like, hey, I'm trying to get my account unlocked And they'd tell you, well, we need you to send copy of your driver's license, copy of the payment instrument, proof of proof of residence. And it would they would just keep putting you off like that because they found out that if you delay a criminal long enough, they get exasperated. They throw their hands in the air. They walk away, and you don't hear from them again. And that's the how the truth today. Legit people, though, like, doing $1500 transactions, like, I had it. Was the problem. So because PayPal did it to everyone, you have websites pop up like paypalsucks.com or, there was a couple websites like that. PayPal sucks was one of the one of the big ones. But, yeah, that was, that was an issue. PayPal really hurt a lot of legitimate customers with that type of friction that went in place, but it absolutely stopped a lot of the crime that was going on at the same time. So I started, to answer your question back on track there, started to not fulfill any of those orders at all. Got worried about money laundering. Thought I was gonna be looked at for that. Figured the best thing I could do is get a fake driver's license, use that to open up a bank account, launder the money through there, cash out at the ATM. Had no idea where to get a fake ID, got online, looked around, thought I found a guy, sent him $200, sent him my picture. Dude rips me off. And, Right. That that's actually it's interesting because you're obviously not gonna report that to the police. Obviously. Right. Yeah. So it's like Some guy ripped me off with fake ID. No. So selling tools to criminals is is almost like police proof because the the the victims are never gonna report it. Ever. Ever. And you see that to this day every single day on Telegram. There's probably 30% of all those criminal tools that are being sold don't exist. The scammers get money from the criminals and they walk away scot free with it. Absolutely. Still in place today. So I got ripped off, got pissed off, and the end result, the first website was Counterfeit Library. So Counterfeit Library and ShadowCrew, both of which I ran are the precursors of today's darknet. Before those two sites come into place, the only avenue you had for organized online crime and all online crime is organized, the only avenue you had was IRC, Internet Relay Chat. This rolling chat board where you had no idea who you were talking to, if you could trust them, if they had a product or service, if they had it, if it worked, or if they were just gonna rip you off. ShadowCrew, other than being an eBay of criminal tools and products, ShadowCrew was the, site that gave a trust mechanism that criminals could use, and that's still in place to this day. What what do you mean the trust mechanism? So you think about it. If you don't know the person's name, if you don't know what they look like, you're never gonna meet in person. You have no real way to ensure that they're not going to rip you off because you're dealing with a fraudster. So how do you how do you establish trust online in a criminal environment? The way that we did it is we gave a large communication channel, a forum type structure where you could reference conversations days, weeks, months old, learn from those, ask questions, take part in them. You knew by looking at someone's screen name because those screen names were static across all these different environments. You knew by this person's screen name what the skill level of that person was. If you could trust trust them, network with them, if they'd ever scammed anyone, ever had any trouble, anything else like that. We had vouching systems in place, review systems in place, even escrow systems in place, all with that singular purpose of establishing trust with 1 criminal and another. At the same time and it works like that to this day. At the same time, those environments are open source. It's all about people communicating with each other. So it's almost like a human botnet. You know, almost immediately if say you're trying to defraud Apple, and Apple at that point in time is wide open. You know when Apple starts to put in new security, it stops that. But you also know when a member is picked up by law enforcement when they go missing, and it's it's broadcast almost immediately. So that open source of sharing and exchanging information on about law enforcement, about potential targets and victims, about tools and services that are being used, that becomes a very good way and a good environment for individuals to go in and know that the other people they're they're working with and interacting with can be trusted. Alright? So it's almost like a social network for cyber criminals. It is. Absolutely. And and did you you started this? I did. And how did you initially get people on it? Like because I would think first, like, okay. Let's say someone's gonna go on it. Is this run by the police secretly? You know? Or, obviously, criminals, you can't brought put an ad in the newspaper. Like, hey. You know? Like, how do people first kind of get comfortable with communicating on this? Well, it was it's really like a field of dreams. If you build it, they will come, and there was no other site like that at that point in time. It was only on IRC, and everyone was tired of being ripped off on IRC. So it started with me, a gentleman who went by the screen name of, mister x in Los Angeles, another guy that went by the screen name of Beelzebub in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. They Beelzebub sold fake IDs. Mister x sold, fake Social Security cards. I was a guy who didn't sell anything. I just taught people how to do eBay fraud, and I reviewed every single item or service that came on that website. Because of that, that environment and because I took the stance of if I vouch for someone, if I give a good review on a product or service, if you get ripped off by this vendor, I will make sure that you're made whole. If I have to give you money out of pocket, I will do that, and I did that. Alright? So because of that Does that make you does that make you an accessory to every crime committed by anybody using any of these tools? Yes. It does. Yes. Oh my god. Yes. It does. You were taking enormous risk too. And, of course, there's the the moral compass issue, of course, but, you were taking significant personal risk. Which comes into play later on because later on, we started out as we grew and became this, you know, this this cybercrime environment, the genesis of all modern financial cybercrime as we're seeing it today. As that reached that point, we had intercepted text messages from the United States Secret Service about them investigating us. We started to see all these IPs coming in from law enforcement agencies. I'm sitting there at the top of the heap, and I'm sitting there thinking, well, they're gonna get me for RICO before it's over, and that's one of the reasons that I decided to duck out and retire from that environment. So absolutely. You're you're involved. When you're the head of that heap, you are engaged in every single crime that everyone underneath of you is interacting with because you're you're you're that godfather. You're that guy who's taking responsibility for everything because it all falls on your shoulders at the end of the day. And I'm sure there's a gray area in there, but I think the fact that you're providing editorial as opposed to just setting up the framework. Let's say you set up a framework and then you're off and you and you have and you have no censorship and no editorial bias or whatever. Okay. If criminal things happen on there, there's a gray area. But since you were providing reviews that really involved you in everything. And it was no gray area. I was absolutely that criminal. Absolutely. And so what was, like, some of the, would you say, bigger or biggest crimes that were committed using tools that people bought on shadow crew? So there there are 2 big ones. I was the guy who the the reason that your tax refunds are are delayed every single year is me. I'm the guy that created this thing called tax return identity theft. So at the Apex, when I was committing that crime, I was stealing a 160 k a week for 10 months out of the year. That's one of the big ones. And that that continued on, as well. Is that? I don't even know what that is. So that's when you I was doing it on dead people, but that's when you steal someone's w two or their, their identity information and you file a tax return in their name. You have it deposited to a prepaid debit card or Chime or Cash App or something like that. I was the guy who started that type of fraud. That started in 2003, 2004. IRS did not implement security against that until 2011. So it gives you an idea about how long these frauds can actually take place. That was one of the big ones that really kinda redefined, modern cybercrime. The one that got ShadowCrew the most attention was this thing called the CVV 1 hack. So on the back of your debit or credit card, that magnetic stripe, there are 3 data tracks there. The first data track is the the customer's name. 2nd data track is the card number forward slash 16 digit algorithm out beside of that. The 3rd data track is called indiscriminate data. No one uses it. What's bought and sold on criminal forums is the second track. Just that card number forward slash 16 digit algorithm. Now we were doing a lot of of phishing at that point in time. And we were back then when when you were phishing someone out, you could ask anything that you wanted to. So a phishing attack would yield on a just an individual. We give the name, social, driver's license, mother's maiden, passwords, bank account numbers, everything else, card numbers, all that, PINs. So we were getting the card number and the PIN. For you to encode that and cash out at an ATM, you have to have that full track too. Well, we didn't have that 16 digit algorithm, but you have to have it to encode. What we found out though is that none of the financial institutions, and I mean none of them, had implemented the hash for track 2. So we had the card number. What you could do, you put the card number forward slash and any 16 digits outside of it, it would encode. You could take it to an ATM. We had the PIN, pull cash out. That was extremely profitable. To give you an idea, before that, we were doing this thing called CMP, so card not present. Basically, you order a laptop top online, get it in with stolen credit card. You get it in, cash it out, sell it on eBay. A good Carter, which is what those people were called. A good Carter could profit 30 to $40,000 monthly doing CNP fraud. Once we found out about that CVV 1 hack, it was no longer 30 to $40,000 a month. It became 30 to $40,000 a day, and that is what got law enforcement attention at that point. So those those were some of the big ones. We were the first group that, so we partner with the Ukrainians. Ukrainians are the people that were are responsible for the, the the modern credit card debt that we see. We were the people that hit, I mean, you name it back then. We were the people that redefined what how eBay handled security, how PayPal, E Trade. When you say you partner with the Ukrainians, like, what what did they provide? So there was this kid. His name was Dmitry Golubov. He went by the screen name of Script. He was a spammer, and he saw the success that we were having with Counterfeit Library. He liked that and he had this idea. And his idea was, I wonder if people would buy stolen credit card details. And it turns out they will. So he picks up the phone. He calls his buddies. They call their buddies, and they ended up a 150 of these cyber criminals over in the Ukraine ended up having a physical conference in Odessa, and they launched this idea for this thing called Carter Planet. Now what you see with cybercrime for cybercrime to succeed, 3 things have to take place. You have to gather the data, you have to commit the crime, and then finally, you have to cash it out. Alright? That was the problem for the Ukrainians. They had the data through phishing, through things like that. So they had all the data. The crimes back then were not hard to commit because there was very little security that was in place. But because the Ukrainians had already committed all this fraud in that eastern part of Europe, every single card on the planet was shut down over there. Even if you were the legitimate cardholder, you couldn't pull cash out of an ATM. So they had to had to reach out and start to try to find somebody to help them cash out. And that comes in with counterfeit library and then shadow crew. So one day, I ended up I was head of, counterfeit at that point in time before we transitioned to ShadowCrew. And this individual named Script, he comes on counterfeit, and he starts saying, hey, I've got credit card details. We call it a COB where you give me an address and a phone number. I'll make that the billing address and the phone number on the account. You wait 5 business days. You can order whatever you want to. We had never seen anything like that at that point. And most members on Counterfeit Library at that point thought it was law enforcement. It's simply law enforcement trying to set us up. Don't fall for it. So for the 1st week, that was the chatter across the board on Counterfeit Library until I came in because at that point, I was the only person that was doing any reviews. I came in and said, hey, I'll review the guy. So I got script on, ICQ. I was like, hey, you have to be reviewed. And he's like, what the hell is that? So I told him, in order to sell anything on this platform, you have to pass a review. And he's like, will you review me? And I was like, yeah, I'm going to. So I gave him an address, drop address, burner phone number, waited 5 business days, tried to place an order, tried to defraud Dell for like $5,000. Order failed. I went back to ICQ. I was like, hey, didn't work. He was like, well, give me one more chance. I was like, okay, I'll give you one more chance. But if it doesn't work, that's your a*s at that point. He's like, one more chance. So I gave him another drop address, another phone number, waited 5 business days, placed an order for Dell for $5,000 for a Thompson's Computer Warehouse for another $4,000 for so $9,000 total. Order went through and got it in within 2 days. Posted the review after that. And within Why do you think the first one didn't go through? I don't think he waited long enough was what happened. Looking back now, I don't think he waited long enough for it to actually cycle through the system. But what happened was is I posted the review. Now before I posted that review, counterfeit library was mainly an eBay fraud, degree mill, money laundering, you know, that type of identity theft type thing. Within 48 hours of posting that review of Script and Company, it transitioned over to a credit theft site. It was all about the credit cards. And Scripp brought a host of individuals with him that knew exactly what they were doing. So Scripp was all about the virtual credit cards and the change of billing. We call it an ATO now. So So he would provide and charge for the service of, like, taking credit card information and making it legal. Right. So or or or taking stolen credit card information. Right. So you would take stolen credit card information, and you would change the billing address to your drop address. You would change the phone number to a phone that you had in your control. Alright? That was called a a change of billing back then. These days, they call it an account takeover. Alright. ATO. But so Scripps started doing that, and you had many sellers that did that exact same thing. Many Ukrainian sellers that did that. And they typically charge somewhere between 5 to 10% of whatever the available balance was on that account. And you could typically cash out about 80% of whatever that balance was on that. So if the the account had $10,000 on it, you knew you were gonna be able to order $8,000 worth of product almost immediately. So that kinda took over the entire thing. At the same time, he had sellers like Roman Vega who went by the screen name of Boa who sold physical credit cards. So if you wanted to actually go in store and shop, Boa would provide physical credit cards for you, and they were spot on to the real thing. He's I see. And he would encode the magnetic strip. He would he would he would steal the dumps, and then he would encode the mag stripe, ship the card to you with it embossed with whatever name you wanted on it, everything else at that point. Those were just some of the sellers. He had socks 5 proxy sellers on there. He had all these different sellers that, that provided any type of tool that you would need to cash out. And they had to at that point, I was the guy that made the connections between the Ukrainians and the Americans on that. The Ukrainians had to have the Americans, and they still need them today in order to provide those types of cash out services. That's one of the things that you see about those three necessities, that gathering data, committing crime, cashing out. The reason it's never a single attacker is either because that person doesn't know how to do something. Maybe he doesn't know how to do man in the middle, reverse proxy, something like that, or that attacker is in a geographic area where they cannot fulfill one of those necessities, typically cashing out. The Ukrainians problem, cashing out. They couldn't do that at that point, so we had to partner with other people. And that's still in play today. You look at all the unemployment fraud that took place during the pandemic. A lot of it was in the Ukraine and the EU, down in South America, places like that. You can't pull those those funds out of an ATM in those areas because it's gonna raise too many flags. So you had to rely on money mules stateside to do that for you. So, like, someone would say to the Ukrainians so the Ukrainians, like, this guy's script or whatever, he would pay someone. Maybe he found them through counterfeit library or shadow crew or whatever. He would pay someone, hey. Here's an account with money. I need that money. Get it and somehow deliver it to me. Right. And you'd pay for some you'd pay for that with, the percent would be 30 to 40%. So I would I would send you a track tube, which you would encode on a white plastic mag stripe card. You would take it to an ATM. If you got a $1,000 out, you send 600 of it over to script or whoever the Ukrainian is and you get to keep 400 of it. And that worked for And you would send cash? Cash. All no, no, no. I'm sorry. You wouldn't send cash back then. And we you talked about this earlier. So back then, the precursors to crypto were Egold and Liberty Reserve. So you would send you would fund someone's Egold account, or you'd send it to them by Western Union, or you'd go buy a prepaid debit card and you'd send them the mag the the, to the track two data of that prepaid card. You'd load the card on your side so they could cash it out on their side. So those were kind of the mechanisms you would use, but typically, it became the eGold, that precursor of today's crypto. That's why you see today, these criminal marketplaces, they operate they started out operating using, Bitcoin. Now they've all transitioned over to privacy tokens like, Monero. And so okay. So there's ShadowCrew. There's Counterfeit Library. You're getting bigger and bigger, obviously. Like, there's probably a huge audience for for, you you know, these precursors to the to the dark web. What kinda happened next? What it was getting bigger and bigger. Were you getting scared? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So we we Or were you cleaning up or both? Well, you know, I I was stealing about a 160 k a week is what I got to the point I was stealing. What happened was is we started to get law enforcement attention because of that CBP 1 hack. Alright? That 30 to $40,000 a day, all the eBay accounts we were taking over, the E Trade accounts that we were cashing out, things like that. We started to get a lot of attention because we were all we between Shadow Crew and Carter Planet, we were the only cybercrime channels on the planet at that point. So, of course, law enforcement's gonna come start paying us some attention. We intercepted text messages about them investigating us. I decided that I was going to step in. Mean? That that that's a big statement. You intercepted law enforcement text messages. How did they how did you do that? So I I won't call it a hack because it's not. But if you remember back around, 2003, early 2004, Paris Hilton has her T Mobile phone contact list published online. I don't know if you remember that or not. I do remember. That was a shadow crew guy that did that. His name was Enhance, and he was not a hacker. He simply worked for T Mobile. So he he he got her information, decided he was gonna publish her phone contact list. Not only that, but in Los Angeles at that point in time, the United States Secret Service, they were using T Mobile. So he decides he's going to start looking at some of those text messages, and he starts finding these messages that are referencing ShadowCrew, and he publishes those on the ShadowCrew forum. So we had those intercepted text messages as well. And that's one of the things that your listeners that are out there, do not call cyber criminals hackers. We are not. We're criminals. Alright? Most of us have no coding experience, anything else like that at all. It's simply that you're you're willing to do something, that you're a very good social engineer, And while those types of upper tier, you know, computer geniuses are out there, you really don't need a lot of them to be skilled and successful in online crime. Alright? And like, for example, with the Paris Hilton, that's not a hack With most account takeovers, that's not a hack. That's simply someone that's tricking you into giving up your credentials or something like that. Most of the social engineering insiders, things like that. Okay? So what happened with us, we started to see all the chatter. I start to get scared about that Rico I'd mentioned earlier. I was already stealing a 160 k a week on, tax fraud, so I retired at about the same time I stepped off those platforms. My techie went by the name of, Cumba Johnny. His real name was Albert Gonzalez. My techie gets arrested doing the CVV 1 cash out. He's in New Jersey, broad daylight. He's got a backpack. He's got a stack of white plastic cards. He walks up to an ATM, and he stands at this ATM for 40 minutes, putting 1 card in, point $20 bills out, stuffing them in a backpack. And it just so happens that across the street are 2 New Jersey cops. And they're looking at each other and looking at him and they watch him for 40 minutes until finally one cop looks at the other, I think I'll go over and ask that kid what he's doing. Walks up to Albert. Albert falls apart. He's got a wig on, got a disguise, everything else. Albert falls apart. We didn't know he had been arrested, and Albert goes to work for the United States Secret Service. And that's how shadow crew gets popped. What happens is is he, they actually asked him because later on, I worked for the Secret Service. They actually asked Albert, hey. How can we catch these guys? And Albert's like, well, what about a VPN? And they're like, well, what's a VPN? And Albert tells them, and they're like, that's a really good idea. So I had left ShadowCrew at that point in time. Albert comes back in in charge of it, institutes where all transactions have to go through a VPN. That was around I guess that was probably April or May of 04. August of 04, Forbes has shadow crew on its front cover. Headline, who's stealing your identity? That's August. October 26th, the vote for United States Secret Service arrest 33 people, 6 countries, 6 hours. I'm the only guy publicly mentioned as getting away. They picked me up February 8, 2005, and they give me a job. Where were you? Like, were you, were you on the run or I was not. I was hiding? I was not even hiding. I was, I was living under an, under an assumed name in Charleston, South Carolina. They arrested me February 8, 2005, gave me a job, and I'm the guy that continued to break the law from inside Secret Service offices for the next 10 months until they found out about it. So why didn't they since you since you had been kind of the ringleader of it all, why didn't they just put you in jail for what you did, as opposed to working with you? What? Because you were the biggest. Sure. So here here's the thing that you're gonna that that happens with drug dealers, happens with cyber criminals, with organized crime, everything else. The big guys know a lot of stuff and they're really respected. So if if no one knows that the big guy has been picked up, they oftentimes work with that person so they can come in and get more peep more arrests on file. And that person will then get, cooperation points when it comes sentencing time. So I potentially would not have served any time at all, but I was the guy that continued to break the law from inside Secret Service offices for the next 10 months. When they picked you up, what was that moment like? What was happening? I had, I'd been married for, for 9 years. And, my first wife, I had lied to her every single day. Took her 3 years to find out I was a crook. Next 6 years, I was telling her how I was gonna stop. I will stop just a little while longer until finally I became that pure a*****e. And I'd tell her, Hey, you like spending the money, don't you? So she leaves me. And, that fear that I mentioned before of being abandoned that my father always had, that hit. I caused it, but it hits. And, I started seeing a psychologist because I started I was depressed and I was getting suicidal. Saw the psychologist for about 4 months. 1 night, I got lonely and horny. I was 34. I'd never been to a strip club and decided that was the time. And, I'm the idiot that fell in love with the first stripper that he sees, man. I walked in. She walked by. I'm like, that's the one for me. Well, because of that, I mean, I moved her in my in my house. After I moved her in, found out she was addicted to Coke. Not only addicted to Coke, but prostituting herself to support her habit. And I've told that story for 5 years, and it it was up until the first time I was really truthful about it and really admitted what I what I really needed to admit was with the, the Lex Fridman podcast. The truth of the matter is is I love the hell out of that woman. I mean, I did. I absolutely adored that woman. I got it in my head. I back then, I thought I could, you know, you could fix somebody. I didn't know that, no, you can't fix somebody else. You can you're lucky if you can fix yourself. So I I thought I could fix her. I thought if, I did that, that we would both be together and may maybe I could fix myself and we'd love each other and everything would be just fine, but, it wasn't. Did you think if you had enough money that would alleviate not only your anxieties but hers so she wouldn't need to do all these things, that it was just a function of money? I actually thought that, I got it in my head that whatever she wanted, I'd give to her, And that would keep her mind off the drugs is what I thought. And, I didn't know what that meant, but what that ended up meaning was every single night was, you know, $500 dinner. On weekends, it was, you know, 2, $3,000 purse, $1,000 shoes. I was not a partier at all. I I always lived very circumspect. And, it was, like, I remember this one time I went, I went through $11,000 from ATMs. So I had 11,000 cash on me on a Friday evening. Sunday morning, I didn't have a penny and didn't know where it went. Had no idea. And I never used drugs or anything, but, had no idea just because it was, you know, whatever she wanted, whatever she wanted. And I don't blame her for that. That was my choice to do that. But I went through all my stateside cash at about the same time that ShadowCrew got busted in October. I was absolutely broke by that point. And I was starting to have I couldn't go back onto the crime channels. I couldn't commit tax fraud because you can't file taxes after October 15th. Had to wait a few months for that. I couldn't go back into credit card theft because because ShadowCrew had been busted and we had no idea who you could trust on those in those forms anymore. So I started running paper, counterfeit cashier's checks. And, at the same time, Elizabeth was I kept investing in that. I kept saying, you know, I'll keep, if I just go a little bit further, everything will be alright. So got engaged. Well, she she had high high dollar taste, and she wanted a, a Tiffany engagement ring. Well, I didn't have money to buy a Tiffany engagement ring, so I paid for it with a counterfeit cashier's check off eBay. And, I ended up getting arrested because she wanted Tiffany wedding bands. And, usually when you're running checks, you need to make sure that you're traveling out of area. I couldn't do that because I was scared of leaving her. I didn't want to be separated from her. So I was tied to that area. Secret Service, FBI, they all knew that every one of those checks was in that area. I knew where I was. So they started doing these controlled deliveries, anything that they thought might be me. And did they know that not only were they finding the guy who who was doing this, check fraud, but that you were the shadow crew guy? They did. Did they know they were honing it on you? Knew that. So what happens is is I was, I went to pick up these, wedding bands one day, told Elizabeth that I'd be back in, you know, an hour or 2. I go to pick them up at an apartment building. UPS pulls in. I've got a counterfeit cashier's check on me. UPS pulls up. I get out, meet the UPS driver at the at the truck. I was like, hey. You got a package for me? He's like, yeah. Can I see an ID? So I flipped in my ID. He was like, yeah. That's a cash you got a cashier's check for 19,000? I was like, yeah. So I hand him a cashier's check, turn around with the box, and there's the FBI and the Charleston PD, pistols pulled, waiting for me. You're under arrest. And it turns out there were, like, 30 of them in the parking lot. So, they arrested me. Scared to death, or did you were you calm? Like, what kicked in? No. I was calm. I was calm. At that point, it was I've always been really good under pressure, and that's about as much pressure as you can get. So, I was I was really calm. I was I sat down. They didn't at at first, they didn't believe that my name was Brett Johnson. They knew they had the shadow crew guy, but they didn't know my real name. So, kept telling them that and everything else until finally I convinced them of that. They take me to this interrogation place, which was where they took all the drug people because they didn't have a cybercrime unit at that point. So they took me to, where they do all the drug questioning. Within 45 minutes, this FBI agent, her name was Cynthia McCants. She, opens up this folder. She takes out this piece of paper, slides it across to me. It's a it's a it's a, photocopy of a fake ID I had used to open up some drop addresses. And, she's like, does that look familiar? I was like, yeah. Looks familiar. Just a little bit heavier version of me. Well, as soon as I said that, the door opens up. These 2 secret service agents walk in, sit down, and they look at me. They were like, we wanna talk to you about some stolen credit cards. And at that point, I was like, oh, they already know who I am. So, they let me sit in a county jail for a week. 2 more agents fly in from New Jersey. They pulled me out of a cell. They looked at me. They they were like, we got your laptop. I'm like, yeah. You got anything on your laptop? I'm like, yeah. Well, were you gonna be charged for it? I'm like, yeah. I figured that. Then one agent looks at me and he was like, is there anything you can do for us? Well, I was arrested February 8, 2005, and that was 3 weeks before I was supposed to be married to this girl. And like I said, I was nuts about her. So I looked at my and my exact words were, you let me get back with Elizabeth. I will do whatever you want me to do. So, they looked at me and said, we're going to get you out. I'm like, okay. So they let me sit there for 3 months to get a taste of it. But but weren't the weren't they worried though that if you sat there for 3 months, then the community would know you might have turned? Yeah. They were. So how come they didn't just, like, get you let you out right away? I I honestly, I cannot answer that question. I have no idea what the answer for that was. Either they were trying to negotiate on their side with their higher ups? I think they were. You know, they had by that point in time, they had hired, Albert Gonzalez was working as an informant for them. Informant slash consultant, is what he was doing, and that's what I became as well. But, they let me sit there for 3 months. The night that I got out, I the first person I called the night that I got out, the Secret Service was there with me. I called Elizabeth, and I was like, hey. I'm out. She's like, I'll be there immediately. And, so she shows up in a damn limousine, gets out, pops the trunk, gets these 2 plastic containers with my clothes, drops them on the pavement, comes over, hugs me, call me later, and leaves. I'm sitting there just tears flowing, man. Secret service agent looks at me. He's like What what what did you say to her? Like, did you say, hey. I thought we're going together. No. I didn't have a chance to say anything. I was just so just shocked about it and, sitting there crying after she leaves and, Like, whose limousine was it? Was she with someone else? She had a friend that owned a limo company. And, so she got in to show up in this frigging limousine and drops my clothes off. Agent looks at me. That's your fiance? I'm like, yeah. He's like, man, I'm sorry. I'm like, yeah. So I didn't have it. I had $30 to my name at that point. Agent pays for me a hotel room that night, pays for my food so I can eat. Soon as he leaves, I take that $30 and I walk my a*s to Walmart and buy a prepaid debit card so I can start back in, tax fraud that night. And, called Elizabeth up, begged her to get back with me. She finally said, yeah. So I, took a month for me to move from, Charleston, South Carolina to the field office in Columbia, South Carolina. And during that point in time, I'm already engaged in crime. So I start to work at the Columbia field office. They've got, me hooked up to a laptop, 50 inch plasma monitor hooked up to that, mounted on a wall so you can watch everything I'm doing. They're recording everything on Spectra Pro and Camtasia. I've got 2 agents in the room with me the entire time. And for the 1st 2 weeks, they're the most diligent people on the planet. They're asking questions, paying attention to everything I'm doing, but I'm I'm very fast about navigating these environments. So I'm go I've got, you know, dozens of screens open, everything else, all these conversations going on. They become bored after about 2 weeks. They were hooked up to an outside line on a desktop computer in the room. And, they spent a lot of their time watching porn. So I'm sitting there while I'm sitting there, you know, watching them. They're not watching me. And I understand pretty quickly that, hey, all this data, all these recordings every night goes on a DVD. No catalog system to it at all. They're not even gonna go through this stuff. So I just start breaking them all from inside the offices, and that lasts about 10 months. Weren't you doing that anyway? Because that they wanted to track what you're doing. Well, no. Well, what are they paying you? Like an employee? But understand that there's a difference between so so an informant, when you're working for law enforcement, especially federal law enforcement, you get an authorization for illegal activity. The US attorney will tell you and sign off on what crimes specifically you're allowed to commit. Alright? Anything out of that, that's your a*s. So I was allowed to do certain things online, and I had to have approval for every single thing on that. What I'm saying is is I continue to commit tax fraud from inside the offices and credit card fraud that was outside of the purview of what the US attorney had okayed at that point. Okay? And that lasted about 10 months until they found out about it. And then I go on this cross country crime spree, still $600,000 in 4 months, make the United States most wanted list, go to Disney World, get arrested, sent to prison, escape from prison, all that. So and I know I know it I know you're taught you're you're busy, and and I have so many questions, but I won't unpack all of what you just said. I won't unpack it all. That's another show entirely. Maybe that will be. But when you go on a cross country crime spree, are you changing your identity or using, like, fake identities and stuff? I was. So, initially, I had to go I had to leave under my own name, but I by the time I got to, Dallas, Texas, I got fake IDs, bought a new car under those fake IDs, everything else, and proceeded to go like that. Yeah. And did you did you start running because you knew they were on to you? Like like, how did you know that they were on to you? The the new crimes? Oh, wait. So I I I was a very egotistical, and I'm I've still got an ego, but I was very conceited. I was I was just a pure a*****e. So what was happening was is I was committing this tax return fraud. And so I would pull out of a series of ATMs on a once a week, I'd pull, you know, $100,000 out. And, so as I went to an ATM, because I was so pissed at the United States Secret Service, I would I wouldn't try to cover myself up. I would smile at the ATM, and I would give the ATM a middle finger while I was pulling out those $20 bills because I knew that the United States Secret Service would see that, and I wanted them to see it. I wanted them to know it was me that was doing it. That's how conceded, how how egotistical Once once they see it and they show you the video, can't don't you know they're gonna say, hey. We're gonna have to charge you with the gun. Now you're actually gonna go to jail. I was I I had such an ego. I was like, I'll I'll never be caught because I was planning on going down to, Brazil at that point in time and setting up shop again. But what happened was is I was in Las Vegas, Nevada. The night before I pulled out, I'd stolen a 160 k out of ATMs. Woke up the next morning, and I was United States Most Wanted. And that puts a damper pretty quickly on any type of travel prep plans that you've got. So I sat there, and I was looking at the screen where I was most wanted. And I literally said out loud, well, Brent, you've made the United States most wanted list. What now? And I said it out loud. I was like, I'm going to Disney World. So I drove from Las Vegas to Disney World, rented a timeshare with cash for 9 months, bought, $30,000 worth of furniture to go in it, and lasted about, about 6 weeks, and they found me. And so this time when they brought you in, did they ask you to work for them again? Or No. No. That job offer was over. So, I I went to prison, lasted about, I don't know. I was at that prison for about 6 weeks until I escaped. And, And how do you escape from prison? So I had actually told everyone in the county jail because I was in the county jail for, like, 8 months. I told everyone in the county jail that, hey, if they give me any more than 60 months, I'm not going to stay because I knew I was gonna be at a minimum security prison. I'd already been doing the research and everything like that. So I had my family and friends looking for a prison that wasn't supposed to have a fence around it, and I was gonna try to get a job outside of the fence. So we settled on Ashland, Kentucky. I'm sentenced to Ashland, Kentucky. Get there. They've got a 14 foot fence around the top. I'm like, okay. So I go in. I'm talking to the guard at, at intake, and I'm like, hey. Are there any jobs outside of the fence? And he's like, well, yeah, you can work in the national forest. And I'm like, no. I'll die out there. And he's like, well, you can do landscaping. And I was like, I can run a weed eater. So, walk into the landscaping office a week later, and and the guard there in that office behind his desk, the entire wall is this aerial photo blown up of the compound and the outline area. So I can literally sit there and plot the escape the entire time. At the same time, my dad my dad came back into my life. He shows up at my sentencing. I haven't had a real conversation with a man in 20 years. So he shows up at my sentencing. He looks at me, he looks at the judge. He's like, I wanna make sure Brett gets a good start when he gets out. He's welcome to come and live with me. So he starts visiting me at the prison in Ashland, Kentucky. About the 3rd visit in, he looks at me. He's like, you know, I've been reading about you online. I'm like, yeah. He's like, yeah. He's like, that's a lot of money you've made. I'm like, yeah. He's like, you think you could teach somebody how to do that? Oh my gosh. And, I used to say that, I used to say I thought he'd come back in my life and he just wanted to, you know, make money. The truth of the matter was is, looking back now and I'm I'm on very good terms with my father. Looking back now, I think that that was the only way he thought he could communicate with me, and I decided to manipulate the man into helping me escape. So he had $4,000 cash to his name. I got him to give me that, a change of clothes, a cell phone, my driver's license, and drop it off outside of the compound. And, in exchange for that, I taught him how to do tax return identity theft. Did he get in trouble for helping you escape? He did not. He did not. Okay. They asked him, but, he did not give up any information that I didn't give give any information at all when I got called either. So you escaped. Mhmm. Obviously, they find you. What what happened? Well, that's that's jeez. I mean, this so what happens is we let's backtrack for just a second. When I first got picked up at Disney World, I got thrown in the, federal holding facility at the Orange County Jail. So all federal inmates, and this guy kinda takes me in under his wing. His his name was Yeti. He was in there for meth, and he we got to talking every day, and he's making sure I'm, you know, taken care of and everything. And he looks at me one one day, and he's like, hey. The only time you get off in federal prison is the drug program. And I'm like, well, dude, I don't use drugs. And he was like, I think you can find a drug problem, can't you? And I'm like, I can find a drug problem. So they give me this thing called diesel therapy. So the transport from from Orlando back to Charleston or to Columbia, South Carolina, I ended up stopping at probably 10 or 15 different county jails along the way. It's all to wear you out mentally and emotionally, physically, things like that. At every one of those county jails, on intake, they ask you, do you use any type of drugs? And I'm like, yeah. Alcohol and cocaine. So by the time I get to Columbia, I've got this paper trail of requesting help for my drug problems. My lawyer, public defender at that point in time, the only good thing he ever did was get a, a psychological evaluation ordered for me. So at county jail, the psychologist comes in. It's a 4 hour interview. About halfway through, he looks at me. He's like, hey. You use any type of drugs? I'm like, yeah. Well, what do you use? Cocaine? Smoke or snort? Snort? How much? An 8 ball a day. And he looks at me, and he's like, that's a lot. I'm like, yeah. He's like, you have any trouble out of that? I'm like, yeah. I can't get an erection. And he looks at me, and I got that from watching the movie Boogie Nights. That money shot at the end when Mark Mark Wahlberg can no longer stand to attention. I'm like, that's gotta be real. So I'm looking at him. I'm looking at the at the at the doctor. The doctor is looking at me, and finally, I'm like, is that right? And he was like, it could happen. I was like, okay. And he's like, is it still happening? I'm like, no. Not that I needed to work where I am. So that made it in my PSR, pre sentence report. So the probation office and the prosecutor, they do this in-depth background check on every single criminal to tell the judge how much time they need to give you in prison. So that drug situation makes it in my PSR. And so what happens on my sentencing on all the cybercrime, the day of the sentencing, the prosecutor, I mean, he's pissed. He stands up and he's screaming at the top of his lungs. Johnson has manipulated the prosecutor, the Secret Service, and he's manipulating you today, your honor. We insist on the upper limits of the guidelines. Judge says yes. Gives me 75 months. I'm like so I looked at my lawyer. I was like, hey. Can you get the drug program for me? He's like, I don't know. I'll ask. So he stands up. Will you order the drug program for mister Johnson? Judge is like, no, but I'll recommend he gets evaluated for it. I'm like, what does that mean? My lawyer is like, you're probably not gonna get it. My exact words, well, how soon can you get me to the camp? Lawyer is like, pretty soon if you don't appeal. And I'm like, you know, screw 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. So arrive at the camp, you know about the escape and everything else like that. Well, I'm arrested about 3 weeks after I escaped. US Marshals get me. They use the exact same pre sentence report that was used in Columbia, South Carolina because it happened so quickly. They escaped it. At that, I was when I was arrested, I had a laptop. I had more stolen identities, more prepaid debit cards, things like that. And, prosecutor stands up, and he's like, you know, your honor, we would appreciate if you take that in consideration when you sentence mister Johnson for the escape. The judge, though, the judge says no. If you're gonna charge him with it, you should've charged him with it. I'm just gonna consider the escape. Then he looks at me, and he's like, you know, mister Johnson, I have no idea why you did these things. But it looks like by you keeping your mouth shut right now, you're saving yourself a serious charge. I'm like, yes, sir. Then he opens up the PSR, and he's like, he starts flipping through it. He's like, it also looks like before you got involved with all these drugs that you were a pretty good citizen. And I'm like, yes, your honor. So he says, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you 15 months on the escape, but I'm gonna order the drug program for you. So the way it works out, I get 15 months on the escape. I get 18 months off because I'm in the drug program. So I ended up hitting the street about 3 months earlier than I should have. But the real good thing that happened was is I go through the drug program. And it turns out the drug program was not about drug rehab. It was a cognitive behavioral therapy. It teaches you that your your thoughts determine your feelings. Your feelings determine your actions. And if you change your thought process, finally, the actions change at the end of the day. And, that program, it was a 9 month program, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all peer reviewed. That program really helped change my life and helped me get me on the path that I'm on today of being able to turn my life around. How do you change your thoughts? Like, the thoughts sort of are very persistent. Sure. So and and there's a there's a set of things of these principles that they want you to start taking into consideration. Empathy, gratitude, thankfulness, things like that. Objectivity. So for example, I mentioned at the beginning of our conversation how this cognitive dissonance of this is the only way I can do this. This is the only way I can make money. You know, I have to steal, or I have to do this this credit card theft in order to pay my bills. Well, instead of thinking like that, sit back and consider, is that really the only alternative? Do you have anything else? Could you get jobs? For example, me as a criminal, I didn't have to go into fraud. It's not like I'm an idiot. I had scholarships. I had all these different things I could have done. I just chose to do that. Once you start to accept responsibility, once you understand that, hey, it's not anyone else that causes you to act or think or do these things. You're choosing to do that. Once you accept that responsibility, I really believe that you have no no other choice but to start to do the right damn thing. You know, if you if you really accept that, hey. I'm the master of my fate. I'm the person that did this. I'm the person that chose to do this, and I can choose not to do this. That makes a hell of a lot of difference instead of playing the victim. Hey. I've got no other choice. I've gotta do this. I've gotta I've gotta support my family. I've gotta I've gotta I I just don't know what else to do. Instead of thinking like that, step back, take a moment, and start to consider things. Like, for example, a lot of criminals and I was no different, I never asked for help ever. I refused to ask anybody to assist me. But when I started this transition over to, this legal thing, you know, speaker, consultant, chief criminal officer, all this stuff, when I started that, I made the decision that, hey, I can't do this on my own. I've got to have people that will help me. So I started to reach out and what I found out was is that even though I was this horrible criminal, lifetime criminal, that there are people out there that believe people need a second chance. And with me, it wasn't just a second chance. It was a 3rd, 4th chance, but I finally got there. And I you know, even today, I I still learn every day what a healthy relationship is supposed to be. I'm I'm I'm still learning that today. You know, I'll tell you this. I don't, I truly don't believe that I deserve the life that I have, but, I'm extremely grateful for that life. And, I take it very seriously these days about working to, to protect people and businesses from that type of person that I used to be. But, also, I take it seriously about, you know, talking to people that may be, may be victims, that may be engaged in crime, that would just may need to to to sit there and talk to people for a few minutes. I I, I wake up doing that, and I go to sleep doing that. And, that's that's what I do these days. I just, I think if I've been if I've been granted and blessed with the with the things that I do now, that anything less than that is, would just be a disgrace. And and, you know, when you started getting into like, do you still do stuff with the Secret Service or the Treasury Department and, like, what's the range of of ways in which you help people now? Are I know you're you consult with corporations on on cybercrime, like and you speak about it. What what what are the range of things you do? I I work with law enforcement, not Secret Service. They still they are still a little miffed. I got a grudge. They're still they're still not happy. So but I work with, other federal agencies. I, that's consulting, helping with investigations. I work with security companies. I consult with security companies. I work with consumer groups. I'm speaking to the Texas state legislature next month where I'm gonna try to help, get Telegram either answerable to US courts or banned in the United States. I'm gonna I help, I'm gonna try to get better, credit protections with children. I'm always working with something every single day to help victims and to help mitigate fraud and online crime. I work with Arcos Labs as their chief criminal officer. We do bot mitigation because you're seeing these days, more and more criminals are looking at automated ways to scale up their crimes. That's one of the things that people are worried to death about chat GPT, for example. So you see all these things in play that really need, you know, I'm pretty unique. I've got this this insight that most people don't have when it comes to identity theft, cybercrime, cybersecurity. And so, bot security is a very interesting issue. Like, basically, every company is probably infected with these sort of bots that are like sleeper cells. Like, the the criminals are waiting to awaken thousands of bots across a corporate network or whatever. Do these bots how off like, let's say that you're a Fortune 100 company and probably all your computers are infected with bots from some criminal organization. What's a typical crime that happens on those bots? And and they're they're kind of undetectable, but, like, the the software skills behind them exceed the software skills of the company. Sure. So and and so with bots, you've got dumb bots, you've got more sophisticated smart bots, things like that. So give give everyone just a picture of of bot traffic. Overall Internet traffic, probably 50% of that is bot driven. If you're on a merchant's website, not up to 90% of the traffic on that website can be bots. Now not all of those bots are malicious. There are a lot of healthy bots that are out there, but there are malicious actors that are on there. So if you're looking at what a bot can do, it can do, account creation. If you, run a company that has rewards points like gasoline rewards or something like that, a a human being trying to take over those accounts won't work. It's not profitable enough for that, but bots are very cheap to run. So you can have bots trying to brute force access to those sites or to check those different accounts to see if there's any rewards points or dollars associated with those accounts. So it really matters on you look at BOS to see if certain parts of those attacks, account creation, account takeover, checking accounts, things like that can be automated. If they can, you typically want to deploy some sort of bot network. It's cheap to deploy. It's very sophisticated. It's not it's not that companies cannot stop bots. It's that a lot of the time, a company has to determine whether they've got the money or want to put the budget into stock. And then you take Twitter for example. Twitter's got a huge bot issue right now. It's not difficult to stop the bots that are on Twitter, but do you want to stop them would be the question. Now to stop that, you you have to you have to have bot mitigation in place at account creation, at login, at, anytime you're posting direct messages, sending messages to each other, anytime you're posting replies, anything else. At each step, you have to have a bot mitigation in place. Because at each step, bots can be used by criminals to somehow manipulate or monetize attacks. Okay? So so, really, you've been keeping up with all the latest technologies, the latest type of cyber crimes. Obviously, you know, like, one big issue is with all these NFTs, there's these things called rug pulls. So and I never understand, like, it seems like 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars of worth of people fall for these things. Someone launches an NFT project, 100,000,000 gets raised, and then there's no NFT there, and there's nothing. And then the guys just guys even sometimes I've heard about situations where people send an email, sorry. That it was totally a crime, and then they just disappear. Because there's no regulation in place, And I'm I'm scared that the regulation that's coming in place will be uneducated, uninformed, and overreaching. Yeah. We need regulations, but they need to be informed and educated. And I am I am not confident at all that that's going to happen. I think the problem with with with not only NFTs, but crypto is the technology, whether it be the blockchain, the technology behind NFTs, what have you. I think that that is trustworthy. The blockchain is trusted. I mean, you can trust that 100%. Alright? But the the issue is is that nothing outside of that can be trusted. You can't trust the exchanges. You can't trust the companies that are associated with it. We just had Genesis claim bankruptcy yesterday. We've had FTX. We see what's happening with FTX. We see we see what's happening with Binance. Binance was named in part of that DOJ thing yesterday where the DOJ shut down an exchange. So you can't really you can't trust the social media because you have rug pulls. But I think the problem is is that the people those victims are taking the trust that's established with the blockchain or with the technology, and they're also thinking that that means that these other outside forces can be trusted as well. And the truth of the matter is nothing outside of the blockchain can or should be trusted. It has to establish its own trust. If you think about it, in order for me to do a rug pull, in order for me to scam or victimize you either as a company or an individual, I have to establish a degree of trust with that potential victim. So that's what people need to watch out for. What does it take for me to get you to trust me? Either if you're a company or an individual, does it take a spoof phone call? Does it take, a plot of social media followers? Does it take a bunch of bots on Telegram or Discord saying, hey. We're gonna make a lot of money? Does it take a a bunch of followers? What does it take? Does it take stolen identity information? Figure out what it takes for me to get you to trust me and then design security around that, and you're gonna protect yourself much better. So interesting because with a lot of NFTs, a lot of it you you you a lot of the ways you you judge whether an NFT is worthwhile or not if you're a potential customer is the activity of the Discord. And like you say, that could be largely bots even doing discussions and engagement. Absolutely. You know, it's almost good, like, you you could create a service, like, in grade every Discord channel, like, from 1 to 5. One is suspect. You're not accusing anyone. 1 is suspect. 5 is trustworthy Right. According to your model or whatever. So that's one I mean, you're probably already doing something like that, but just there's there's just so much scam and scandal out there. It's, like, great what you're doing now actively fighting this, and it's it's it's it's good for you. Like, you're you're doing well and and and making money and, you know, enjoying it? Well, I you know? Yeah. I make money. More important to me, and the people who follow me know this, is I'm the guy who calls s**t out. You know, it's it's more important for me to, whether you're a company or a criminal, it's more important for me to to call the things that no one else will call because we're in an we're almost in a world these days that people are scared to say the things that need to be said because maybe they'll anger somebody or lose a client or a job, a contract, something like that. And we've I really believe we have to get past that. We have to get to the point where we're calling out the things that need to be called out. That's the problem with crypto. You know, somebody back just a few months ago, someone would say something negative about that crypto vertical and you'd have all these people that would pile on and start lambasting them. When the truth of the matter is is, hey. It's got some problems. It doesn't mean it can't be fixed, but there are some problems in that vertical. But you couldn't say that a few months ago. Only now are you seeing these conversations. Yeah. No. I agree. And look. It's just like reminds me that just in the beginning days of the Internet. The Internet, of course, created 1,000,000,000,000 and 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars of positive value in people's lives, but it was it was it was the home for a lot of crimes as you it was your home, so in the beginning. So, you know, I think crypto's going going through that, you know, and it's probably not over yet and it'll probably be there for a long time just like it's still on the Internet to some extent, but, you know, the Internet has many more use cases now so people are comfortable with it. But, yeah, I agree. Like, all of this stuff, in order for crypto to be truly accepted and and go move on to the positive use cases which which are baked into the technology, it's gotta deal with the regulation. It's gotta deal with this crime issue and and all these other factors. It it does. And and you're you're absolutely right. I mean, crypto, it it has its roots in criminal activity. That doesn't mean it's always gonna be like that. We are going to get past that. There's not a doubt in my mind we will get past that, but we have to get proper regulations, proper informed regulations in. We have to move past the these these, you know, honestly, I like DeFi. If we can get it right, I like DeFi. I agree. Like, you've never seen a fraud on a DeFi exchange because there's no individual who could misuse funds. And so it's it's baked into the code. Everyone can see the code and say, oh, this this is a crime in in action. But the problem is and I always people have heard me say this on the podcast before, the problem is grandma and grandpa in Main Street, Kansas, they are not gonna use SushiSwap to buy some random coin on a MetaMask wallet like That is true. Hard for them. There needs to be sort of an interface or some front end or maybe Visa gets involved or Fidelity or whatever and and makes it easier, and and they're the ones who deal in their back office with the DeFi exchanges. Absolutely. I agree completely on that. So and and we'll get there. I mean, I I really believe we'll get there. I don't think that we're anywhere near there right now. You know, we've got, you know, this this idea that crypto has this the the overarching idea that it's gonna change finance, that it's gonna equalize people across the board. We have not seen that at all at all. And I don't know how we get to that point when you've got, you know, 2% of the wallets are holding 98% of the tokens that are out there. We have to get we have to figure out that problem and and get past that too. And I think it'll happen, but I just I don't know. I mean, I I'm guessing it'll happen just like it happened with the Internet. It's just we don't know the path that will take. Will it be some country where, you know, adopts crypto in a more mainstream way than El Salvador did? Is it is it, some enormous use case that people get excited about, that that drives usage? I mean, basically, just like the Internet, it basically needs a 1000000000 users to get acceptance. And it's just not there yet in terms of interface, in terms of use case. Even though the technology is great and it solves a lot of problems, it's also like you're saying, solving a lot of problems for criminals. So that's that's something to watch out for. I mean, I'm I'm hopeful. I'm that guy that, you know, I used to be a criminal and everything else, but I'm I'm still that optimist. I really believe that we will get there. I just think as you said, I I don't see what that path is right now, but I think that it will find its own path. You know, last last kind of subject, and you just touched on it, do you think criminals have to be optimists? You know, I do. I do. And I so I made the comment yesterday. I was You could be cynical. I was at a conference yesterday, and I made the comment that, you know, I I see when I was in prison, I served time with men there who would never get out. They had lost their family, didn't have friends, they would never see outside of that fence again. And yet every single day, those men found something to be grateful about and something to be happy about. And, you know, to the and the reason I said that is today I see all these people that kinda wallow in self pity that, you know, they they they think about how bad their lives are. And and I gotta tell you, they're nowhere near as bad as what those men were going through. Yet they still found happiness, found something to be grateful about. The the question, do criminals have to be optimists? I think you do. I really think it's a weird type of optimism, this this victimizing other people. But every single one that I've ever met I mean, not everyone, but but the majority of them have been these guys who have been just optimistic about things. Mix that with cognitive dissonance, you got you get a bunch of criminal activity. But that that that foundation of optimism, I think, is there in most criminals. Absolutely. And that's sort of that's propelling you now into kind of, you know, the success you're finding and and the message you're spreading and and so on. Thank you. And, look, I'm sure I'm sure many people benefit from interacting with you. You know, just hearing you talk is very inspirational, and and, you know, I think, you know, I'm I'm excited for what you're doing. So, you know, anytime you ever wanna come on the show, let me know. Or Oh, you now you're saying that, I'm gonna take you up on it. Yeah. Of course. Take me up on it. Could could do this all the time. So I really I really appreciate it. Brett Johnson, what's the best way for people to to find out? You can find me on LinkedIn. My show is I've had a hiatus on my show. I'm gonna be back on Spotify and, other podcast platforms probably the next week for the Brett Johnson show. You can also find me at the brettjohnsonshow.com. Okay. Great. Alright. Well, thanks very much, Brett, and, I'm excited to release this episode. No. Thank you so much. It is it I'm honored and and completely humbled to be invited on. I really do appreciate it. I apologize if I asked you any questions. Like Not at all. I was I wanna be I'm a curious guy. Thank you again. Thank you. The nation's favorite car buying site, Dundeele Motors, is home to the largest range of new and premium used cars from all of Ireland's trusted car dealerships. That's why you'll find Brady's Mercedes Benz on Dundeele. Visit the Brady's Mercedes Benz showroom on Dundeele to find your next car. Dundeele Motors, for confident car buying and deals to feel great about from all of Ireland's trusted car dealerships. Visitdundeel.ie today.