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Dec. 18, 2023 - Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

02:13:20

Dr. Peterson Interviews Former U.S. Most Wanted Cybercriminal | Brett Johnson | EP 406

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	Cybercrime today, if it were a country, would have the third largest economy on the planet.
	That's how things have expanded to that point.
	Now, does that include pornography distribution?
	It does not.
	Without pornography distribution?
	without pornography.
	Hello, everyone.
	I had the opportunity to speak to Brett Johnson and Brett, well, Brett had a rough life and led him dark places and he spent a lot of time setting up and running the darker edges of the web and for many years and facilitating the development of online criminality and that's become a real scourge in our society and That all changed about six years ago when he decided that he was going to work on the positive side of the universe for a while.
	And so we spent a good amount of time walking through his bio and talking about how he got involved in Shadow Crew, say, from 2002 to 2004.
	It was an early consortium of online criminals devoted to the sales of illegal goods, drugs, guns, identities and information and so forth.
	And we walked through all that and then...
	The mechanics of his decision to stop and to start working with law enforcement agencies and so forth and with corporations and to inform the general public about the dangers of online crime and about how to protect yourself and, well, about About the realities that face us as we professionalize and organize criminality at the same rate that we're doing with everything else using this amazing technology that's at our fingertips.
	So, welcome aboard.
	It's going to be quite the ride.
	I've been studying this array of personality traits.
	It's going to be a long question, but it'll get us right into what we want to talk about today.
	Known as the Dark Tetrad.
	Now, the Dark Tetrad is a group of descriptors of personality that are negative.
	And they emerged as an object of investigation for two reasons.
	One reason was that There was this gentleman named Dr.
	Robert Hare who worked at the University of British Columbia.
	And he was the first psychologist who studied psychopaths.
	And he interviewed a lot of psychopaths in prison, hundreds of them, and developed a questionnaire Measurement, a set of measurements, essentially, that helped determine what the personality characteristics were of people who were likely to become long-term, unrepentant career criminals.
	And his students started to study that psychopathy, let's say.
	It kind of had two components.
	It had a callous component.
	So people who are psychopathic are likely to be very high in the trait.
	They're disagreeable.
	Self-centered.
	They have very little empathy for other people.
	And can be cruel if necessary.
	And then they also tend to have a parasitical lifestyle, which means that they're perfectly willing to live on the earnings of other people or to manipulate them for that purpose.
	That kind of makes up psychopathy.
	They also tend to be relatively fearless.
	So, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And then...
	And his students started to study psychopathy in normal life, right?
	Because many psychopaths end up in prison, but not all of them.
	And so Harris students started to study psychopathy.
	More normal psychopathy, so to speak.
	At the same time, psychologists had put together a group of personality descriptors that covered the whole range of possible personality.
	Five factors.
	Extroversion, extroverted people are talkative and full of positive emotion.
	Neuroticism, that's a proclivity for negative emotion.
	Agreeableness, we talked about that a little bit already.
	Conscientiousness and creativity are openness.
	But they eliminated from those descriptors anything that was evaluative.
	So good, evil, bad, good, cruel, kind.
	Most of those were taken out because they wanted to make a non-evaluative representation of personality.
	But then that didn't work out so well because you had to keep in the evaluative terms for the study of, say, serious misbehavior.
	And people started to look at how those descriptors clumped and came up with this dark tetrad model.
	So the darker sides of personality are Machiavellian.
	So Machiavellians will use manipulation to get what they want from people.
	Psychopathy, which we already discussed.
	Narcissism, which is the desire for unearned social status and attention.
	And then sadism, which was the latest one that was added to that, which was something like positive delight in the suffering of others.
	Okay, so that's the background.
	Now, I've got extremely interested in this in recent years because...
	Our culture is splitting apart and there's a culture war that's occurring that's much more and more serious.
	And it looks like part of that's driven by polarization.
	And so I'm concerned that polarization is driven fundamentally by the disinhibition of the psychopathic or dark tetrad types online.
	So in normal interactions between people, There are lots of evolved mechanisms to stop manipulation.
	So, for example, if you and I have repeated interactions, and if we're in a community where people know me and know you, you can probably pull the wool over my eyes two or three times, but by By the third time, I'm going to catch on, maybe, and then I'll know you, and then word will get around, and that'll keep you under control, right?
	And a lot of people are kept under control by nothing else than social reputation and social pressure.
	That's all stripped away online.
	And so, I'm concerned that the virtualization of the world is enabling the psychopaths.
	I want to add one more thing to that before asking you more specifically about this.
	I know already that about 35% of internet traffic is devoted to the propagation of pornography.
	And my sense is it isn't the world's best guys that are involved in the production and distribution of pornography.
	And then there's a huge area where there's overt criminality.
	I mean, most of the elderly people I know are targeted on at least a weekly basis by people who are trying to steal everything they've got.
	And then around that, there's an edge of sort of quasi-criminal behavior that is engaged in by the anonymous trolls and so forth.
	The people who are doing their, what do they call it?
	They're having their fun for the laws, which is to laugh out loud, to...
	To gain amusement at the expense of others.
	And we also know that the people who do that are more likely to have these dark tetrad personality traits.
	So I'm wondering, you have extensive experience with this.
	You ran an organization or were involved in it called Shadow Crew.
	Correct.
	2002 to 2004.
	Right.
	And that was one of the earlier attempts to organize, how would you describe it?
	Is it to organize criminal behavior, quasi-criminal behavior, illegal behavior, criminal?
	Criminal.
	So let's talk about shadow to begin with.
	Tell everybody exactly what that was.
	So Shadow Crew was the first organized cybercrime community.
	If you think about cybercrime, in order for it to succeed, three things have to take place.
	You have to gather data.
	That's the stolen PII. That's credentials.
	That's any type of tool that's used to help commit the crime, which is the second necessity of cybercrime.
	And then the third necessity is caching that crime out.
	And that means either information access, data, or cache.
	All right, so the problem is...
	Okay, so the three were again...
	The three are gathering data, committing the crime, cashing out.
	The issue is a single attacker, criminal, hacktivist, nation state, what have you, a single attacker cannot do all three things.
	So he has to network with other criminals who are good in those areas where he is not.
	So it's like a thief with a fence, for example.
	That's it.
	So you're relying on the internet to To fill that gap where you don't have skill.
	Okay.
	All right?
	So that's what Shadow Crew primarily did, was it allowed criminals to network with each other.
	Shadow Crew is also the first forum or platform of its type that was a criminal marketplace for goods and services.
	So prior to Silk Road or whatever's around today, the dark web as we know it, Shadow Crew was that platform that began all of that.
	Okay, so that was the origin point.
	Right.
	Okay, okay.
	And that was, how old were you?
	I was, so this was 2002, 32 through 35.
	Shadow Crew makes front cover of Forbes, August 2004, headline, Who's Stealing Your Identity?
	October 26, 2004, Secret Service Arrest, 33 people, six countries, six hours.
	Okay, and how exactly were you involved in that?
	Looking at financial cybercrime, the genesis of that, there are three sites.
	There's Counterfeit Library, Shadow Crew, and then Carter Planet.
	I ran both Counterfeit Library and Shadow Crew.
	It starts with Counterfeit Library.
	And the way it starts, geez, I mean...
	I grew up with a background in fraud.
	My mom was basically a major fraudster in Eastern Kentucky.
	So I grew up knowing how to do document forgery, insurance fraud, so faking stolen cars, faking accidents, burning homes for cash, trafficking drugs, illegally strip mining coal.
	That's my basis of everything.
	And your mother was doing this?
	My mom did that.
	Yeah, my mom did that.
	How did she get involved in that?
	That's a good question.
	I would say from her family, because as I grew up, it was really every single member on that side of the family.
	My grandfather, for example, I mean, what he would do is he would buy stolen goods all the time.
	We were in eastern Kentucky.
	He'd sit down on the porch of his house, and people would bring up stolen goods, and they'd try to give him a story on how it was acquired.
	You know, Paul, this is where it comes from.
	He'd stop them.
	Son, I'm not an FBI agent.
	I don't care.
	How much do you want for it?
	So that's where things began.
	But there's a lot of fraud in Eastern Kentucky.
	That's not an excuse.
	There's just a lot of fraud takes place.
	Okay, so there's a community there that engages in fraudulent practices regularly, and your mother was neck deep in this.
	My mom was neck deep.
	When you started to know that and started to get involved in it, how old were you, do you think?
	I was 10 years old when I started Break the Law.
	Okay, let me go a little bit even earlier than that.
	So how would you describe yourself as a child, like earlier than 10?
	Did you have friends?
	No, Dr.
	Peterson, I didn't really have friends.
	I don't really have friends now.
	Okay, and so why didn't you have friends when you were a kid?
	My dad was in the military.
	We moved around a lot.
	My mom and dad, they argued all the time.
	My entire circle were my parents and my sister.
	And your sister?
	Yeah.
	And is your sister younger or older than you?
	My sister's a year younger.
	And do you have a relationship with her?
	I do.
	I do.
	I have a very good relationship.
	Did you have a good relationship with her when you were a kid?
	I did, yeah.
	Honestly, it was like me and her against the world.
	Okay, so you had one person.
	What was your relationship with your mom like?
	My mom was the person who always told us that she gave up her life for us, that she was going to leave and not come back, that we'd find her dead in a ditch someplace.
	She'd go out and, no other word to describe it other than she'd go out and whore around with other men, or my father.
	Once she leaves him, she would come home and tell me that, make up these stories about how the men had abused her, tried to rape her, everything else.
	So I became the guy that the kid who was Scared that she wasn't going to come back.
	I was a kid that if she was going someplace, I would try to go with her to make sure she was going to be okay.
	So she was out there putting herself at risk constantly.
	But also, tell me if I've got this right.
	I want to make sure I've got this right.
	But that she'd also come home and tell you in particular how dangerous the situation was.
	Right, right.
	And so, was she playing the martyr?
	Was she trying to get attention?
	Was she that confused?
	Was she out for adventure?
	What do you think was going on with her?
	So, I view my mom, and I don't have a real relationship with my mom now, but I view her as the person who always tested people.
	If I can do this to you, will you still love me?
	At the end of the day.
	She cheated prolifically on my father.
	Abused him, tried to kill him, tried to poison him.
	And he always kept taking her back.
	Always.
	And I think that's how I view my mom.
	What could she do to you and you would still love her at the end of the day?
	Did you know her mother at all?
	I did.
	What was her mother like?
	So her mom's name was Alverna, and she wasn't like that.
	She was very condescending.
	She was...
	She wouldn't say anything to your face.
	It was always behind your back.
	That type of mentality.
	Now, my grandfather, her father, Paul was very in your face.
	And Paul was...
	And he was the one that was involved with the fencing, essentially.
	He was, yes.
	So he was always in your face.
	He would...
	He would tell you what he thought of you, and it was almost as if he had high blood sugar, and he wouldn't take proper insulin for that a lot of the time, so he would go off the rocker a lot.
	Oh, yeah.
	So that was an additional wild card.
	But this is a man who, not only fencing, he would, if you angered him, he would chase you around the house with a butcher knife, with a hose, He rented apartments downstairs of his house.
	He had converted the downstairs to apartments.
	If he heard any noise down there after 11 o'clock at night, the breakers were upstairs.
	He'd throw the breakers on the renters.
	We lived in the house with him for a while.
	Once he went to bed at night, he slept in a bedroom off from the living room.
	So he would watch the evening news at 11 p.m.
	It would end at 11.30.
	At 11.30, he went to bed.
	You could watch television, but it had to be muted.
	If he heard anything, and he kept his bedroom door open, if he heard anything, he'd get up, he'd throw the breakers at that point in time.
	Me and Denise, when my mom leaves my dad, we were allowed to take a bath once a week.
	And Paul would measure the water.
	You were allowed two inches of water, and that was it.
	So that was exciting.
	What was your emotional state like as a kid, when you were a little kid, say even before 10?
	I don't remember a lot of that.
	I remember just saying, you know, not wanting my mom and dad to argue.
	That makes any sense.
	I remember, I've talked about it.
	Before, but I've got two earliest memories.
	The one that I knew was real, we were in Fort Lewis.
	My father was a captain in the military, and we were driving in the car.
	Me and Denise were in the back seat.
	Mom was in the passenger seat.
	Dad was driving.
	She was screaming at him.
	And finally, she lunges across the car, grabs the steering wheel, and screams at him, are you ready to die, you son of a bitch, and tries to steer him into traffic.
	And he always remained calm.
	He was always, what can I do?
	What can I do?
	How can I help this?
	The other memory I had was, and I didn't know it was real until I was in my 40s, and my mom mentioned something about it, but she had a...
	She had a woman tied up in the front yard of my grandfather's house, and she was beating her.
	And it turned out that she had cheated on my mom's sister with her husband.
	And those are the two earliest memories I've got.
	Oh, yeah.
	Well, those are plenty rough.
	They're a little rough.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	But, you know, I didn't have friends.
	It was always...
	It was always just that circle.
	I don't know if you call it embarrassment or what, man.
	Say that again.
	I don't know if you'd call it embarrassment, not wanting to bring people around.
	Yeah, well, yeah, yeah.
	So you couldn't see how you could bring people over to your house.
	Yeah.
	And how, you said you moved around a lot because your dad was in the military.
	Okay, so you're moving constantly.
	That makes making friends difficult.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And what about your father?
	How often was he around and what sort of relationship did you have with him?
	My dad passed away about six weeks ago.
	Growing up, my dad was always the center of reason, if that makes sense.
	And you never heard him yell or scream.
	And when my mom was doing these things, he would try to reason with her.
	She would bring men home in front of him, and he would cry and beg her not to do it.
	She'd do it anyway.
	She brought this one man home and told him that she was leaving him.
	And he's sitting there crying.
	She leaves for a few weeks, comes back.
	I loved my dad.
	I did.
	What happens is that my mom leaves my dad.
	I was 10.
	My sister, Denise, 9.
	And we moved from Panama City, Florida to Hazard, Kentucky.
	And you asked for that entry into crime.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So mom had been gone for a few days.
	I was a guy that didn't think she was going to come back.
	I always worried about her.
	Denise was the kid at 9, just pissed off all the time.
	And Mom had been gone.
	Denise walks in one day with a pack of pork chops in her hand because we didn't have any food in the house.
	Couldn't go upstairs and eat because they would talk about us all the time.
	You know, you'd go upstairs to try to get something to eat.
	And while you were sitting there eating, they'd say stuff to me.
	Who would?
	My grandmother and my grandfather.
	So, you know, you didn't want to go upstairs a lot.
	You wanted to just stay downstairs in the apartment.
	What would happen if they said things about you?
	Well, nothing.
	I mean, they'd feed you.
	Don't make no mistake.
	They'd feed you, but at the same time they were feeding you, you know, your mom needs to get a job, your mom needs to do this, you know, I can't believe this is going on, all that stuff.
	So I took that kind of personal.
	I think Denise did, too.
	So Denise walks in one day, and she's got a pack of pork chops in her hand.
	I'm like, where'd you get that?
	She's stealing it.
	She shops it, too.
	And she was nine?
	She was nine.
	And we started stealing food.
	The shopping plaza that had the A&P, it's got a Kmart in it.
	Start shoplifting other things.
	Hoodies.
	The way that started, we wanted a sandwich.
	I went in, got a hoodie off the rack, took the tags off of it, and stuffed a loaf of bread down the sleeve of the hoodie, threw it across the shoulder.
	From there, it was video games and jewelry and clothes and all that.
	Mom comes home and sees the stuff that we've stolen.
	Takes her a while to notice what we've stolen, but asks where it came from.
	I tell her we found it.
	She's like, no, you didn't find that.
	Denise, we stole it.
	My mom looks at my sister, show me how you did that.
	And not only does she join us and start running into these little shoplifters, but she calls her mom to join us as well.
	So we used to take these road trips.
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	When you were that young, okay, so the way you describe this starting is that, well, there's certainly an element of necessity in it, right?
	And you're obviously at nine and ten, you're pretty damn little, and your family has plenty of problems, to put it mildly.
	And so, Denise, you said, she starts to shoplift, and then you're doing that next, and relatively quickly.
	Did you have some sense at that point that it was wrong?
	No, sir.
	You didn't?
	No.
	Why not, do you think?
	No.
	I don't think I even cared.
	I mean, I knew that...
	I mean, I knew walking into Kmart that, you know, stealing stuff, that people were watching you, but I... Yeah, you might get caught.
	Yeah, but I didn't care.
	Right, right.
	And do you have any idea why...
	I mean, you can infer from what you've said about your family why you didn't care, but have you thought about that any more in the intervening years?
	I have.
	I spend a lot of time trying to think through that, and the answer is, well...
	We needed it, or at least I'd convince myself that we needed it.
	Yeah, well, there's some evidence for that, by the sounds of things.
	I mean, you were pretty young, and you're pretty desperate, and so you can imagine how your sister might have been tempted into doing that the first time, and well, then this problem is solved, but then, you know, I'm kind of curious, too, at one point, especially once your mum joined in, at some point, I would imagine it got to be both a thrill and a game.
	Oh, it is.
	It is.
	It absolutely is.
	So, you know, the reasoning needed it, wanted the stuff, you know, we couldn't afford an Intellivision or an Atari 2600, so I'll take it.
	Right, right.
	And then it gets quickly to the point where you want to find out what you can get away with, which is also what you described, to some degree, what your mom was toying with all the time, to see what she could get away with, right?
	Why do you think your father, do you have any sense of why your father put up with this?
	Yeah, I do.
	Part of it, I think, is my dad was always scared of the people that he loved leaving.
	Now, that's my perception.
	Whether that's true or not, that's because I do that a lot myself these days.
	But a lot of it is my dad was not a man who had much of a backbone a lot of the time.
	Right, right, right.
	Okay, so from a personality perspective, he would be, your mother would be disagreeable and high in negative emotion, to say the least, and your dad very agreeable.
	Agreeable people have a hard time standing up for themselves and they can easily be taken advantage of, but they would also be the sort of person, they are also the sort of person who's very inclined to take care of other people and who will always see nothing but their good side.
	That's my dad.
	But I want you to understand, too, that my dad, I really do believe that, you know, he wanted to commit the crime, too.
	You know, if mom had an idea to burn a home or fake a stolen car in an accident or something like that, I don't think that he had the backbone to do it himself.
	I think that he absolutely was all for it.
	I mean, he would not hesitate if mom wanted to do something like that.
	Right, so he was involved in those things as well.
	He was.
	He was.
	The only two...
	So how do you think, how do you jive that with the fact that he also, I mean, he had a military career, he rose to the rank of captain, he must have been able to follow rules and to abide by principles.
	Why do you think, what did you think it was about the criminal activity that was attractive to him?
	I think it's getting away with something that no one else is doing.
	I think he had the confines of the military, that type of structured environment.
	Yeah, being told what to do all the time, too.
	And it's easy enough to do that, but at the same time, you want to buck a little bit.
	Okay, so this issue of getting away with it.
	So maybe you can tell me this, and this should be relevant to what we talk about later, when you were a kid.
	So kids, when they're in their teenage years, generally shoplift and break laws to some degree.
	In fact, the clinical evidence shows that, imagine there's three categories of kids.
	There's kids that break rules all the time.
	They don't have a good outcome.
	A lot of them end up in prison.
	Then there's kids who never break any rules.
	They don't have a good outcome either.
	They often end up dependent, depressed, and anxious.
	Right.
	And they're not breaking rules because they're good.
	They're not breaking rules because they're intimidated and afraid.
	Okay.
	And then there's kids in the middle who toy with rule breaking, especially when they're adolescents.
	But then, you know, they usually straighten out by the time they're 16 or 17 and put that behind them.
	So, now, when I was a kid in my little town, I can remember in junior high, shoplifting was all the rage, and if you were good at it, there was certainly a certain amount of status associated with that.
	I had a couple of People I knew, they were older, tough guys, athletic types, big farm kids.
	Their triumph was stealing a canoe, right?
	Shoplifting a canoe, which is like, they didn't really need a canoe, but it was really a brazen act, right?
	What's the most preposterous thing we can possibly get away with?
	And that issue of getting away with it, you know, there's a kind of I think of it as a kind of arrogance and pride that's associated with that.
	And one of the things that is true of the more psychopathic types of criminals is that they generally justify their crime with a rationalization that goes something like, if you're so stupid that I can take advantage of you, then you deserve exactly what you have coming to you, right?
	And it's also a demonstration of...
	I'm wondering what you think about those sorts of motivations in relationship to what your family was doing after your mother put together this little crime network around you two as kids.
	I don't think that the superiority...
	I don't see that in my childhood.
	Okay.
	I don't.
	I absolutely see that once I branch off my own.
	Okay, okay.
	So that comes later.
	Right.
	Right, okay, okay.
	But I wouldn't have thought either that that was what motivated the initial crimes because you already laid out really how that happened.
	You're relatively desperate kids.
	You're relatively isolated.
	You don't exactly have the best moral...
	Plus, you're hungry and eating is a pain and, you know, it sort of happens one step at a time and then your mother facilitates, your father joins in.
	That's perfectly understandable.
	Okay, so now you said your mother leaves your father about when you're 10?
	About 10.
	Is that permanent?
	10, 11, somewhere through there, but yes.
	That's permanent.
	Absolutely.
	And then, so what are her relationships like after that?
	So after that, she was a nurse, an LPN. She was a nurse?
	She was.
	But the thing about my mom was she would get a job long enough to see my dad off to work.
	She'd quit the job and then go out partying.
	That was my mom.
	So when she leaves my dad, we moved back to Kentucky.
	My grandfather, like I said, he lived in a house.
	He had elevated the house and built apartments underneath, so we ended up living in an apartment underneath.
	My mom, yeah, she started out with a job as a nurse, but that lasted a few weeks, at which point there was another lady down the street.
	She hooked up with her, and they would go out partying and basically leave me and Denise at home.
	And did your mother drink a lot?
	She did not.
	She was a Valium user, though.
	Valium.
	Any other drugs?
	Valium pot, probably drink as well, but I absolutely remember the Valium.
	Okay, okay.
	So, big Benzo user, but she would, it was all about partying.
	It was about a host of men that she would come home and she was either dating them and she would always pick the most dangerous man she could possibly find.
	So those were the kind of guys that were around?
	Oh yeah, she liked those types of guys.
	So there was one who had murdered his girlfriend slash wife, whatever that was, and had supposedly had a blackout and didn't remember it, so I got to hear all about that.
	Finally, she meets the man who would become my stepfather, and Jimmy was his name.
	And he was not a bad guy.
	He was an alcoholic, but he worked hard every single day.
	I don't know what to tell you.
	The way they met, to hear my mom tell it, what had happened was she went to walk into a nightclub.
	He was standing outside.
	He looks at her and says, hey, why don't we go make some babies?
	And she looks at him and says, well, come on.
	And that was the way they met, and they had a relationship from that point.
	You asked about my child.
	It's funny in some ways, a meeting like that, that they'd actually want to have a relationship, because it's a hell of a thing, right?
	It's so contradictory, is that you establish a sexual relationship really at the drop of a hat.
	And yet, even then, there's a pull towards something like an actual relationship.
	And Jimmy, from what you're telling me, it sounds like Jimmy wasn't as bad as some of the guys that your mom dragged home.
	I would agree.
	Yeah, and how old were you?
	Did she marry him, or did they just live together?
	She married him while I was in juvenile detention.
	Did she divorce your father?
	She did.
	Okay, and how old were you when she married Jimmy?
	Fifteen.
	Fifteen, and that's you were in a juvenile detention center?
	I was.
	Okay, so let's go through the progression of your criminal career.
	You start out with shoplifting.
	I did.
	And then that expands under the tutelage, really, and the participation of your mother and your father and your grandmother and your sister.
	Anyone else involved in that?
	I mean, not really.
	Like Paul, he did a lot of fencing.
	Paul was just a little crazy, violently crazy at times.
	And Paul was?
	My grandfather.
	Paul was your grandfather.
	But it was my mom, my sister.
	I hesitate to say her criminal experience because other than shoplifting, she doesn't do anything else.
	I see.
	I see.
	So she didn't continue to?
	She did not.
	Was there a point in her life when she quit chalk lifting as well?
	Yeah.
	How old was she when she?
	This would have been 12 or 13.
	Oh, okay.
	So she quit early.
	And what happened was we took this road trip to Bristol, Tennessee.
	There was a mall called the Fort Henry Mall.
	And they would go to J.C. Penney's to sell clothes and jewelry.
	I would always go to the bookstore and steal books.
	So I was in the bookstore, B. Dalton Bookstore, stealing books.
	Why were you stealing books?
	I like to read a lot.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So I was stealing books.
	It's like a virtuous cry.
	I know, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So I was stealing books, and I was supposed to meet them back at the vehicle as they were coming out of J.C. Penney's.
	So I go back to the vehicle.
	Nobody's there.
	I wait about 30 minutes, walk into J.C. Penney's.
	There's two guards outside, and I literally hear my name come over their walkie-talkies for Brett Johnson.
	I'm like, that's me.
	So go up, and they had gotten caught at that point.
	So that ended their shoplifting experience, and that ended Denise's little foray into criminal activity, too.
	So why do you think she quit?
	I don't think she ever wanted to do it.
	I think Denise actually had that moral compass at that point.
	I see.
	So you think she was primarily driven to it by necessity.
	Yeah.
	And then your mother was participating, and so it got extended.
	And then when the hammer came down, that was enough.
	And so, okay, well, we'll get back to Denise later.
	Okay, so now you, on the other hand, you're shoplifting.
	And so how are you reacting to doing it?
	Now, you saw your mom and your sister get caught.
	Why didn't that stop you?
	Well, because I was getting the stuff that I wanted.
	Okay.
	We couldn't afford the video games or the clothes, or later on I was doing the dine and dash routine at restaurants and stuff like that.
	We couldn't afford that.
	So it became this thing of, okay, if I can't afford it, I'll take it.
	Right, right, right.
	But, and even at this point, 12, 13, do you have other guys around you at that point, other friends, or not then either?
	Not really.
	So, in our neighborhood, there were four boys.
	There was me, my cousin, two kids that lived down the street, and we all basically, you know, we all were in the mess, as that goes to speak.
	But, you know, we grew up in that environment, and all of us were...
	Getting in some sort of trouble.
	Right, but you also don't...
	It doesn't seem also that you're inclined to characterize them as friends.
	That's true.
	I'm not.
	Okay, okay.
	And you said that's even true now, eh?
	Yeah, I don't...
	When I speak, I do a lot of speaking.
	And when I speak, I'm...
	I tell people I never had friends while I was a criminal.
	I had associates because you don't have friends.
	I lie to everybody.
	Yeah, right.
	Yes, that's an unstable basis for friendship.
	Yeah, I don't think you can have friends when you're lying to people.
	No, it's tough.
	These days, I don't have friends.
	I've got my wife, next-door neighbors, a few people like that.
	But I'm not the guy that...
	It has what I think would be considered real friendships.
	Yeah, well, it's a hard thing to establish later in life if you don't have a pattern of doing that from probably from about the age of three, to tell you the truth.
	Like, there are boys I'm not sure.
	Were you an aggressive kid?
	No.
	Okay, okay.
	So, one of the typical patterns for long-term criminality is there's a small minority of boys, about 5%, who are quite aggressive by temperament at age two.
	They kick, hit, steal, and bite.
	And so, if you put them with other two-year-olds, you know, they're aggressive.
	Now, two-year-olds tend to be egocentric anyways, but these two-year-olds are egocentric and aggressive.
	Most of those boys are socialized by the age of four.
	And so then, and what that means is they start to develop friendships that are somewhat reciprocal at about the age of three, and then that expands, right?
	And there are often boys who are disciplined appropriately, often by fathers at home, right?
	And then they get to be socialized well enough so they can have friends, and then they have friends.
	And instead of being...
	Aggressive and tilting in the exploitative direction like they did when they were two.
	They learned to be, you know, competitive within the confines of sports and so forth.
	They sublimated into some other...
	Yeah, yeah.
	But if they don't manage that by the time they're four, they never manage it.
	It's very hard to be socialized into a friendship network if you don't accomplish it between the ages of two and four.
	Yeah, it seems to lay down the pattern for it or something like that.
	Establish the expectations.
	We don't exactly understand it that well.
	Okay, so between 10 and 15, are you still in school?
	Are you going to school with any degree of regularity?
	How are you doing at school?
	I was...
	I was extremely bright in school, but bored a lot, so would miss a lot of school, would typically not do a lot of the work, thought that I knew more than the teachers a lot of the time, and did not hesitate sometimes to tell them that.
	So that was my school experience.
	How far did you get in school?
	Halfway through bachelor's.
	Oh, okay.
	So you went off to college or university?
	I did.
	And what did you take in college?
	English Lit and Theater.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So now, as your shoplifting expands, what other activities are you getting involved in on the shadow side of the law?
	Like, are you drinking?
	Are you smoking?
	Were you ever a drug user when you were young?
	No, I didn't start drinking until I was 34.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Really?
	Okay, so that's strange.
	So how in the world did you manage to skirt the, more than skirt the frontiers of shoplifting and other sorts of criminal behavior when you're a teenager?
	Especially with a mother who's partying all the time, and that sort of influence around you.
	Why in the world weren't you attracted to alcohol and drug use?
	I didn't want to be like my mom.
	Okay, but that's very specific because you were engaging in criminal activity with it.
	But there was something about the drug world that really you weren't happy about.
	Okay, so what is it exactly that you decided you weren't going to participate in?
	I don't want to lose control under some sort of substance.
	I want to be in control myself.
	I see.
	I see.
	And so you saw her lose control in ways that were, what do you say, were they frightening?
	Were they otherwise off-putting?
	What was it about the influence of drugs on her that you particularly objected to and didn't want to replicate?
	So I associate my mom's drug use with...
	With that verbal, mental, physical abuse that she did to everyone.
	I associate her wantonness with other men with that drug use.
	The way that she treated my father, the way she tried to kill my father sometimes.
	I associated all that with that.
	I never had kids.
	I didn't start drinking until I was 34.
	I have never used drugs.
	All because of that.
	Do I think I missed out sometimes?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I think I missed out sometimes.
	Yeah, but it sounds like you missed out on an awful lot of trouble.
	Yeah.
	Mm-hmm.
	But yeah, 34, when my wife leaves, my first wife, when she leaves me, I started drinking at that point.
	Basically, it was like, screw it, why not?
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	Right, right, right, right, right.
	Okay, so...
	Let's go through from 10 to 15.
	You ended up in juvenile detention.
	Okay, so how did that progress?
	Now, you finished school, and well enough so that you could go to university.
	Correct.
	Okay, so we'll deal with that on a different track.
	So how is it that your shoplifting expands, and into what other criminal endeavors, and how is it that you get brought to the attention of the law?
	So I don't associate that juvenile stuff with the shoplifting stuff.
	Oh, okay.
	For me, I put it on two different tracks.
	All right.
	And the way that I associate that, when I was, geez, I don't know, seven, eight years old, I would catch my mom and dad, I would catch them gone, and I would urinate in the house, on the carpet, down the drains, in the sink, something like that, all right?
	I don't know if it's correct or not.
	I didn't talk about that until I was about 46.
	I got on the stage.
	So me with therapy, I do a lot of my therapy in front of a crowd.
	Because that's the only place I feel like I can be safe doing that, as weird as that is.
	But I started talking about it.
	I had a woman come up to me afterwards that said that she used to work with abused children.
	And she was like, that's a control mechanism.
	That's the only control you had left was that.
	I was like, okay, fair enough.
	But what happens is my mom leaves my dad.
	I was under the impression that I was going to be able to go and live with my dad.
	So one day I call my dad up and he tells me that not only am I not going to live with him, but he's gotten married.
	I didn't know who he had married or anything else like that.
	How long after your mother left your father did you find out this?
	Two years.
	Two years?
	Two or three years.
	Had you seen your father in that intervening time?
	I had not.
	I didn't have a conversation with my dad for about 20 years.
	I see.
	So your mom left your dad at 10 and he just disappeared in your life.
	Outside out of mine.
	Right.
	But you were hoping, there was a part of you that was hoping that he wanted you to go live with him and that's what you wanted.
	Yeah, I would call him every now and then.
	You know, I would call him like every two weeks.
	I'd have to leave the house where he'd live and that same Kmart I was shoplifting from, they had a pay phone outside.
	I'd go out there and call the man and talk to him.
	And, uh, thought that, excuse me, thought that I was going to live with him.
	So you were talking to him on the phone?
	Yeah.
	Okay, okay.
	So you had that much contact.
	And did he know that you assumed that you were going to live with him?
	He did.
	He did.
	But he didn't tell you that that wasn't...
	Do you think maybe he was hoping that that would happen?
	Or was he unwilling to dash your hopes?
	Why do you think that he wasn't letting you know what the lay of the land was?
	So, I think there's a few reasons for that.
	I think that it's lack of backbone.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I think that, you know, after I talked to him, after we kind of made amends and everything, I found out that he didn't have anything.
	He was living in an apartment.
	He had to walk back and forth from work.
	He had a dog he couldn't afford to keep.
	He gave his damn dog away.
	So, he didn't have anything.
	And I don't think he wanted to tell his son that...
	That he couldn't?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Right, yeah, well, you know, things often have multiple causes.
	Yeah.
	Right, right, right.
	So what happens is, is he tells me that.
	The neighborhood that I lived in, there was a hospital out at the end of the street.
	I walk into the hospital, get an elevator.
	Woman walks in, and I assault her.
	At that point in time, beat the hell out of her.
	Hmm.
	I get arrested for that.
	I was 15.
	I get arrested for that.
	That's why I was in juvenile detention.
	I see.
	So that's why that's separate from the other...
	Yes.
	Right.
	And so...
	Now, okay, so...
	Look, I don't want to poke and prod in places that are going to be too distressing.
	It's fine.
	It's fine.
	Okay, okay.
	So my sense of that is that you're...
	What would you say?
	Betrayed, outraged, and hurt beyond belief at that point, right?
	You're living with your mother.
	That's not going very well for all the reasons you laid out.
	You're nursing this fantasy that you're going to go live with your father and things are going to be all right.
	And that vanishes.
	And so now you're...
	But the question is, why do you think that translated into the action you took in the hospital?
	She looked a lot like my mom.
	I see.
	I see.
	Why did you go into the hospital, do you think?
	We used to, as kids, we didn't have any money.
	We used to go up there and hop the elevators, right up and down.
	Oh, I see.
	So that was just something you were in there doing for fun.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so you didn't go into the hospital with any, like, aggressive intent in mind.
	No.
	And so you saw this woman?
	What happened exactly?
	I guess all the...
	I just...
	Through the, she walks in, I was so pissed off that I just started beating.
	And somewhere through the line, you know, they had that push button where you throw the emergency stop.
	And so this was in the elevator?
	In the elevator.
	In the elevator.
	So were you in the elevator and she got on?
	I was in the elevator, she gets on.
	I see, I see.
	And there was just the two of you?
	Just the two of us.
	Uh-huh.
	Okay, okay, okay.
	So emergency stop gets hit.
	She starts screaming.
	And I just want her to stop screaming.
	So I don't know how to stop that other than just hitting.
	So hit her until she stops screaming.
	Get up.
	And I remember trying to climb the damn wall of the elevator to try to get out of the emergency exit.
	I was, you know, So was the elevator stopped at this point because the emergency was hit?
	So I don't know how long I was in there, but I ended up starting the elevator back, doors open, there's a crowd outside, and this guy grabs me out, one of the nurses' attendants grabs me by the arm, and I ended up knocking the hell out of him.
	Hmm.
	How big were you?
	I was a big kid.
	You were a big kid, okay.
	15, I was a big kid.
	I see, I see.
	I'll give you an idea of size.
	When I was in grade school, I started varsity football.
	So, my third or fourth grade, I played varsity.
	I took off on the run, made it back to the house, hid the clothes that had blood on them.
	About an hour and a half later, the Kentucky State Police, they pull up, and I was sitting on the porch, and they knew immediately.
	I mean, they knew where to go, because I was known in the neighborhood.
	They take me in, and I was I think I was six months.
	I said juvenile detention.
	They didn't have juvenile detention.
	So I was six months in a cell, just away from the adults.
	That's the end of the county.
	The judge at the end, we went to trial.
	I told the judge, yeah, I assaulted her.
	The judge found me guilty and sentenced me to a psychological evaluation.
	Went to the evaluation in Louisville, Kentucky.
	I was at the hospital there for about six weeks.
	Cut me loose.
	I don't know what the prognosis was, but they wanted me to have counseling after that, of course.
	There was never any counseling.
	There wasn't?
	There wasn't.
	Well, why not?
	My mom didn't think I needed it.
	And it wasn't mandatory?
	It was not.
	Okay, okay.
	Well, that seems like a mistake.
	It does seem like a mistake.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Do you know what happened to the woman?
	Yeah, she was in the hospital for, I think, four or five days.
	She testified at trial as well.
	And we didn't have a jury, it was just judge, just signing everything.
	And from there, it was a very small town.
	And she used to, she knew where I lived and everything, she used to drive by the house.
	So she was no longer afraid of you at that point, do you think?
	Doctor, I don't know what that was.
	But if I was out someplace, I guess it was just to show her to herself that she wasn't scared.
	But she would walk up to me and just stand in front of me and look at me, not say anything.
	And those types of episodes were kind of common like that.
	Hmm.
	And what happened, what sort of emotional reaction did you have when she did that?
	I would run.
	You would run?
	Yeah.
	Try to get away and run.
	Now, at that point, were you remorseful for what had happened in the hospital?
	Oh, yeah.
	You were?
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Did you ever apologize to her?
	I apologized at court.
	I was, uh...
	I never said anything to her after that.
	But in court?
	In court.
	And that's one of the regrets I have.
	I wish I would have been able to apologize.
	Right.
	What would you have said?
	I'm sorry.
	Alright, so you were in the juvenile, in the cell for about six months, or how long did they keep you in there?
	Six months.
	Okay, and what did that, what was the consequence of that for you, of the assault, the trial, and then the incarceration?
	How did that change you?
	Well, I became a pariah.
	In a small county, so I became a parade.
	Right, because people knew who you were.
	Yeah, everyone knew who I was.
	So when I come back out, the first high school I try to go to, the kids prevent me from coming.
	They actually line up outside at the high school when I come here.
	The second high school, the principal, my mom takes me in there.
	Same county?
	Same county.
	Second high school, the principal tells my mom that my sister is allowed, but I'm not.
	And I looked at my mom.
	I was like, hey, let me go to this place called Dilscombs.
	It was way out in the county.
	And she wanted to fight it.
	And I was like, no, I don't want to fight.
	I just want to...
	Let me just go there.
	So she takes me there, and they allow me there.
	And...
	I was a junior at that point.
	And they were, it was like a home to me.
	Why'd they allow you, do you think?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	The principle was open arms.
	Well, and you're somewhat distant too, right?
	So there's a bit of an arm's length relationship there.
	So that was a good place for you.
	It was.
	I excelled there.
	Absolutely excelled.
	So I became head of the academic team, head of the drama department, head of my trial.
	I was one of the top academic students in the state.
	I ended up winning for theater competition.
	I won best actor and actress in 89 for the state.
	I did extremely well.
	But what happens is, when I get there, And I say this pretty consistently when I'm talking to people.
	That's the first real person that I met that was a good person.
	This woman named Carol Combs was an English teacher.
	I walk in, and the way she tells it, she says, I heard this voice, and I wanted you on stage.
	And she looks at me, and she's like, hey, have you ever been on stage?
	And I was like, well, I'd like to be on, you know, academic team, quick recall type stuff.
	Yeah.
	The deal was, if I did theater for her, that she would let me be in academics, and I ended up heading both of those.
	So what do you think it was about you that she was positively predisposed to?
	Guess.
	I think she saw somebody that was...
	that was broken and didn't need to be.
	And you think she saw that?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, she...
	We'd get out of school.
	There was an convenience store down at the bottom of the hill.
	And I would have to wait there.
	Four or five hours before my mom would come and get me.
	So Carol started to see that.
	How far away was your mom at that time?
	How far away did you live?
	10, 15 miles.
	Okay, so there was no reason for a four or five hour delay.
	No, there wasn't.
	And Carol started to see that after a few weeks.
	So she started to pick me up, take me to the house.
	So she became this like surrogate mother to me.
	You know, and...
	Most of my time for that two years was spent with her, you know?
	So I did really well.
	And then not.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Well, that's okay.
	So that's curious, because what happens is that you get a second chance.
	who actually opens genuine doors for you, who encourages you.
	She notices things about you that you can do that are genuine, right?
	She opens some doors for you and you actually start to have some success.
	And obviously, it seems to me that you were pretty happy about that.
	Oh, yeah.
	Okay, so then, now you could be on a good track, right?
	Hypothetically, because you also said you were winning awards, and you also indicated that you were accepted.
	Where did you go to college or university?
	University of Kentucky.
	Okay, okay.
	So you're going to a decent university, and you're taking something, apparently, that you'd like to take.
	You said English and drama?
	Right.
	And you would steal books to read them, and you obviously had some academic inclination and some dramatic talent.
	So, you know, in some ways, it looks like, well, you could have a life.
	Right.
	Okay, so you graduate from high school.
	So what goes wrong?
	Well, what goes wrong is...
	I got my first girlfriend.
	So I was 19 when I met Christy and fell over, head over the hills with a girlfriend.
	You know, finally had a girlfriend.
	High school?
	High school.
	Well, I was out of high school and a freshman.
	I see, I see.
	So you're at the University of Kentucky?
	Right, right.
	Well, I'm at a community college first, about to transfer out.
	I see.
	How long were you at the community college?
	A year and a half, two years.
	And how was that for you?
	It was okay.
	It was not as great as the high school experience, but it was okay.
	Okay, okay.
	So, and you get a girlfriend?
	Get a girlfriend, and now coming out of high school, so coming out of high school, Why no girlfriend before that?
	You're doing alright at school.
	You're doing alright at the drama side.
	Hypothetically, you might have been able to be attractive to a girl.
	Why not before that, do you think?
	I think it was the history of the elevator.
	I think it was my view of not deserving a girlfriend because of that.
	And just scared to ask.
	Yeah, well, fair enough.
	Fair enough.
	So what happens is, coming out of high school, I had some scholarships for drama, debate, things like that.
	Turned those down because I had been talking to this girl, so I wanted to stick around.
	I see.
	So you'd be talking to her at the end of high school?
	Right, right there in high school.
	Okay, so you don't take full advantage of the scholarships and so forth that are offered because you now have the interest in this girl.
	Now, the one I did take interest in, I started community college.
	We were doing a show called House Divided.
	It was written by the head of San Jose State's theater department.
	And he flies in.
	The professor at the community college, he knew him.
	So he flies in to see the production and sees me on stage.
	And he's like, hey, full ride scholarship.
	Do you want to take that?
	I was like, yeah, I want to take that.
	And that was for the University of Kentucky?
	No, that was for San Jose State.
	That was for San Jose State.
	Oh, they were going to give you a full scholarship?
	Full ride.
	Wow, wow.
	I was like, absolutely, we'll take that.
	He's like, I'll be back in a few weeks, we'll talk about it.
	I was like, okay.
	He leaves, comes back a few weeks later, flies in.
	I'm outside shooting basketball with some of the boys in the neighborhood, and he pulls up.
	I walk up to his car and I'm like, I'll walk in and introduce you.
	He's like, I got it.
	He walks into the house.
	He's in there about 15 minutes, walks out, quiet as a sheep, leaves.
	Scholarship dies.
	Never hear from him again.
	And a few weeks later, I find out what had happened was, he gets in there, my mom pulls a knife on him, threatens to kill him.
	You're not going to steal my son from me.
	And he took that to heart.
	Oh, oh, wow.
	And when that happened, I kind of took that to heart, too.
	Okay, so what does that mean, that you took that to heart?
	I... Is it okay to cuss?
	Hey man, have that.
	I was like, you know, I'm not leaving this place, I'll just stay here.
	I see.
	So that's sort of a reaction that's...
	Is that the same reaction just out of curiosity that happened to you in the elevator?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so...
	Yeah, because that's an emergence of something like, and you can understand it, right?
	Because, well, obviously, what happened with your father, that was very frustrating and definitely something that could engender both resentment and the desire for revenge.
	Right.
	Okay, so now you've been working pretty hard at getting your act together.
	You have this full scholarship that's on the table, and your mother basically stabs you in the heart.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And so the response you had, which was, fuck it, that's an understandable response.
	Have you been able to determine in the intervening years what you should have done instead?
	Yeah.
	Okay, what should have you done?
	I should have called this director up and said, hey, you know, Edward, I'm coming.
	Let's do this.
	Don't worry about that.
	I apologize about my mom.
	I want to take this opportunity.
	That's what I should have done, but I didn't.
	Let me ask you this question.
	Are you at peace with the mindless screen time you spend on your phone every day?
	Are you gaining that higher quality of life you know you desire?
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	Why not, do you think?
	I mean, that response you had, that's a response of anger, right?
	And it's also, it's a response that basically says something like, instead of moving forward, I'm going to burn things to the ground.
	It might be me, it might be, well, God only knows what you're going to burn to the ground.
	But it's so interesting, eh?
	Because you had things set up.
	And I mean, your mother definitely did her part to trip you up, no doubt about that.
	But Why do you think that you succumb to the temptation of saying to hell with it instead of taking this other pathway?
	Any idea?
	Yeah, it's a scary prospect, right?
	I'm comfortable where I am, committing crime and everything else, but that fear of the unknown, of actually doing...
	A good thing of taking a step into something I've never done before.
	Yeah, I've acted.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	But going off into some lost land out in California someplace where you don't know if you're going to succeed.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, and you would have had to go alone, too.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You know, and that is a daunting proposition.
	But, you know, on the other hand, you know, you could have imagined thinking, oh my God, I get to leave.
	Thank God, it's what I've been praying for forever.
	I've been, you know...
	Maybe part of that too is like your situation in many ways was pretty desperate and you did clamber your way out of it.
	But you could also imagine conceivably that you were concerned that you would take the stellar opportunity and it would turn out to be, you know, to dissolve into dust and to burn to the ground.
	And so that's people, I know people whose hopes have been dashed repeatedly.
	They start to get afraid of hope itself.
	Right.
	You know, because they've put themselves on the line.
	They've put themselves on the line and been throttled as a consequence of it.
	At some point, it's easy to say, I'll never do that again.
	It's not helpful, though, because the alternative is, well, let's find out what the alternative is.
	Okay, so you said, to hell with it.
	All right, so now you're not going off on scholarship.
	All right, so what happens?
	Well, what happens then is I dive kind of deep into...
	Some criminal activity.
	I was...
	And right away?
	No.
	Okay, were you engaging in criminal activity when you were going to the high school where you were doing well?
	No, I wasn't.
	I wasn't.
	Okay, so you'd put that on the back burner at all?
	Were you?
	No, no.
	Those two years, I was busy with theater, with dramatics.
	I would go to school at 8 o'clock in the morning every single day.
	I'd go to school every day, and I wouldn't come home sometimes until 8 or 9 at night.
	I didn't have time to do it.
	Okay, okay, okay.
	So the other thing we can draw from that is the conclusion that...
	You had something better to do.
	I did.
	Right, right.
	Well, you know, one of the things that has to happen for people to say, stop drinking.
	Say, I have to find something better to do.
	You can't just stop drinking.
	Right.
	Or any form of misbehavior.
	You actually have to have something better to do.
	And you had something better to do at the school.
	And then you had an offer, the scholarship offer, that would have given you something better to do, but you didn't take it.
	Now, your mother put that...
	It's a funny thing, you know, because you might ask yourself, like, did she put a...
	Did she put a knife in your heart or a stumbling block in your path that you then stumbled over?
	Right?
	Because obviously, like, she bears responsibility for pulling a knife on the person who was offering you this great gift.
	But, you know, the mystery there, too, is why didn't you...
	Christ, you could have gone to San Jose, like, to the guy's office and said, look, you know, I get it.
	You're terrified.
	I'll do anything to come here, right?
	I'll put my mother behind me.
	She's not a real danger.
	You know, give me a shot for four months and see how it goes.
	Right.
	You know, I mean, that would have been a sophisticated response, and you would have had to do it alone, and so it's unlikely, but you could also see that it wouldn't have been impossible, right?
	And so, you had this opportunity instead.
	All right, you've got to be angry at this point, I would think, you know?
	Oh, yeah.
	Okay, okay, yeah, right, right, right.
	And did you ever have it out with your mother about this?
	I did, but that type of having it out is, well, it was basically...
	Yelling.
	I don't yell, but, you know, this, hey, angry discussion, and then, you know, two weeks later, everything is kind of okay.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, well, I mean, you'd seen repeated patterns of misbehavior characterizing her life, and I can't imagine that you thought that you would think that, you know, it would be possible really to sort something like that out so there would actually be change.
	Okay, so now...
	Now you lack the future you could have had, but you also have an excuse because something's been taken away from you.
	Right, so now you have a justification for, okay, so now what starts to happen?
	First thing I do is steal someone's identity I used to go to school with.
	No, I actually, I walked into the DMV, found out what it took to get a replacement driver's license, noticed the way that they kept records at the DMV, then proceeded to get enough documents to convince them that I was him.
	Geez, that's elaborate.
	Okay, how do you come up with that idea?
	That's a good question.
	That's an elaborate plan, essentially.
	Yeah.
	So what happens is, I was actually getting my replacement driver's license.
	Walked in there and noticed that the way they kept records on the DMV, it was all paper at that point in time.
	And I was like, well, hell, they're not even putting pictures to the driver's license.
	So...
	I was wanting, of all things, I was wanting a Sega Genesis at that point in time and didn't have one.
	And at the same time, I was like, well, you know, I could probably set up a bank account and start running checks if I had somebody else's ID as well, all right?
	Okay, okay.
	So you have a goal in mind.
	You want this video game.
	Now you're plotting ways that you could...
	How to do it.
	How to do it.
	So I ended up...
	So why not, like, get a job?
	Because obviously you've got enough discipline at this point to work, at least in principle, because you've been working at school.
	Is it because you're angry?
	Why not?
	Later on, I ended up getting a job.
	I was a manager at a Domino's Pizza for a while.
	Okay.
	But I broke the law from inside the pizza place, too.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So again, was it fundamentally your anger?
	What's motivating you at this point?
	The ability to do it.
	Okay.
	So is that when that pride in being able to do it?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so it's not that I needed money.
	I didn't.
	When I was working at Domino's, I did all right as a musician.
	Yeah, yeah.
	East Trinketuggy, no one has a lot of money anyway, so everyone's in the same boat as it is.
	Right, right.
	So even if you have a reasonable stream of income this small, you're doing okay, comparatively.
	Yeah, you're doing okay.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Because most people there aren't working.
	Right, right, right.
	Most are just making ends meet.
	Me, it was...
	I think it boils down to, so when my mom meets my stepdad, Jimmy, and I actually said this to my sister at the time, we ended up, he went broke, and we ended up living in a trailer, 40-foot business trailer for about 18 months.
	And I told my sister, I was like, I'll never live like this again.
	And so at that point, You know, when I started working at Domino's, it was always like a puzzle to me.
	How can I get around these systems?
	So, at that point, it was like, you know, you're getting all these orders and I'm like, well, I wonder if I could pocket some money and nobody know about it.
	Well, it turns out you can.
	So it was like, how much can you steal?
	Well, I can steal another $400 or $500 a week.
	Maybe more than that.
	And it keeps going to that point.
	Does anyone want to find out about it?
	Right.
	Okay, so there's a materialist motivation to some degree.
	You don't want to live in that kind of poverty and that humiliation.
	And ego.
	And ego.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, ego in what way?
	I'm better at it than anybody else.
	I can do it and get away with it.
	I'm better.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, so that's when that starts to come up.
	Right, right.
	Well, the thing is, too, you already knew that you were smart.
	Right.
	And you had been rewarded for that at school, and you were successful.
	So you had reason to think that you could probably get away with it.
	Right.
	Right, right.
	And that pops up a lot in my history.
	Yeah.
	Yes, I imagine.
	I imagine.
	Okay, so that's where it has its real genesis.
	Right.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So, still this kid's identity turns out.
	So, what happens is I leave that day, call the DMV, hey, what do I need to do to get a replacement driver's license?
	I don't have any of these identity documents.
	And they tell me, well, you can get some school records and you'll need to go to the Social Security Administration and get an affidavit of identity printed out by them, things like that.
	So, I started at the school.
	The Board of Education, I walked in, told them I was this guy, and got his school records.
	From there, that allowed me to...
	And they didn't ask for ID. They did not.
	I see.
	As long as I had a social, that was fine.
	So I ended up...
	Back then, you didn't have caller ID. That was widely distributed.
	So I ended up calling, acting like the Social Security Administration, telling them, hey...
	You know, we're the Social Security Administration.
	We've got some sort of anomaly with your Social Security number.
	Could you verify your number with us?
	He fell for that, gave me the social.
	That allowed me to walk into the...
	I see, I see, I see.
	Now you're starting to be able to build an identity outside the system, right?
	That's a big deal.
	That's a big threshold to cross.
	And that opens up the possibility of doing that, like, at a large scale, right away.
	Exactly.
	Right.
	And you also have the motivation.
	You said ego.
	You also had the motivation...
	What, to, well, to not live in poverty and to get some of the things that you wanted, but, and also that, what would you say, the dawning conviction that you were smart enough to get away with it?
	Right.
	Okay, okay, all right.
	So that's how that starts to develop.
	All right, so.
	So get the driver's license, set up a couple bank accounts, get the checks in from the bank accounts.
	Use that to do cold checks at every single Walmart that I could find in that Radius and Easter.
	Okay, define that, cold checks.
	What are you doing exactly?
	You go in and you buy goods, write a bad check for it, and walk out with the product.
	Okay, and why would they accept the check?
	Because back then they used to.
	So they wouldn't be able to verify how much money was in the account against the check.
	So they'd take your word for it.
	Right, because most of the time that would work and they could make a sale.
	As long as the check didn't exceed a certain amount, they would not verify funds on the account.
	So I think it was like $250, $300, something like that.
	Oh yeah, okay, alright.
	So enough to get going.
	Right.
	So did that, and come to find out what had happened was, is when I go in to get the driver's license...
	At that point, they had changed security.
	So at that point, they take your snapshot and they attach it to the file that has the DL information on it physically.
	So that lasted and that did not stop me.
	I just held with it.
	Maybe I'll get away with it and start running the checks.
	They bring the kid in.
	Of course, they get a warrant for the kid.
	Go to serve the warrant.
	The kid's like, that's not me.
	That's Brett Johnson.
	Oh, the picture!
	Yeah.
	I see, I see.
	So they get a warrant on me, come down, my mom finds out about it, she gets the money up to pay off all the checks, and I ended up on probation at that point.
	So no real consequence for that action.
	And that's a lot of my history, too, is I was committing a lot of crime and no real consequence, and each time would ratchet it up another notch.
	Alright, so what do you think should have happened to you at that point that would have been best for you?
	You know, because really what you're telling me, I believe, is that in retrospect, the play in the system, the mercy that the system showed you even...
	Was not in your best interest?
	No.
	Okay.
	So what do you think should have happened that time?
	Now, the first time, with the assault, you got nailed.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And then, well, actually, your life, in some ways, straightened out after that for a reasonable amount of time.
	Okay, this time you get caught, but you get a slap on the wrist.
	Right.
	And so...
	You don't think, oh my god, I was fortunate, I should straighten the hell out.
	What do you think instead?
	I got away with it.
	You got away with it.
	There's no consequence.
	Right, so even though I got caught, I didn't want to get caught, I didn't think I'd get caught, but even though I did get caught, it didn't make any difference.
	Right, right.
	Right, and you didn't care.
	No, I didn't.
	I didn't.
	I mean, I didn't.
	That was my history.
	I did not care about victims, did not care who I was hurting, justified it, and believed the justifications that I threw out.
	I'm doing it for my wife, for my stripper girlfriend, for my sister.
	I believed that crap.
	That I threw out there, too.
	Right, so, but you needed those extra reasons to justify what you're doing, the extra reasons being that you were, that there were other people that you were serving?
	Yeah, I don't think so.
	You don't think so?
	I think I used those, I did believe those justifications, but I don't think I needed them in order to go out and do that.
	Now, what's kind of interesting with me, and I think about that a lot, when I was from the girlfriend home, if I didn't have a girlfriend in my life, I was not doing fraud.
	But once I had a girlfriend in that relationship, oh yeah, as much as I possibly could at that point.
	So there was absolutely that aspect.
	And was that an ego status thing as well, do you think?
	It was with my dad.
	And that's why I hearkened back to him when I told you that he was the guy that was scared of the people that he loved leaving him.
	I am the guy that does not want to be apart from That romantic relationship.
	If I have a woman...
	Okay, so why was the fraud necessary then?
	Because I could stay at the house and do it and set my own hours.
	Okay, so what did that mean?
	That you could be with the person more often?
	Do you keep an eye on them?
	I don't have to work a 9-to-5 or an 8-to-4 job or anything else like that.
	I can sit at the house, kind of make my own hours, and I'm there around you all the time.
	And is that what...
	Now, why did you want to be around the person that you were in love with all the time?
	Was it to keep an eye on them, or was it because you...
	Why was it exactly?
	For they might leave.
	You didn't want them to leave.
	Yeah.
	So it was actually a consequence of the relationship, and the value of the relationship.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So you could make a...
	Okay, so this is interesting, though.
	So you could make a bond with the person that you were in love with.
	You think that was a genuine bond.
	Did you treat...
	So, you'll have to tell me.
	When I was in prison, and I take this to heart, I was told that if you have an addiction, that you cannot love anything else but that addiction.
	Now, I view my criminal activity, especially cybercrime, as an addiction.
	Now, I like to say that I love my first wife.
	I like to say that I love this woman named Elizabeth that was a stripper.
	I like to say that.
	But the truth of the matter was is I put crime first.
	Right, but it's complicated because you said you didn't engage in the fraudulent activity except when you had a girlfriend.
	Right.
	Right, so, well, you know, Unfortunately, people are complicated, right?
	And you can have more than more motivation at the same time.
	I mean, I guess you'd ask yourself in a push, if push came to shove situation, so I guess, you know, one of the ways of sorting that out would be if you were in a situation where it was lose your girlfriend And or stop committing crime.
	If you pick the option that left you continuing criminal activity, then obviously you love that more, almost by definition.
	And so were you ever in situations like that?
	Oh, yeah.
	So my first wife, I mean, Susan, it took her two to three years to find out that I was this criminal.
	I lied to her every single day.
	And once she finds out, that's when I start the routine of, I'm going to stop, I will stop, just a little while longer, I have stopped.
	And then finally it got to the point that, you like spending the money that's coming in, don't you?
	And she leaves at that point.
	You tell her that?
	Yeah, I used to tell her that.
	Right, right.
	So you're making her complicit in some ways, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And so, okay, at that point, what's justifying the continued criminal activity?
	Is it still the ego, the pride, the adventure?
	Like, what the hell exactly is the thrill of it?
	So, at that point, that comes into this whole thing, that first question that you asked about the internet, all right?
	Yeah.
	So, at that point, it's really ego-driven, because I'm at the top of the food chain.
	So I am the guy that everyone comes to for references, advice, how to do things, picking up deals, everything else.
	And I'm basically this kind of God status.
	Right, right.
	So in this domain of online criminal activity, you're way the hell up on the hierarchy chain.
	Right, okay.
	I'm not about to stop.
	Well, you can see that that would have its attraction.
	Right.
	And that's the same attraction that mob...
	Mob life has for a mob boss, right?
	Or in drug distribution gangs, there's definitely competition to rise up the hierarchy.
	That's typical male motivation, regardless of what the hierarchy is.
	You know, there's a great study of a drug distribution gang in Chicago in the projects, and most of the low-level drug distributors were more likely to be employed gainfully than the non-drug distributing peers, right?
	They were ambitious guys.
	And that they tended to be ambitious within the confines of the criminal organization, but that ambition still drove them upward, that drive for status, right?
	So, okay, so, all right, so let's go back to when you got put on parole for making this false ID, and you got caught, but now you know how to do it.
	Okay, so now what happens?
	And you're, what, about 20 at this point?
	Yeah, I would have been probably 2021 at this point.
	Okay, okay.
	So, you didn't get stopped.
	You got away with it for all intents and purposes.
	You could think at that point, do something like, well, if the damn system is so stupid that they're not even going to call me on my misbehavior, you know, to hell with it again.
	But you also said, you know, and then we'll go back to this, you also said that you didn't have any remorse with regards to the victims.
	And so, why do you think that was?
	Like, what was the justification for that?
	Well, the justification for me was telling myself that, hey, I need it more than they do.
	Hey, it's just his identity.
	He'll recover from that, you know, without carrying the type of trouble.
	Okay, so you had a realm of rationalization.
	Right, right.
	Always trying to rationalize.
	Well, because I'm curious, because, you know, the fact that you, you know, you spoke positively of your sister, and you spoke positively, to some degree, of your father.
	You certainly spoke positively of this woman who helped you out in high school.
	You're clearly able to establish some empathic relationship with other people.
	And so that would beg the question, you know, why didn't that occur?
	Why didn't you extend that to the people that were being victimized by your actions?
	But you just said you had a web of rationalizations that I suspect you probably built that up one piece at a time until it was very elaborate.
	Same sort of thing you did with your wife when you told her that You know, she wanted to spend the money, and so she was really involved, too.
	And, you know, and that's always an open question.
	If someone's misbehaving terribly in your household, and you have some advantage to that, and you fail to notice, you always have to ask yourself, it's like, well, was your lack of noticing convenient, right?
	And so, I mean, I use that against them.
	I mean, yeah, I get that.
	You know, if someone loves you, and Susan absolutely loved the hell out of me, and I knew that, you know, I'm...
	I knew I was never going to quit breaking the law, but would tell her that in order to smooth things over, would pretend that I wasn't in order to smooth things over.
	And then when it pops up again, you know, I'm so sorry, I'll never do it again, blah, blah, blah.
	Did you feel that you were genuinely sorry at that point, or was that just an act?
	No.
	It's complicated.
	Yeah, no doubt.
	Complicated also by the fact that apparently you're quite a good actor.
	Yeah.
	Part of it, yeah, I'm sorry I did that.
	Am I sorry I stole money?
	No, I'm sorry that I hurt you.
	Right, right.
	So you could draw on that sorrow.
	Right, compartmentalize it.
	Yeah, right, right, right.
	And that would make it more believable, too, for you as well.
	Right.
	Right, right.
	Okay, so now you know how to generate false IDs.
	So how does the whole internet phenomenon start to emerge?
	What happens is, is I date this girl that was, I was with Christy for, I think, five years.
	Your first wife?
	No, no, first girlfriend.
	First girlfriend.
	Okay, I was with her for five years, and she was a preacher's daughter.
	Right.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	She finally figures out that I am not going to convert to Christianity.
	I have belief problems.
	So, she breaks up with me.
	And I ended up at that point, I'm married to my wife, Susan, within six months.
	Meet her.
	It's this whirlwind thing of sex and romance.
	And we get married.
	Move from Hazard, Kentucky to Lexington.
	And Going to college, and I'm a control freak, no doubt about it.
	Told her, I was like, don't worry about working, I got it.
	Don't worry about cooking and cleaning, I got it.
	And didn't have it.
	So, I was working a 60-hour-a-week job, had an 18-hour load, all the cooking and cleaning.
	No, I didn't have that at all.
	What ended was the job, and as soon as the job ends, I start going back into fraud again.
	Okay, so when you went to Lexington, to begin with, you stopped that for a bit.
	I did.
	Right, okay.
	Because I was working at that...
	Testing printer boards at Lexmark was a job I had.
	I didn't have time to break the law.
	All right, so the job ends and I start going into that.
	There's a good moral in that.
	There's a good moral in that.
	Like, you know, the devil finds, what is it, work for idle hands.
	There's definitely truth in that, right?
	You want to be so busy doing useful things that you don't have time for things that, you know.
	And I take that to heart these days.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, I bet, I bet.
	All right, all right, so the work, how come you stop working?
	I couldn't do it.
	The 60 hours was from like a Friday through a Monday.
	So I would be in there 15 hours a day and then try to go to class with an 18-hour class load the rest of the week.
	So you took on too much?
	Yeah.
	And was that an attempt to impress this woman?
	Probably.
	It was more trying to make ends meet, because we didn't live on campus.
	She wanted to live off campus.
	Okay, so there was financial necessity there, too.
	Was she in university?
	She was.
	She was a music major.
	I see, I see.
	Music performance is what she was.
	And were you happy to be with her?
	Initially.
	Uh-huh.
	Yeah.
	But, you know, six months, you think you've got all the things in the world in common.
	Yeah.
	After you're with that person for two years, you find out you've not got anything in common.
	Uh-huh.
	Then you're with them for another seven years on top of that.
	Right, right, right.
	Okay, so your job, you quit?
	I quit.
	You quit.
	And then, okay, so what happens then?
	Quit the job, start in telemarketing.
	And I'm good on a phone.
	Oh, yeah.
	So, start with telemarketing and...
	Good in what way?
	In manipulating people to buy the product.
	Right, so that's online, real-life training for manipulation.
	Right.
	Right, and you already have some skills as an actor.
	Yeah.
	So I'm very good at that.
	Start at a cemetery.
	The cemetery transitions over.
	Customers in a better position at the Shriners Hospital.
	They had a third-party company coming in doing telemarketing for fundraising, selling circus tickets, things like that.
	Did that.
	Once that gig ended, that same company transitioned over to raising money for the Kiwanis Club.
	And they were selling food baskets.
	So what I did was, I was like, you know, I can run a Kiwanis club myself.
	So go down, get a business license for my own charity, and start telemarketing, telling them that I'm a Kiwanis club.
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	So when you learn to sell food baskets for Kiwanis, you said in all of that you learn to be manipulative, let's say, or better at it.
	Right.
	So what tricks did you learn telemarketing that then enabled you to produce the next scam?
	Like what...
	How much of a theory do you have of that?
	I mean, you're a smart guy.
	You must be thinking through the processes that you use to entice people to buy.
	Well, you were selling something that was genuine to begin with.
	Right.
	But you said you were good at, you said, I believe, that you were good at manipulating people.
	And, you know, the line in sales, especially something like telemarketing, between selling and manipulating is, you know, it's a tricky moral line.
	Right.
	And you can be disproportionately rewarded in a telemarketing operation if you happen to be good at it.
	So what were you teaching yourself to do while you were telemarketing?
	Well, see, you got to backtrack a little bit on that.
	So you got to realize that when I was a kid, and this is this whole thing called social engineering.
	So as a child, I had to know what the adults were doing around me, what they were thinking, how to try to, you know, to survive that That Paul Campbell routine sometimes.
	So I had to know what was going on.
	That translated really well to phone work.
	So you're paying attention.
	You're doing this active listening thing.
	So the first few seconds of the call, depending on the tone, depending on the aggression of the person, how they're answering the phone, everything else like that, you know whether they're in a hurry.
	You know whether they're dominant or passive.
	You know exactly how to handle that call.
	Do you need to come in and be aggressive?
	Do you need to come in and be more passive and submissive with that call?
	And did you mirror the people?
	Like, if they were aggressive, what would you do in response?
	If they were aggressive, so it's all predator-prey, right?
	Depending on the relationship that you're with someone, you're either predator or prey, but it's not always that you're predator or prey.
	You have to know when to make that switch.
	If you're making that switch, so an aggressive person, you'd come in with more of a submissive type attitude until finally you're ready to take over that call.
	All right.
	I see.
	I see.
	So you back off and look for your opportunity.
	Right.
	You're always gauging the person.
	You're always paying attention to what they're saying, how they're saying it, the pauses that are taking place, everything else, until you finally, you've read that person enough and you need to do it quickly.
	You've read that person enough to know exactly what you need to do to trigger that cell, to do that manipulation, to get them to do what you want them to do.
	And that's exactly- Right.
	And was that a game?
	Yeah, that's a game.
	Yeah.
	But that's the exact same thing that translates extremely well When we're talking about online crime.
	Right, right.
	Okay?
	So all these...
	Yeah, well, it's interesting, too, because telemarketing is sort of...
	It's the gateway to virtual, right?
	Because you're just on a phone.
	You're not actually there in person.
	So you're half virtual on the phone.
	Right.
	Right.
	So you're learning all sorts of tricks.
	Right, right.
	And you get good at it.
	How long do you do that?
	I did that for...
	Married in 94, so probably through 97, 98.
	Oh yeah, so four years.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	How many hours a week?
	30, 40 hours a week.
	Okay, okay.
	So you definitely develop expertise in this.
	How long till you branch off with your own false charity?
	So that would have been two and a half years in.
	Okay.
	And how long did you run the false Kiwanis organization?
	Probably eight to nine months.
	Okay.
	And what happens is I was doing some telemarketing, and I was a one-man operation.
	So I did not have a drop address for them to send checks for cash.
	I would actually go around and pick it up.
	Oh, yeah.
	It seems like a bad idea.
	Yeah, it's a horrible idea.
	Yeah.
	So, went to pick up checks, walked up to this guy's door.
	He walks outside on his porch.
	He's like, you are not with the Kiwanis Club.
	I was like, what are you talking about?
	He's like, I'm a member of the Kiwanis Club, and law enforcement's on their way.
	Oh.
	So, I get in the car, take off, get caught, served three months in a county jail.
	All right.
	And what was the dollar amount of fraud that you'd managed at that point?
	I was only charged with maybe $6,000, $7,000.
	Oh, okay.
	Just the amount of checks that I had on hand.
	I see.
	And what do you suppose it was in total at that point?
	Any idea?
	It wasn't much.
	$30,000, $20,000, $30,000.
	Okay.
	And were you still working as an actual telemarketer?
	I was not.
	You were not.
	So this was like your full-time job now.
	And were you doing that like eight hours a day or how much time?
	Four hours a day.
	Four hours a day.
	So 5 p.m.
	to 9 p.m.
	So that's when you find most people are at home.
	Oh, right.
	People are during the day.
	What were you doing during the day?
	Hanging out with my wife, Susan.
	Oh, okay, okay, okay.
	So you got to hang out with Susan at that time.
	And take four hours off to do telemarketing.
	Okay.
	And then one day a week, you'd go around and pick up checks and money.
	Okay, and so you got picked up, and you got...
	What was the punishment at that point?
	So I was looking at a year and a half.
	Yeah.
	Got a lawyer, did three months.
	That's what I did.
	Okay.
	Now, that absolutely ends the telemarketing fraud bit at that point in time.
	Yeah.
	So Susan and I, we lose our apartment.
	So what was it like to be in jail for three months?
	Now, I presume you were in the general prison population at this point.
	Minimum security prison?
	County jail.
	County jail.
	Yeah.
	All that was county jail.
	So in Kentucky, if you don't serve anymore, if you're not sentenced to any more than a year, you do your time in a county jail system.
	Okay.
	And what was it like being in the jail for three months?
	Interesting.
	So, it's very loud.
	Yeah.
	You've got some violence that goes on.
	So, at that county jail, it was not horrible.
	You didn't have, like, a riot popping off.
	You didn't have inmates trying to kill each other.
	And were you good at defending yourself physically?
	I mean, are you the sort of person who gets bullied in jail or not?
	No, I'm not.
	Did people leave you alone?
	I'm not.
	Did they leave you alone?
	Yeah, they did.
	Okay, why?
	I was big to begin with, but I was also very gregarious, smart enough that if someone needed a letter written or some advice or something, I could tell them.
	Oh yeah, okay, so you could be useful when it was useful.
	And useful matters in prison.
	It matters a lot.
	Well, useful matters pretty much wherever you are, as it turns out.
	Yeah, okay, okay.
	So, all right, and you were there for three months.
	Three months.
	Okay, and what's your wife thinking about this?
	She's crying every day.
	Right.
	And did she have any idea you were engaged in this sort of activity at that point?
	She did know at that point.
	She did.
	Okay.
	I don't think she, I don't think, well, I don't know what she thought.
	But she certainly knew I was breaking the law when I was going around picking up checks and doing telemarketing fraud.
	Okay.
	She certainly knew that.
	I don't know.
	And why did she put up with that?
	Because she loved me and I manipulated her.
	Yeah, okay, okay, okay.
	That's why.
	Okay, same, okay, right, right, right.
	Again, it's that me putting criminal activity in front of the relationship.
	You know, she'll, because I'm the man of the house and I'm paying all the bills, she will get accustomed to it.
	Right, oh yes, okay, also that.
	So she becomes reliant on it as well.
	Right.
	Right?
	Right?
	Do you suppose there's a part of you that knew that if she became reliant on that, she would be less likely to get in your way?
	I think so.
	Yeah, that's a rough one.
	Yeah.
	Again, like I said, man, I'm a control freak.
	I am.
	You know, I want to be the person that provides for the family.
	I want to have that position.
	I believe it's my job to do that.
	The problem back then is that job was fraud.
	Right.
	That's the problem.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, okay.
	So you're there for three months.
	You get out.
	And what do you conclude from being there for three months?
	I have to do it better the next time?
	I conclude I should not do telemarketing fraud.
	That's literally the conclusion.
	Yeah, yeah.
	A little problem generalizing there, I would say.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So I move over into online stuff, is what I do.
	And that's when?
	What year?
	This would have been 96, 96.
	Okay, so that's early in the online world, right?
	So you're an early adopter of online technology.
	Right.
	Right.
	So what I do is...
	How did you learn to use computers?
	I was always adept in that.
	You were.
	My dad, when we were in Panama City, one of the Christmases...
	So my dad, we moved to Panama City.
	The only job the man could get was at a 7-Eleven as a midnight clerk.
	And that Christmas, he gave me and Denise $70 apiece.
	That's all he could afford for that.
	And...
	He surprised me.
	There was this Texas Instruments.
	They had a personal computer division.
	They were going out of business.
	So this man goes and waits two hours in line to get this TI-99-4A. Oh, yeah.
	What year is that?
	Geez, this would have been 79.
	Oh, okay.
	So that was very early.
	That's early.
	Right, because computers really didn't become widespread until about 83, 84.
	Even that was really early.
	Right.
	Right, so you had one very early.
	Yeah, and it was, you know, it's a glorified video game.
	Yeah, yeah, but you're in the game at that point.
	You're in it, you know, you're programming, you're typing in all the lines of code and everything so you can play that game for 10 minutes.
	Right, right.
	And all that.
	So from there, it just kind of took you.
	Sure, sure.
	But you've got to understand that it's not really, a lot of crime online is not really being adept at computers.
	It's being adept at fraud.
	Right, but the computer wasn't an impediment.
	Right, it was not, it was not.
	Okay, so what do you start doing online?
	So, start looking around.
	You said porn.
	Yeah, I was part of that, 35% of that point.
	I'd spent a lot of time on porn sites and everything else, and finally I find eBay.
	And I'm like, I like eBay a lot.
	And I was like, there's got to be some way to make money on eBay.
	And what I came across was...
	Bill O'Reilly, he used to host Inside Edition, and they were doing a show on Beanie Babies one night, profiling Peanut through the blue elephant, was what they were profiling.
	And I was watching, and I was like, I'm a naive guy.
	I was like, you know, I'm in Kentucky.
	There's got to be one of these little animals someplace in a store, in a bin someplace, because he was selling for $1,500 on eBay.
	So, the next day, I skip my classes, go around to all the little stores.
	It takes me about three hours to figure out, no, no, he's not in a store.
	He's on eBay for $1,500.
	Right.
	They'd already been well-scavenged.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	So, I was always the guy that did research.
	I go home and I start researching, okay, what do you have to send?
	If you don't send an item in the mail, can they arrest you for that?
	Is what I was like...
	Turns out they can.
	So I was like, so how do you get around that?
	Well, it turns out that they had these little gray Beanie Baby Elephant spray dollars.
	Bought one of those, stopped by Kroger on the way home, picked up a pack of blue ripped dye.
	Oh, yeah.
	Went home, dyed the guy.
	I was like, you know, I can tell the lady, if nothing else, that damaged and shipping, something like that, because they were exactly the same except for the color.
	So put a picture of a real one on eBay.
	She wins the business.
	How much like the real one did they look?
	Not at all.
	It looked like it had the mange when you got it out.
	So it's made out of polyester.
	Right, so it's hard to dye it.
	Yeah, you can't dye it.
	I mean, it needs to be splotchy and everything.
	It's wet and everything else.
	And I was like, you know, what will happen is she'll get it in the mail.
	She'll see that it's been wet and everything.
	She'll think it was damaged and shit.
	I can claim that, if nothing else, all right?
	So, died the thing, sent it out to her, get a call as soon as she gets it.
	But before I sent it out to her, I was like, hey, I want to make sure I get my money.
	Sent her a message.
	This is a social engineering thing again, because I don't want to be on the defensive of this conversation.
	I want her on the defensive.
	I want her to have to establish trust with me, not me with her.
	So, I sent her a message.
	Hey, congratulations, you won the bid.
	We've never done any business before.
	I don't know if I can trust you.
	What I need you to do is go down to the U.S. Postal Service, pick up a couple money orders totaling $1,500, send those to me, I'll send you your animal.
	She believed that.
	Sends me the money orders.
	The reason I wanted that is you can't cancel.
	So she sends me money orders.
	I cash them out.
	Send her this thing in the mail.
	Get a phone call.
	Did not order this.
	My exact response, you ordered a blue elephant.
	I sent you a blue-ish elephant.
	And I kept putting her off.
	I kept saying, yeah, I'll send you the money back.
	I'll send you the money back.
	What you find out, and that's one of the things I teach in classes these days, is that's the first lesson of cybercrime.
	You delay that victim.
	You just keep putting them off.
	A lot of them, they get exasperated, throw their hands in the air, walk away.
	Right, right, right.
	You don't hear from them, and they don't call law enforcement.
	So it's the first online crime I committed right there.
	And why don't they call law enforcement?
	Embarrassment.
	I mean, so think about it.
	Well, and it's trouble.
	It's also trouble to call the cops.
	It's not nothing.
	And I know the reasons today.
	So it's embarrassment of victims.
	It's who do you complain to?
	Do you complain to the Kentucky State Police?
	Do you complain to the sheriff's office?
	Do you complain to the state where you bought it from?
	It's legal ambiguity.
	So there's a lot of jurisdictional issues at the same time.
	But a lot of the time, the law enforcement, when you walk into a police station, they don't want to hear it.
	You know, were you stupid enough to fall for a scam like that is a lot of the response from law enforcement.
	That's a foolish response because the people who are scamming are likely doing other things.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Plus, if you let those small things go, as we've already discussed, they don't stay small for long.
	They don't.
	Because criminals are also ambitious.
	What's that broken windows policy?
	Yes, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	It works.
	Definitely that.
	Yes, definitely.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So you're putting her off and you've got your $1,500.
	Okay.
	So then what happens?
	Well, what happens is I continue with little eBay scams under my own name, but I start getting better because I start to realize that, hey, these people are calling me and complaining about this stuff.
	Seems like an unnecessary amount of trouble.
	Very unnecessary, but remember, I've got that history and identity theft at the same time.
	So what I start doing is I transition over into pirated software.
	Pirate's software, in order to play like pirated video games, back then you had to have a mod chip that was soldered onto the circuit board of the gaming system.
	So I started to do that.
	That opened up the door.
	Okay, do what exactly?
	So you'd get this little circuit chip, and you'd crack open the PlayStation 1 or the Sega Saturn or the Newcast, and you'd find out where on the circuit board you had to solder that chip, and you'd solder the chip on there, and that would allow you to play the pressed or the...
	The first game.
	That you had the games on.
	Oh, yes.
	So that would do that.
	So that led into programming satellite DSS cards.
	So the RCA-18 satellite systems, you can pull the access card out of it, program it, turn on the channels.
	Started doing that.
	How do you learn to do these things?
	Read it online on forums.
	This is not complicated stuff at all.
	So the soldering, I learned working at Lexmark.
	So that tool translated very well to that.
	The pirated software led into, what got me on there was I was doing porn online and some of the sites had Banner ads were people discussing pirated software.
	So that led into getting the contacts for pirated software, which then led into modchips.
	The modchip forums started to talk about RCA satellite systems.
	So this is the beginnings of a criminal network emerging online, essentially.
	And then what happens is a Canadian judge, he actually rules in court.
	He was like, since RCA doesn't sell the systems up here, my citizens can pirate the signals.
	Oh, yeah.
	Thank you, Canada.
	Yeah, so what happens is, is you go down to Best Buy, you buy the system for $100, take it out, throw the system away, take the access card, program it, ship it to Canada, $500 a pop.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	That's a good deal.
	That's legal, too, eh?
	That's legal.
	Well, it's gray air.
	Yeah, okay.
	Right, right.
	So it's legal in Canada, but it's not legal to do it in the United States and ship it to Canada.
	I see.
	I see.
	Okay.
	So started doing that.
	Also, relatively low probability of getting caught because your Canadian people are not going to be unhappy.
	So started to do that, and at the same time, it's when PayPal comes into fruition.
	And how much money are you making with the chip thing?
	$4,000 a week.
	Oh, yeah.
	And that's in 2000?
	This was 96.
	Okay, so you're doing pretty well.
	I'm doing pretty well at that point.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Had so many orders, it became a problem trying to find enough access cards for the orders.
	That's sad.
	That's an issue.
	So what I was like, I was like, hell, they're in Canada.
	Who are they going to complain to if I don't send them anything?
	So...
	Oh, yeah.
	Started doing that, stole even more money, got worried about how much was coming in, and wanted a fake driver's license.
	Now, I knew how to do identity theft.
	I didn't know how to make fake driver's licenses.
	So figured I could get a fake ID, use that to open a bank account, funnel the money through the account, cash out the ATM. Didn't know where to get one.
	That university didn't know where to get one.
	So I got online, started looking around, found a guy, sent him $200 in my picture, and he rips me off.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I got really angry at that.
	You should have thought that was funny, really.
	You know, today I do.
	I do.
	Today it's all karma, but back then I was just mad.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, that's a blow to your ego.
	It is.
	Definitely.
	But I still needed the ID. Yeah.
	So, continue to search for this thing.
	The only avenue you had back then to commit crime...
	Online was IRC, internet relay chat.
	Rolling chat board.
	Had no idea who you were talking to, if you could trust them, if they had something for sale, if they actually had it, or if they were just gonna rip you off.
	So you couldn't use that network.
	The only real website at that point in time was called Counterfeit Library.
	And the only thing it dealt in was counterfeit degrees and certificates.
	But they had a forum section attached to it.
	So because that was the real only platform out there, I started going to that forum every single day and complaining about getting ripped off.
	That's all I do.
	I'm bitching about that.
	About getting ripped off for the ID? Yeah.
	Because I'm looking for this ID. So I'm complaining about getting ripped off and I still need this ID. I see.
	I see.
	So what happens is, because that's really the only trustworthy platform that's out there at the point, you start having these other people coming into this forum as well.
	I ended up partnering with two other people.
	A guy from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.
	A guy from LA. The Moose Jaw guy.
	Moose Jaw, that's...
	There you go.
	So Moose Jaw, he actually made fake IDs.
	So he gets me up one day on ICQ and he's like, hey, I can make you a fake driver's license.
	I was like, well, make it.
	He's like, no, I'm going to charge you $200.
	I'm like, yeah, like shit you are.
	Well, by this point in time, I'm friends with the people who actually own the website.
	We're...
	Shooting emails at each other and everything else.
	And I'm like, I'll tell you what.
	I'm going to send you $200.
	So that way when you rip me off, I can have you banned from here and I don't have to worry about you anymore.
	And he's like, bet.
	I was like, okay.
	So send him my picture.
	Send him $200.
	Two weeks later, I get a fake driver's license.
	Is it a good one?
	Well, I thought it was.
	Looking back, it wasn't.
	But at that point in time, it was good enough to go to a bank.
	Right, it was good enough.
	It was good enough to cash your checks with.
	And it was in a real name as well.
	So...
	What happens is he went by the screen name of Beelzebub.
	Oh, God.
	That bloody well figures.
	You know, one of the things I've really noticed about the most vicious online trolls is the probability that they have an anonymous name with something satanic, Nazi, or communist in it is almost 100%.
	Always.
	Yeah, it's stunning.
	Always.
	It's supposed to be funny.
	It's not that funny, actually, but it's unbelievably prevalent.
	He did that, and he was a pot grower.
	That's what he actually did on the side.
	He grew marijuana.
	But he sends me the idea.
	He wants to sell fake driver's licenses online.
	Yeah.
	The other guy that I partnered with, he went by the screen name Mr.
	X, and he did a very competent social security guard.
	So together you had an ID packet.
	Right, right, right.
	I didn't have that skill at that point in time.
	So what he said was, he was like, hey, what you do is you become the reviewer.
	Any product or service, because you don't sell anything, you're not making anything, any product or service, you'll be that outside, unbiased.
	Oh, interesting, interesting.
	You review everything, then that allows you to get the product in, see how it works, see how these things operate.
	So that's what I did.
	I started to review things.
	You're reviewing specifically illegal things.
	Exactly.
	So that was my initial position.
	Right, and you had presumably an anonymous handle for that as well.
	Gollum Fun.
	What's that?
	Gollum Fun.
	Gollum.
	Oh, yeah.
	Lord of the Rings.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Like you said, like you said.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So what happens is...
	Amazing.
	Why'd you pick that name?
	I'm a big Lord of the Rings fan.
	Yeah, but normally people don't pick Gollum as their hero.
	I'll tell you why I picked it.
	So on the satellite side, my initial name was Baggins.
	All right?
	And because there were some other Baggins users on the internet at that point in time, I added dad to it.
	So Baggins dad.
	So once I translated over to a real criminal platform, I was like, well, you can't use that because they're going to find that name and that is Brett Johnson.
	So I was like, I still like Lord of the Rings, Gollum.
	Then add a tag on it.
	That's the sign that you've gone to the dark side.
	I know, that's the sign right there.
	So I become the reviewer of Counterfeit Library.
	And it was a field of dreams for criminals, because it was the first of its type.
	Now you had someplace where you had an actual reviewer that, and when you reviewed something, if I gave a positive review, I stood by that.
	Meaning, if you get ripped off, I will reimburse you for being ripped off.
	Oh, you're kidding.
	So you were an escrow agent for criminal transactions.
	I'll make sure.
	So if I'm reviewing somebody, I'm going to make sure that you get your product or service.
	Okay.
	Well, that's quite the creative niche.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, really.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Makes you wonder what you could have done if you would have been putting that power to go.
	A whole lot.
	A whole lot.
	I'm doing pretty well right now.
	Good, good, good.
	Well.
	But Mr.
	X and Beelzebub.
	Beelzebub doesn't do really well with his driver's licenses.
	He drops out about 15, 16 months later.
	Mr.
	X gets arrested cashing things out in Las Vegas.
	So both of those disappear.
	I'm top of the food chain because by this point in time, all these other criminals have come to this platform.
	And they rely on me to tell them, hey, this is who you need to do business with.
	This is how good the products are.
	You're connecting people like mad, yeah.
	So at one point, every single transaction went through me on Counterfeit Library, nothing else.
	From there, Counterfeit Library transitions over to Shadow Crew.
	And Shadow Crew...
	What sort of population size of people do you suppose were using that on a regular basis at that point?
	So Shadow Crew ended with 4,000 people.
	Right.
	That's what it ended with.
	So, you know...
	1% of the criminals commit 65% of the crimes, right?
	So if there's 4,000 of them and there are people who are dedicated, you're dealing with a group of people who are responsible for a massive amount of criminal activity.
	We were prolific.
	So Shadow Creek gets busted in 2004.
	You look at the cybercrime arrests that have happened up through today, and a majority of those people have connections to Shadow Creek.
	Right, right.
	So Albert Gonzalez, Roman Vega, all these other people, they're shadow crew operatives.
	Even the Canadian guy that ran Quadriga, the cryptocurrency exchange, both of those guys were shadow crew people.
	So that connection absolutely still exists today on that.
	To give you an idea though, so that 4,000 sounds like a lot until you fast forward to 2017, Alphabay, which was a dark web marketplace and forum, 240,000 people.
	Right, right.
	It grew like everything else on the net.
	In 2019, just a marketplace gets shut down, 1.15 million.
	So these numbers continue to explode.
	Cybercrime today, if it were a country, would have the third largest economy on the planet.
	That's how things have expanded to that point.
	Now, does that include pornography distribution?
	It does not.
	Without pornography distribution?
	Without pornography.
	We're talking financial cybercrime, third largest economy on the planet.
	That's how big this is these days.
	Now, is that primarily operating in Western worlds, or how prolific is that criminal activity in non-Western worlds?
	Well, North Korea finances one-third of their nuclear program through cybercrime.
	Oh, that's a lovely little connection.
	Isn't it, though?
	What about Iran?
	I don't know about Iran.
	I can't give that figure on that.
	North Korea, one-third.
	One-third.
	Through stolen cryptocurrency, credit card schemes, pig butchering attacks, you name it.
	What's that one?
	Pig butchering is, think of a romance scheme or a cryptocurrency scheme where I'm going to not take one or two payments from you, but take every single thing that you've got.
	Yeah.
	They call it pig butchery because you're basically butchering the pig.
	And you pull people in one little step at a time.
	Layer the trust.
	Like a Ponzi scheme thing where they get payouts to begin with and you build up trust and eventually you just take everything.
	But understand in an online environment, trust is much easier to establish because people almost inherently trust that technology.
	We don't understand the cell phones.
	We don't understand security on websites, but we trust that stuff.
	We trust those phone numbers that come across the line.
	We don't understand that criminals use spoof phone calls.
	That's not the Social Security Administration or the FBI calling them.
	That's a scammer.
	You just don't see their own number.
	That lays trust.
	And then, remember I talked about social engineering.
	Then you see how good of a con man, liar, social engineer he is in layering the trust and manipulating you to give up cash, information access, data.
	Right, right.
	Okay, so this expands outward.
	Now, you're involved in this from 2002, the Shadow Cruise specifically, 2002 to 2004.
	Correct.
	Okay, what happens in 2004?
	So, 2004.
	I'm the guy that, in the United States...
	There's this thing called tax return identity theft.
	It's the reason that every single person gets their tax returns delayed every single year.
	I'm the guy that started that.
	Okay, and so how does that work?
	So what it is, is I started it.
	I had access.
	We had these identity database accesses, these different databases.
	Started out with the Indiana State Sex Offenders Registry, and we used that to open up bank accounts.
	Back then, you had, on that registry, you had Social Security, Driver's License, Mother's Bay, and DOBs.
	Of these people?
	Of the sex offenders.
	Oh yeah.
	And there's a population you can take advantage of with very little guilt.
	Exactly the fault.
	Right.
	So my thought was, who's going to complain about that?
	So, started doing that and did so much fraud on that registry that Indiana stripped the PII from the registry.
	PII is?
	Personal Identifying Information.
	Yes, okay.
	Socials, dates of birth, mother's maiden.
	Right, right.
	They stripped that.
	The next database we had access to was the Texas DMV, which we used to make a lot of driver's licenses.
	Wow.
	Okay.
	And you got access to that.
	Got access.
	How did you get access to it?
	They had...
	The passwords were very easy to brute force.
	So none of it complicated at all.
	The final database that I had access to was the California State Death Index.
	So I started to look at that, and I was like, I wonder, because I was looking for money to come in.
	I was like, I wonder if you can file Social Security benefits for the people who are deceased, and how does the federal government know if you're dead?
	Right.
	Because in the United States, a state database does not share information with a federal database.
	So the state can know you're dead, but the feds may not.
	As a matter of fact, prior to 1998, if you died, the only way the federal government knew you were dead is if the family filed a Social Security death benefit, only paid like $200.
	So most family members did not because they're in grief at that point in time.
	Right, right, right.
	After 98, that law changes.
	Now the hospital or the funeral home can do that for you, okay?
	And they do.
	So back then, I was like, I wonder if you can do Social Security benefits, you know, retirement benefits on these people.
	You can't, because the numbers have been dormant for so long, they want you to come in for a sit-down interview.
	The next thought was, I wonder if you can file taxes for tax returns on these people.
	You can.
	Alright?
	So, the way that system works is, you pay your taxes, The U.S. government gives you a refund on those taxes before they are able to verify with the employer whether that person was hired and worked and had taxes withdrawn.
	So you can file a false return that's very realistic for someone else and claim a return.
	And they will send you the money.
	Oh, yeah.
	Okay, so I started doing that.
	I would file...
	Around 180 tax returns a week.
	Got to where I was manually able to do one every six minutes.
	Sunday through Wednesday file returns.
	And for what amounts approximately?
	3,000 and under.
	And why did you pick that amount?
	So one of the things that you find out with cybercrime, and I was always good on research, so tax return theft had been popular.
	And what you saw on the indictments was people would have those returns deposited to their own bank accounts.
	Okay?
	I didn't want to do that.
	No.
	You learned that already.
	I learned that one already.
	So what I wanted to do is I wanted to find some sort of payment instrument that would accept a direct deposit from the government.
	At about the same time is when these things called prepaid debit cards start to hit the market.
	And back then they used to advertise them as payroll cards.
	So you'd basically give them to illegal Hispanic workers.
	And they could have their paycheck deposited on them.
	Well, they would accept any ACH deposit, meaning a federal government deposit would be just fine on that.
	But the deposit amount had to be under $3,000.
	I see, I see.
	So, started doing that.
	Would spend time...
	180 a week.
	180 returns a week.
	Right.
	So, you're starting to make a lot of money at this point.
	Making a lot of money.
	At the same time, Shadow Crew starts to get a lot of law enforcement attention.
	Were those things linked?
	They were not.
	Nobody knew I was doing tax return theft at that point.
	I see.
	But what happens is...
	And so how were you making money on Shadow Crew then?
	I wasn't.
	I never made any money on Shadow Crew.
	Oh, I see.
	I see.
	You were just making your connections and learning.
	I ran the entire thing, never made any money.
	Okay, so why did you do it?
	The eco.
	Okay, fair enough.
	I was that guy.
	Yeah, yeah, well, like you said, their status is a major motivator.
	And I got a lot of, so if anyone, like, I partnered with the Ukrainians.
	I was the guy who brought them over.
	They would give me, shoot me free products and services all the time.
	So as long as I was giving them good reviews and as long as their product worked, I was more than happy to do that.
	Right.
	So they made a lot of money, too.
	So it was just, you know, never made cash, but I made products and services.
	Yeah, yeah, okay, okay.
	Shadow Crew, We had this thing called the CVV1 hack, which allows you to take phished information like we were getting the card number and the PIN. We found out through testing that the banks had not implemented what was called the hash.
	So in order to encode it onto a physical card, you've got three data tracks on the card.
	The second data track is what's important at an ATM. That's the card number, forward slash, and then there's a 16-digit algorithm outside of that.
	None of the banks had implemented the hash for that, meaning you've got the card number, you've got the PIN, you put any 16 digits out, it would encode, you take it to an ATM, start pulling money out.
	We started doing that, and typically a cashier would make $40,000 a day at that point.
	All right?
	Yeah.
	And 60% of that went over to the Ukrainians that was supplying the information.
	So they were making a lot of money all of a sudden.
	That got a lot of law enforcement attention.
	So we started to see IPs coming in from DOD, Pentagon, DOJ, all these other things.
	Right now you're funding a criminal network in the UK as well.
	That's not turning out so well.
	And I'm starting to wonder about RICO all of a sudden.
	Yeah, right.
	So at the same time, we had a gentleman who went by the screen name of Enhance.
	He was the guy that posted Paris Hilton's phone list.
	Back in the early 2000s.
	He's also the guy that intercepted text messages of the United States Secret Service investigating Shadow Crew.
	So we have that.
	I'm at the top of the food chain.
	I'm getting worried about what's going to happen.
	I'm like, what are you doing with all your money at this point?
	I don't know how to launder money yet.
	So I'll go on a road trip, put $150,000 in a backpack.
	That's what will fit in 20s in a backpack.
	Put $150,000 in a backpack.
	I've got a spare bedroom in Charleston, South Carolina.
	Come home, take the backpack, chuck it in the bedroom.
	150k a week on that.
	All right, 10 months out of the year.
	So a lot of money coming in.
	And is that where it's sitting?
	It's sitting until literally one day I open up the bedroom door and I'm like, shit, I've got to do something with those backpacks.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So at that point is when I started learning how to launder money.
	I had bank accounts in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Caymans, throughout Europe, and it finally ended up into Estonia, a bank called Bank Latiko is where most of the money ended up.
	All right?
	And how much money are we talking about at this point?
	How much do you manage to make?
	About $7 million total is what that was.
	All right?
	Wow.
	Shadow crew.
	Right, but see, when I asked you what you were doing with the money, I didn't exactly mean you're putting it in backpacks and throwing it in a room.
	I mean, you're making all this money.
	What good is it doing to you?
	None.
	I'm none.
	I'm one of those...
	What you find out with most cyber criminals is that most of them will commit a crime, get the proceeds of the crime, live off that until it starts to dwindle down, then bankroll the next crime.
	I'm one of those guys that...
	I didn't work that way.
	I kept doing it and saving the money as a big...
	I liked looking at a big pile of money.
	So...
	And did you ever have any idea what you might do with that pile of money?
	Yeah, I was going to open up a nightclub.
	Okay, okay, okay.
	You could open up a pretty good nightclub for $7 million.
	Pretty good one.
	Why didn't you just do that instead?
	Because you could have had a nightclub then.
	Looking back, it's the ego thing.
	Yeah, okay.
	You're in it already.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You're not going to give that up.
	No, I mean, it's hard to express how big of a draw that is when you've got everyone that's relying on you.
	So my days, I would spend 14, 16 hours a day at a computer.
	I only took time off from the computer to go get money out of ATMs.
	Right.
	So you're working your tail off.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So that's what happened at that point.
	Are you drinking at this point?
	No.
	I don't start drinking until Susan leaves.
	What about women?
	No!
	I see.
	So you're just hiding up backpacks of money.
	I have to tell you, once Susan leaves, I make up for the alcohol and the women at that point.
	Uh-huh.
	All right?
	Right.
	And you've got the cash to bankroll that now.
	And I've got the cash to bankroll.
	So when I was working for Secret Service, I would typically spend $4,000 or $6,000 a night at a strip club.
	Just go in and I'd give the bartender a wad of 20s and say however many kamikazes that will buy.
	And they would put this table together and they'd put all these kamikazes on that.
	And I called that my stripper magnet.
	And what's a kamikaze?
	It's vodka and lime.
	I forgot what all it's got in there, but the girls liked it.
	And I would drink these white Russians, what I would drink all the time.
	Right.
	And so once Susan left, that's where you were going at night to strip clubs.
	Once Susan leaves, I... I get depressed.
	I find out she's cheating on me, and I put a key logger on her computer to find it out.
	So I found out she was cheating on me, found some pictures and everything else, and she was asleep in the bedroom in Charleston.
	I walk in there, and it was like 10 o'clock in the morning.
	I walked in there.
	I opened up the closet, got a suitcase out, started putting her clothes in it, and she wakes up.
	She's like, what are you doing?
	I was like, where are you going?
	I'm like, I'm not going anywhere.
	You are.
	And so you've been married how long at this point?
	Nine years.
	And that's your first wife?
	Yeah.
	Right, okay, okay, okay.
	And this affair she's having, she's found someone else that she wants to be with this guy?
	What's the scoop with that?
	Yeah, looking back, what I think actually happened was, I think that's the only way she figured she could break off the relationship.
	Right, right.
	Because that's always my line in the sand right there.
	Right, right.
	Well, and you said you'd already rendered her or she'd already been rendered dependent as well.
	So she needed an out.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And did she know how extensive your online criminal activity was?
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, she was well aware of it.
	Okay, so she's...
	Yeah.
	Okay, okay.
	Did she have any family or anyone connections at that point still?
	She did.
	And what happens is, is I was a pure asshole.
	Yeah.
	I was planning on taking her back to Kentucky that day, but it was a week of me and her crying at the house and, you know, ending the relationship.
	This is after you pat?
	After I pat once a week doing that, and I mean, it's obvious that the relationship's over.
	And so I take her back to her mom's in eastern Kentucky, and that's the last time I see her right there.
	From there, I go back to Charleston.
	I'm walking around the house crying all the time.
	Realized I was getting suicidal.
	Figured I'd better do something about that.
	Picked up the phone book, went to psychology, went to criminal psychology, found one that said criminal psychology on there.
	Called this psychologist crying.
	She tells me to come in, and I see her for about four months.
	I tell it in speeches, but she was trying to get me to stop breaking the law and go into real estate, and I kept telling her, is there a difference between the two?
	What happens is, is one night, I get lonely and horny.
	Had never been to a strip club before.
	I was like, tonight's the night I get laid, because I've got all this money to.
	Walk in, and I'm the guy that falls in love with the first one that he sees.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, she walks by, I'm like, that's the one for me.
	Move her in with me.
	How long?
	I moved her in with me within eight weeks.
	Yeah, man, that's not wise, yeah.
	No, it wasn't.
	And were you, is that when you started drinking?
	I started drinking shortly before that.
	Uh-huh.
	And were you intoxicated when you made the decision to go to the strip club?
	I was not.
	Completely sober.
	Completely sober.
	And were you drinking at the strip clubs by that point?
	No, I only drank, at the point in time, I only drank white Russians.
	And it was just a beer bar was all it was.
	I couldn't stand beer at that point.
	So what happens is she walks up to the bar and she's like, you want to buy me a drink?
	Well, the drink's for $25 a pop.
	I'm like, yeah, what are you drinking for $25?
	And finally she's like, well, we can go in the back if you buy a bottle of champagne.
	I was like, well, how much is champagne?
	She's like, bottle of Corbell's $400.
	I'm like...
	Okay.
	So, we go back there, and there's no dance.
	I find this out later.
	A lot of men that go strip clubs, especially, you know, 30s plus, they don't do dances.
	They just want a bartender.
	They want somebody to talk to.
	And that's literally what I did with this.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I talked to her about three hours that night.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Come back a week later and ask her out.
	And she says, yeah.
	Moved her in with me probably eight weeks after that.
	Find out she's addicted to coke after that.
	Yeah.
	Find out, not only addicted to coke, but prostituting herself to support the habit.
	And I go off the rails.
	I get it in my head.
	Okay, so why were you shocked?
	I don't think I was.
	Yeah, okay.
	I think that I wanted something, and I just was willfully naive.
	At that point?
	Yeah, well, you know, yeah, fair enough.
	Fair enough.
	Well, there's none so blind as those who will not see, they say.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, well, you said you were lonesome, and it's easy to look the other way in all sorts of ways, right?
	And so, like, your plate was clean at that point.
	She didn't know I lied to her, too.
	She didn't know I broke the law.
	She had no idea about that.
	I was telling everybody that I knew that I was a fraud consultant, and that was a joke for me.
	Yeah, I consult on fraud.
	I just don't tell you on which side of the equation.
	Right, right, right, right.
	So what happens is I get it in my head that I can fix her.
	Yeah.
	And I don't understand yet.
	Now, you can't fix other people, Brett.
	Hell, you can't fix yourself.
	Well, yeah, try yourself first and see how far you get with that.
	So I actually adopt this.
	I actually said it.
	I was like, what I'll do is I'll spend enough money on her that it'll keep her mind off drones.
	No matter what it takes, because I've got that kind of bankroll.
	Well, I've spent, I've sent most of my money over to Estonia, so I've got a bankroll at the house of maybe 200k.
	It's fine, all right?
	She's got very expensive tastes.
	At that point in time, my meals, I'd eat at the house.
	I'd cook at the house.
	I didn't spend a lot of money on stuff.
	It became, every single night, $500,000 dinners.
	It became $2,500 purses every weekend.
	$1,000 Giuseppe Zanotti shoes every weekend.
	Quickly start dwindling down on funds at the same time that Shadow Crew gets busted.
	So Shadow Crew makes that front cover of Forbes and gets busted three, four months later.
	When that happens, by the time that happens, I'm out of money.
	Elizabeth stopped using cocaine.
	Absolutely.
	She started to substitute it with alcohol at that point.
	But she stops using coke and she gets this thing where she doesn't want me to be away from her.
	Well, when you're doing this type of cyber crime, you have to take road trips.
	You don't want to shit where you eat.
	So you want to travel because if they find out a central location for you, they're going to get you.
	So because Elizabeth didn't want me to leave any place, I can't take a road trip.
	Shadow Crew gets busted right as tax season is over.
	I can't do tax return fraud in October.
	So I have to wait until late January, February to start back tax fraud.
	Shadow Creek is busted.
	I can't go into credit theft or anything else all of a sudden.
	So the only thing that I'm left with is checks, running paper.
	I used to teach people, never run paper.
	You're going to go to prison for that.
	It's easy enough to catch that stuff.
	I start doing that, get caught.
	And what had happened was Elizabeth wanted Tiffany rings.
	So Tiffany engagement ring, that was a counterfeit cashier's check, and then she wanted the wedding bands, and that's where I got caught.
	I had them ordered through eBay.
	You know, this is the plot of a very bad novel.
	Oh, it's a very bad one that we're trying to work on.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay, so you get nailed.
	You get nailed at that point.
	You've broken your own rules there, too.
	I have.
	Why?
	Just, why?
	Did you think you could get away with it?
	Like, you knew you said.
	No, I knew.
	By that point, I knew.
	I guess just tired, worn out.
	Didn't give a damn anymore.
	Everything else.
	When Susan left, I actually tried to get a real job.
	That didn't last.
	Oh, yeah.
	So, do you suppose there was a part of you that was hoping you were going to get caught?
	I hesitate to say that.
	Yeah, but it's strange that you would pick something that you knew.
	But I do the same thing with the Secret Service, so maybe, yeah.
	Maybe.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, you know, you said you were pretty sick of yourself after your wife left.
	Yeah.
	And then the whole thing with the stripper couldn't help that much.
	Right.
	Did you love her?
	It's that addiction thing, right?
	Yeah, I loved her.
	I loved the shit out of her.
	I did this other show, and up until that, I had always joked about it.
	That first stripper that I see.
	I was talking to this guy, and he asked me, and I looked at him, and I was like, well, screw it, man, why not?
	I told him, I was like, yeah, I absolutely loved her.
	She contacted me after that.
	First time I've got to talk to her since 2006.
	Yeah.
	And just sent me a message, and I told her, I was like, I'd like the opportunity to apologize to you.
	That's it.
	Uh-huh.
	I'm sorry I did everything to you.
	Uh-huh.
	But she's doing good and everything, from what I can tell.
	I manipulated her, too.
	So I got Secret Service saying they arrest me.
	Spend three months in a county jail.
	They get me out.
	And the night they get me out, I go back into committing crime again.
	Why did they get you out?
	To work with them.
	I see, I see.
	So you were making an arrangement at this time to work with them in what way?
	So they get me, I'm arrested February 8th of 2005, three weeks before I'm supposed to marry this Elizabeth.
	And I mean, I was head over heels with her.
	I get arrested.
	She doesn't know I'm breaking the law.
	She finds out pretty quickly once they search the house and throw me into county jail.
	They let me sit there a week.
	Two agents fly in from New Jersey, pull me out.
	We got your laptop.
	I'm like, yeah.
	Got anything on it?
	Yeah.
	You're going to be charged for it.
	I figured that.
	Then they asked me, is there anything you can do for us?
	And my exact words, you let me get back with Elizabeth.
	I'll do whatever you want me to do.
	And they said, we're going to get you out.
	So they let me sit there for three months to get a taste of it.
	Get out after three months.
	First phone call I make is Elizabeth.
	I'm out.
	She's like, I'll be there.
	So it's midnight, standing outside in the parking lot, agent beside of me.
	She had a friend that owned a limo company.
	Pulls open a damn limo.
	Pops the trunk, gets out, walks around to the back, gets these two storage containers out with my clothes.
	Drops them, comes over, hugs me, call me later, leaves.
	I'm sitting there bawling by this point in time.
	Agent looks at me, he's like, is that your fiance?
	I'm like, yeah.
	He's like, I am so sorry.
	I'm like, yeah.
	So I didn't have any, I had $30 for my name at that point.
	He paid out of his pocket to put me in a hotel.
	Soon as he leaves, I take that $30, walk to Walmart, buy a prepaid debit card so I can start back in tax fraud.
	Then I call Elizabeth, beg her to get back, and I lay these lies on her.
	I'm like, hey, it's going to be fine.
	I'm not going to do any prison time.
	You've seen that Frank Abagnale movie, haven't you?
	Catch Me If You Can.
	I'm that guy.
	And she leaves that.
	Don't tell her I'm back from any crime.
	I'm like, hey, it'll be just fine.
	So I move her from Charleston to Columbia, South Carolina, where The field offices, and my job was to work four to six hours a night, consult with the Secret Service, whoever they bring in to teach them about cybercrime, also target individuals for potential arrest.
	Now, were they paying you for this?
	They were.
	They were paying $3.50 a week.
	Plus, they were paying rent, all the utilities.
	Right, so nothing compared to what you had been making.
	Nothing compared.
	But do you still have money in Estonia at this point?
	I do, but I can't get it.
	Okay.
	Well, that's the problem with having money in Estonia.
	That's the money we've been all the way over there.
	I can't get it.
	So, what happens is...
	Four to six hours a night, when I'm online, I'm really fast with things.
	I'll have 20, 30 windows open, I'm bouncing between them all the time.
	Now, they've got Camtasia and SpectraPro on my machine, so they've got me on a laptop hooked up to a 50-inch plasma monitor on the wall outside internet line.
	They are two agents in the room at all times with a South Carolina law enforcement official.
	They've got their desktop computer literally next to mine, Outside line as well.
	For the first two to three weeks, they're diligent.
	They're paying attention to everything, asking questions, everything else.
	After that, they get bored because how could you not be?
	You don't even understand what's going on.
	Right, right, right.
	So they start, there used to be this site called FlashYourRack.com.
	They start looking at women who are exposed in their breasts and rank them on a scale of 1 to 10.
	And they spend most of their nights doing that.
	So I'm sitting there going, nobody's paying attention to me.
	All the data every night is going on a DVD. Why not?

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