WEBVTT

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JACK: You grew up in Kentucky. What was your…?

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BRETT: I was a army brat.

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JACK: Okay. What was your first crime?

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BRETT: First crime was shoplifting.

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My mom – and I – I’ve spoken about this a few times, but I’m from Eastern

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Kentucky. [MUSIC] Hazard; Hazard is coal country. My dad was coming out of the military. He was a

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captain in the army, a helicopter pilot. Army downsizes; he gets booted out. He goes back to

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mining coal, is what he does, strip mining. So, a bulldozer operator is what he was doing. My mom

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was a nurse, an LPN, and she worked long enough to see dad off to work and then she would go out,

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and we’d call it whoring around. She would go out and party with other men. I mean, just horrible,

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horrible stuff, and just abuse out the wazoo from – I remember one time me and my sister come home.

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I was probably eight or nine, my sister a year younger, and we – the bus drops us

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off. The hood of the car is up, so we walk by, like that’s odd. We walk in. Denise asks mom…

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DENISE: So, we walk in. Mom is sitting on the sofa in the living room

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with her legs crossed, acting all chill. I was like, what’s wrong? What’s up? Where’s dad?

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I don’t know, she said. I look on the floor and I see pieces of marble

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broken off. The TV is pulled out from the wall. I was like, what is this?

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BRETT: So, there was some spaghetti on the stove; we go to get some and mom’s like no, no, don’t

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touch that. Don’t touch that. That’s for your father. Well, what had happened was my mom had cut

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the spark plug wires on the car so dad couldn’t get away. She cuts the cable behind the TV so that

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when he goes to turn the TV on, there’s no signal. You know, you just got the snow on there, so he

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gets behind the TV trying to see what’s going on. As he bends over the TV, she takes a marble

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statue, clocks him in the head with it. [MUSIC] The spaghetti on the stove had rat poison in it.

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DENISE: So, he had ended up walking – I forget how many miles – to the hospital,

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and he still has a piece of that marble in his skull. But of course with us,

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her story when we got home was, I don’t know where he is.

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BRETT: I don’t know.

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DENISE: I don’t know why that’s on the floor.

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BRETT: That was my mom, and this is not atypical.

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I remember that when my dad – the one time he tried to divorce her,

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me and my dad were living in an apartment. My mom had my sister. My mom climbs in the window of the

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apartment and I wake up hearing this noise in the living room. I walk in and my mom’s got a

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knife to my dad’s throat, threatening to kill him. That was my mom, so – and she was a criminal, so…

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JACK: What was she so bent on killing him for?

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BRETT: My mom’s problem was she always – and it’s weird with her.

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I think it’s because the way she grew up. She grew up abused as well. But her issue is that

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she always had to test people’s love. If I do this to you, will you still love me? If I

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sleep around on you, will you still love me? If I threaten to kill you, will you still love me? If

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I abuse the kids or neglect the kids, will they still love me? My dad was so crazy about my mom

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that he put up with it. He became the enabler in the family. He was scared of losing her. But I

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get the worst parts from mom and dad. From my mom I get that criminal mindset. From my dad

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I get that fear of the people that I love leaving me, and that’s a lot of the reason

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that I break crime, historically. It’s for cash, but I use cash to buy love.

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(INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC]

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These are true stories from the dark side of the internet.

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I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

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JACK: So, today we’re gonna hear the wild and crazy story of Brett Johnson. This is one of

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those stories that I was very skeptical at first, like no way did he do all this. But

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after talking with some people who knew him and reading all the police reports,

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it checks out. Oh, and I should mention there are a fair bit of swear words in this episode,

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and it has some adult and mature content, so fair warning. Brett grew up in a weird situation. His

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dad was no stranger to doing illegal things. For instance, his dad was a helicopter pilot in the

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military, and one time his dad tried to sell some stolen hand grenades. After the military,

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his dad tried running drugs back and forth to Mexico as a helicopter pilot,

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and at one point he even tried becoming a cop with the sole idea that he was going

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to do a drug bust and somehow keep the money he confiscated. When all those plans fizzled

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out and the family had no money, that’s when Brett’s mom decided to take the kids and run.

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BRETT: [MUSIC] At that point in time, we were in Panama City, Florida.

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My mom leaves my dad. We thought we were – me and Denise thought we were coming up to Kentucky for a

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funeral, and we weren’t. Well, I mean, there was a funeral, but we thought we were only gonna be gone

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a week. So, we packed enough clothes for a week. My dad thought we were only gonna be gone for a

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week, and I don’t see my dad again for, jeez, I don’t know, ten years? Something like that.

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JACK: His mom took the kids and moved to Panama City, Florida,

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and they moved in with her parents. Her dad was just as crazy; super strict and

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pretty abusive. Just to give you an idea, they weren’t allowed to eat any of grandpa’s food

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and they weren’t allowed to make any noise after dark, and he was very strict on how

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much water they could use. For instance, he wouldn’t even let them fill up the bathtub,

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and both Brett and his sister Denise did not want to be around grandpa when he gets angry.

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DENISE: We had no soap.

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BRETT: Right.

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DENISE: We had really very little clothes. I mean,

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two pairs of panty, and you weren’t allowed to wash them.

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BRETT: Or you’d have to wash them by hand.

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DENISE: There was that, you know. I remember going over to Pizza Hut and stealing the soap

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from Pizza Hut so I could bring it back and wash my underwear in the sink with the soap.

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You know, but I had to be careful because if he knew I was doing that,

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I was wasting water and that would set him off, and if you set him off, his goal was to kill you.

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BRETT: It was; we had that round table in the kitchen upstairs in their house,

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and there were times when he would get the butcher knife on you and you’d do

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the little dance around the table until he got tired. Then he would finally sit

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down and he would look at you and say don’t let me catch you, I’ll kill you.

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DENISE: Or he’d get really upset and then he’d go looking for his gun,

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and that’s time for you to leave.

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BRETT: Yeah, so you would leave for a while, then come back in a few hours.

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DENISE: But I remembered him saying to us, your parents are

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sorrier that pigeon shit and we should not have to feed you, and…

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BRETT: And they didn’t want to feed us.

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DENISE: No.

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BRETT: So, mom had been gone for a few days. She started partying, using drugs, everything else

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like she was doing. We didn’t have any food in the house and I was the guy that was scared that

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mom wasn’t gonna come home ‘cause she’d tell us that we were – she was gonna – we’d find her dead

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someplace, that she was gonna commit suicide, that she had given up her life for us, everything else.

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So, she had been gone, I’m worried she’s not coming back. Denise never worried at all.

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Denise was just always mad at her. We were living downstairs from my grandfather. He had converted

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the downstairs into apartments, and we weren’t allowed to go upstairs to eat. They just wouldn’t

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let us. This one time I was ten, my sister Denise was nine. So, Denise walks in one day and she’s

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got a pack of pork chops in her hand, and I was like, where’d you get that? She was like,

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I stole it. I’m like, show me how you did that, sister. So, she takes me over to A&P and we – she

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shows me how she’s stuffing meat and everything down her pants. I’m like well, we can eat.

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So, we start stealing food and we look across the way because we were wanting

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to make sandwiches. That’s the actual story, is we were wanting to make sandwiches. Well,

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you can’t stuff a loaf of bread down your pants. Well, Kmart was across the way, so we went over

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there and stole a hoodie so we could stuff bread down the sleeves of the hoodie. That’s when we

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found out hey, we can shoplift clothes and then books, games, jewelry, toys, all that stuff.

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Mom finally comes home and sees the new television that I’m playing and everything else,

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and where’d that come from? I looked at her and said oh, we found it. She was like no,

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you didn’t find that. Denise stands up; never lies at all. Denise stands up; we stole it.

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My mom looks at my sister and then – I mean, she’s like, show me how you did it.

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Not only does she join us, but she goes and gets her mom to join us as well. So it’s grandmother,

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mom, me and my sister taking these road trips to different malls to steal clothes. Well,

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they stole clothes and jewelry. I’d always go to the bookstore first and steal books,

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‘cause I liked to read a lot. We were at the Fort Henry Thomas Mall in Bristol,

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Tennessee. They had dropped me off at the B. Dalton Bookstore. They had went in JCPenney’s.

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We were supposed to meet back at the vehicle I think like at 1:00, 1:30. Well, I came back with

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a load of books; nobody’s there. So, I’m sitting – I’m standing around about thirty minutes,

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like okay, where are they? I’m only like ten, so I’m like, where are they? So, I wait a while.

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Finally I’m like okay, I gotta go in and find them, so I stuff the books under the blazer,

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walk into JCPenney’s. As I’m walking in, there’s two security guards standing right

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in the entryway there, and I hear my name, Brett Johnson, come over one of the walkie-talkies,

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and I’m like hey, that’s me. They’re like, that’s you? I was like, yeah. They’re like, come with us.

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So, I go – they take me to the security room and my mom and grandmother, they’re huddled in

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a corner crying, screaming, telling everybody they didn’t do it, didn’t mean to, this is the

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first time we’ve ever done it. Denise is in the opposite corner. I mean, she’s just – I mean,

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Denise is ballistic, just angry, staring holes through her like she could kill them right there.

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That’s the first crime that I committed there.

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JACK: [MUSIC] That marked the end of his sister’s criminal behavior. She totally stopped shoplifting

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after that, but this was the beginning of Brett’s criminal career. He continued to shoplift and

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steal, never getting caught for it, either, and he watched as his mom did criminal acts,

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too. His mom was shoplifting and he learned she was drug trafficking,

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and she would sometimes call random people to try to get them to donate to a charity,

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but they were really just giving her money instead. This is called charity fraud. She

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even tried to steal heavy equipment sometimes. She was kind of an opportunistic criminal, getting

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involved with whatever came her way, and Brett was watching it all. After some years of this,

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Brett started talking with his dad again, but only over the phone. His dad had his own issues. He was

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breaking the law and stuff, too. When Brett was fifteen, he got his first taste of jail.

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BRETT: When I was fifteen, I was in Eastern Kentucky. My

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dad had called – I called him and he said he was getting married,

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and I was always of the opinion that I was gonna – that dad was gonna save us.

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So, he said he was getting married. I went to the – I was at the hospital on a pay phone there,

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got in an elevator, and ended up assaulting a woman that got on the elevator with me. I just

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– I guess I snapped or whatever. I don’t know. I don’t know. I was fifteen at that point. I was

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charged with assault of the first degree, so they put me in solitary for six months.

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JACK: Why do you think the news from your father getting married caused this?

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BRETT: I think that was the last – and I don’t think it caused it. I think that it was – looking

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back now, I think that I just – I had taken mentally as much as I could, because it turns

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out the woman looked a lot like mom. So, I think that I had just – with that final news of dad,

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I think that – I had always been the guy that thought I was gonna – you know, it took me to

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save me, and I’ve lived my entire life like that. If you’re gonna do something, do it yourself. But

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when I heard that from him, I think that child in me, that small part of having hope of somebody

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saving me was finally gone, and maybe I realized that that just wasn’t gonna happen. [MUSIC] So,

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I don’t like to make excuses for that because it was a horrible, horrible thing,

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and I’ve lived my life – I mean, every single day I’ve thought about that, and I just – I wanted

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to mention that because I think it’s important. I think it’s important to the story and everything.

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JACK: This is gonna be a heavy episode. Brett pleads guilty to this assault and goes to juvenile

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detention for a few months, and starts attending high school in Hazard, Kentucky. This is where he

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finds a teacher who saw potential in Brett. He excelled in academics and drama in high school,

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and because he was doing well, he actually stayed away from crime for the most part. He graduated

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high school and wanted to be an actor, and he had some scholarship offers but ended up just going to

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the community college there. He gets a part in a play, then the head of the Theatre Department

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from the San Jose State University in California came to see his play and saw Brett’s performance.

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BRETT: As soon as he sees it, he comes up to me. He’s like, I’ll give you a full ride scholarship

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if you want to come to San Jose State right now. I looked at him; I was like, done. Let’s do this.

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So, I agree to the scholarship. He tells me it’s gonna be great. He actually says hey, you’re a

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big fish in a small pond. I’ll make sure you’re a big fish in a big pond. You’ll go someplace.

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So I was like, let’s do this. So he’s like, I’ll be back in a week. So, he leaves; he

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flies back down in a week. He drives to my house. We were living in Airport Gardens at that point.

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I’m shooting basketball with some friends. He pulls up,

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I come over to meet him. I was like hey, let me walk you in and I’ll introduce you

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to my mom. He’s like no; he said I can go in and meet her. I was like, alright.

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So he goes in and he’s in there, I don’t know, ten, fifteen minutes, something like that. He

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comes out, never says a word, gets in the car, leaves. I didn’t know what had happened. I

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find out – I don’t know, a couple weeks later I find out that my mom – he goes in to meet her

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and talk to her and tell her the opportunity that I’ve got and everything else like that –

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she pulls a knife on him and says I will – she had this line she used to say; she said I will

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cut you from gizzard to sternum, and you’re not gonna steal my son from me. That scares

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the man to death and of course, the scholarship and all that goes out the window at that point.

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That, I don’t know, I guess part of that kinda broke me, of leaving.

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JACK: There were similar problems going on with his sister. She was older by this point and going

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to college too, but her mom had a tight grip on her and didn’t want her to go away, and was doing

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very manipulative things to keep her. But the people at the college, about ninety minutes away,

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saw a glimpse of what Denise was going through and gave her a full scholarship and a place to stay,

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and even protected her. This gave Denise the chance she needed to escape the bad gravity

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of her mom and get an education and get on her feet. She became a teacher, and a pretty good one,

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winning Teacher of the Year, even, and she stayed clear of any criminal behavior.

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BRETT: So, I continued in community college, had a girlfriend that was a preacher’s daughter, and

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those were very decent people. For the most part I didn’t think about breaking the law or anything

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else. That relationship fell apart after five years and I met my first wife. Her name was Susan.

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Wanted out – Susan wanted out of the home – out of Hazard, Kentucky, and I knew that – I kinda

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used that as a way to get out of Hazard myself, so I faked a car accident. I had bought this

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little Chevy Spectrum and I figured hey, what I could do is I could cover Tess up with insurance,

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make sure I get the insurance where they pay for lost wages as well;

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that way I’ll have a steady paycheck coming in, fake the accident, go on like that. Well,

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my cousin Ronny, he hears that I’m gonna fake the accident. He comes up to me;

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he was like hey, can I get in on that with you? I was like sure, man, let’s do this. So,

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the day that we’re faking the wreck, Ronny goes to the dentist, has the dentist pull a tooth,

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tells the dentist no, no, no, don’t pack it with gauze or anything; just leave it like it is.

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So, here Ronny is; he’s got this tooth pulled. We’re riding up in a head of a hollow to fake this

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accident. We end up pushing the car over a hill, then we climb down the hill and climb it back up

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so it look like we’ve done something. We walk our way out of the hollow, hitchhike to the hospital

00:17:25.020 --> 00:17:30.900
and file this claim of an accident. I get the money to move from Hazard, Kentucky, to Lexington,

00:17:30.900 --> 00:17:36.720
Kentucky to go to school. What happens is at that point – again I’m the guy that – it’s never been

00:17:36.720 --> 00:17:42.120
enough for me to show love in a healthy relationship. I’ve always went overboard,

00:17:42.120 --> 00:17:47.160
way the hell overboard. So I told Susan, I was like hey, don’t worry about getting a job. You

00:17:47.160 --> 00:17:52.440
just go to school. Yeah, I’ve got the job, I’ve – and I got a job working at Lexmark testing printer

00:17:52.440 --> 00:17:57.120
cards. That was an eighteen-hour – no, sorry, it was a twelve-hour shift three days a week,

00:17:57.120 --> 00:18:00.600
is what that was. So here I am busting my ass doing that. I’ve got an eighteen-hour class

00:18:00.600 --> 00:18:04.740
load. I’m not only doing that – all that, but I’m doing all the cooking and cleaning.

00:18:04.740 --> 00:18:09.480
Susan’s going – she’s never been away from home before, so that’s hitting her pretty hard. It’s

00:18:09.480 --> 00:18:14.160
arguments every single day and all that. Something had to give, and what gave was the

00:18:14.160 --> 00:18:20.160
job. I just couldn’t do it, so I quit the job and immediately start into fraud. [MUSIC] First types

00:18:20.160 --> 00:18:26.040
of fraud I started into was telemarketing fraud. So, telemarketing charity fraud. I was working for

00:18:26.040 --> 00:18:31.980
the Shrine Circus selling circus tickets, making really good money doing that. As soon as that

00:18:31.980 --> 00:18:38.940
ended, I – they transition over to the Kiwanis Club selling money for food baskets or selling

00:18:38.940 --> 00:18:45.960
food baskets for the food centers. You’d pay for a food basket, like $40. You’d buy a half-basket for

00:18:45.960 --> 00:18:54.180
$20. I steal their phone list, go out and start my own Kiwanis Club. I get arrested doing that.

00:18:54.180 --> 00:18:58.620
JACK: He spends three months in jail, and with no money coming in,

00:18:58.620 --> 00:19:04.500
his wife had no choice but to go back and live with her parents in Hazard, Kentucky.

00:19:04.500 --> 00:19:09.420
When he gets out of jail, he goes and lives with his wife in her parents’ house. But just

00:19:09.420 --> 00:19:15.600
as he’s getting out, his wife’s father bought the family a new Hewlett Packard computer.

00:19:15.600 --> 00:19:21.720
BRETT: [MUSIC] They’re over there playing games – playing Duke Nukem and all that. I’m sitting there

00:19:21.720 --> 00:19:28.860
going well, how do you make money on that? So, that’s when I find eBay, and then eBay leads into

00:19:28.860 --> 00:19:34.380
all this other stuff. eBay is – basically leads into watching Inside Edition one night. They’ve

00:19:34.380 --> 00:19:40.680
got – talking about Beanie Babies. The first crime I really committed online was that. I was watching

00:19:40.680 --> 00:19:45.600
this thing about Peanut the royal blue elephant. He was going for $1,500 on eBay. I’m sitting there

00:19:45.600 --> 00:19:51.300
going, need to find me a Peanut. So, I was taking classes at the community college in Hazard and I

00:19:51.300 --> 00:19:55.980
was like okay, find me a Peanut. So I go around to all the little gifts – gift card stores in the

00:19:55.980 --> 00:20:00.780
area and everything, can’t find the damn thing. They had all these little grey elephants online;

00:20:00.780 --> 00:20:08.280
I was like okay, I buy the grey elephant, pay $8 for that, buy a pack of blue dye,

00:20:08.280 --> 00:20:12.540
go back and try – start trying to dye the little guy. Can’t dye him at all ‘cause

00:20:12.540 --> 00:20:16.500
he’s made out of polyester. You get him out – I’m serious; you get him out, he’s blotchy.

00:20:16.500 --> 00:20:20.460
Looks like he’s got the mange and everything else. I’m like, I’m not gonna make money doing that.

00:20:20.460 --> 00:20:25.680
So I look around and find a picture of a real one online and post it. The lady wins the bid,

00:20:25.680 --> 00:20:31.800
and that history of – that scam mentality that I had already, that kicks in at that point. I’m

00:20:31.800 --> 00:20:35.640
like okay, I can’t wait for her to contact me. I’ll contact her, not – that way it sets

00:20:35.640 --> 00:20:40.080
the tone of the conversation. So, I send her an e-mail and I was like hey, we’ve not dealt

00:20:40.080 --> 00:20:43.980
before. I don’t know if I can trust you. I’ve got the animal. What I need you to do is send

00:20:43.980 --> 00:20:47.760
me a US postal money order. It’s issued by the government. It protects both of us. It makes

00:20:47.760 --> 00:20:52.680
sure I gets my – get my money, and because it’s issued by the government, it protects you as well.

00:20:52.680 --> 00:20:58.440
She believed that. She sent me a US postal money order, two of them, for $1,500. The reason I

00:20:58.440 --> 00:21:03.840
wanted US postal, it’s very difficult to cancel that postal money order, and you can take it to

00:21:03.840 --> 00:21:08.940
the post office and cash it out as well. You don’t have to have a bank account. So, she sent me that.

00:21:08.940 --> 00:21:13.740
I went to the post office, cashed them out, sent her this mangy looking animal,

00:21:13.740 --> 00:21:16.740
get a call right after that as soon as she receives it; I didn’t order

00:21:16.740 --> 00:21:22.740
this. My response was lady, you ordered a blue elephant and I sent you a blue-ish elephant.

00:21:22.740 --> 00:21:26.220
I kept putting her off. She kept calling and bitching and complaining ‘cause – I did this

00:21:26.220 --> 00:21:32.340
under my real name. She kept calling and bitching and everything and I kept putting her off. Finally

00:21:32.340 --> 00:21:37.020
she just disappears, and that’s where I learn – I talk about this a lot, that first lesson of

00:21:37.020 --> 00:21:40.740
cyber-crime, that if you delay a victim long enough, if you just keep putting them off,

00:21:40.740 --> 00:21:45.540
a lot of them get so exasperated, they literally throw their hands up in the air, walk away,

00:21:45.540 --> 00:21:51.180
and you don’t hear from them again. To this day, most victims of scams and cyber-crime,

00:21:51.180 --> 00:21:56.460
they never really complain to law enforcement at all. So, it really reinforces the idea of that

00:21:56.460 --> 00:21:59.760
criminal activity. No one’s complaining, so you keep right on going with it.

00:21:59.760 --> 00:22:02.040
JACK: By this point, Brett is in his mid-twenties,

00:22:02.040 --> 00:22:05.640
and I stopped him here to try to recap what his criminal activity has been up

00:22:05.640 --> 00:22:09.540
until this point. But this just reminded him of so many more crimes he committed.

00:22:09.540 --> 00:22:14.280
BRETT: One of the things I got away with – there was a baseball card shop in Hazard,

00:22:14.280 --> 00:22:19.980
Kentucky, and I got it in my head that I could go in and steal the cards one night and

00:22:19.980 --> 00:22:24.600
take them a couple states away and resell them. So here I am; I break into the shop

00:22:24.600 --> 00:22:29.520
at 2:00 in the morning and didn’t know they had a silent alarm. So, 2:00 in the morning,

00:22:29.520 --> 00:22:34.380
I’m in there stealing cards and everything else, and all of a sudden the Hazard police pull up,

00:22:34.380 --> 00:22:41.760
lights flashing and everything else, and they see me inside. So before they can get inside – I had

00:22:41.760 --> 00:22:49.560
actually broken in through the wall in the back, and the river was outside as well. So, I make it

00:22:49.560 --> 00:22:54.600
outside – as the cops are coming around the back, I make it outside. One of the cops actually grabs

00:22:54.600 --> 00:23:01.860
my arm. I wrestle away from him, dive in the river, and swim down the river and end up getting

00:23:01.860 --> 00:23:06.594
away like that. So, I did not get arrested on that. There was another episode where I…

00:23:06.594 --> 00:23:10.787
JACK: Gosh, every little story – you got like a million stories. I can’t do them all.

00:23:10.787 --> 00:23:16.440
BRETT: Yeah, there’s a lot of criminal activity. There was an instance where I broke into the

00:23:16.440 --> 00:23:22.500
Hazard Community College. I actually camped out – I found a place to hide until everyone

00:23:22.500 --> 00:23:26.640
had left. So again, like 2:00 in the morning, I come out and I start stealing computers at Hazard

00:23:26.640 --> 00:23:32.010
Community College and resold those. I mean, there’s a whole list of criminal activity…

00:23:32.010 --> 00:23:34.440
JACK: You could write like, ten books at this point, man.

00:23:34.440 --> 00:23:37.220
BRETT: It’s crazy. It’s crazy. It’s crazy.

00:23:37.220 --> 00:23:38.460
JACK: Okay.

00:23:38.460 --> 00:23:41.640
BRETT: Yeah, so you’re trying to keep track of the criminal activity, and it’s

00:23:41.640 --> 00:23:46.920
not that I’m trying to leave it out; it’s just there’s so damn much that I forget some of it.

00:23:46.920 --> 00:23:52.860
JACK: [MUSIC] So, after he started getting into computer crime,

00:23:52.860 --> 00:23:57.360
learning how to scam people on eBay, then he started selling pirated software,

00:23:57.360 --> 00:24:02.760
like charging people for just the trial version or some bootlegged copies of the software.

00:24:02.760 --> 00:24:07.980
BRETT: So, I got a lot of my inspiration from watching Bill Riley bitch about things on Inside

00:24:07.980 --> 00:24:13.560
Edition. One of the shows he was talking on was – they were selling autographed baseballs of

00:24:13.560 --> 00:24:18.060
Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire. So, I’m watching that, and they were selling it all on eBay,

00:24:18.060 --> 00:24:22.140
and I think at that point in time they were $60 or $80, is what they were selling them for on

00:24:22.140 --> 00:24:27.720
eBay. I’m sitting there watching it like, you know, why not? So I skip class the next day,

00:24:27.720 --> 00:24:32.280
go down to the sports store. I think it was Academy. I go down to Academy, walk in, and I buy

00:24:32.280 --> 00:24:39.420
a case of Major League baseballs. Stop by Kroger on the way home, buy a Sharpie pen, go home and

00:24:39.420 --> 00:24:44.160
start trying to sign these things, and find out pretty quick that hey, you know what? It’s pretty

00:24:44.160 --> 00:24:51.060
hard to forge a signature on a round baseball. So I’m looking at these signatures; it doesn’t look a

00:24:51.060 --> 00:24:56.220
damn thing like the signature I’m seeing online, so the next idea I get is like – I’m like okay,

00:24:56.220 --> 00:25:01.980
well, I’ll print out a certificate of authenticity and I’ll make it look like they’ve signed it right

00:25:01.980 --> 00:25:07.800
after the game, and it’s – that’s why it doesn’t look quite right, but it’ll come with a COA.

00:25:07.800 --> 00:25:11.040
So, I print out my own certificates of authenticity,

00:25:11.040 --> 00:25:17.280
put the entire case of baseballs up one by one on eBay, sell the entire case at $60 apiece.

00:25:17.280 --> 00:25:24.180
A couple weeks later, me and my wife are sitting at home. It’s at night and we get that top knock,

00:25:24.180 --> 00:25:29.580
that bam, bam, bam. So you know – even if you’ve never been – a cop’s never knocked on your door,

00:25:29.580 --> 00:25:34.860
you’d know that’s a cop knock at that point. So I get up, Susan is looking at me.

00:25:34.860 --> 00:25:40.440
She’s sitting on this couch. I get up, open the door, and at the door is Sergeant Pat Tingle and

00:25:40.440 --> 00:25:45.180
a detective. Now, Pat Tingle – I come to know his name pretty well because he keeps visiting

00:25:45.180 --> 00:25:51.600
me over the next few months. But he looks at me and Susan stands up. He looks at me; he’s like,

00:25:51.600 --> 00:25:56.340
are you Brett Johnson? I was like, yeah. He’s like, mind if we come in? I was like yeah, come

00:25:56.340 --> 00:26:04.260
on in. So, he walks in. Susan doesn’t even look at them. She’s just looking at me the entire time.

00:26:04.260 --> 00:26:08.700
Sergeant Tingle, he looks at me. He’s like, I want to talk to you about some baseballs. I was like,

00:26:08.700 --> 00:26:13.020
yeah. He’s like, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire. I was like, yes sir. He’s like,

00:26:13.020 --> 00:26:15.780
autographed. I was like, yes sir. He was like, where’d you get them? I was like,

00:26:15.780 --> 00:26:21.480
I got them off eBay. You bought them off eBay? Yes, sir. With certificates of authenticity?

00:26:21.480 --> 00:26:28.800
Yes, sir. Mr. Johnson, we’ve got a sample of their signatures down at the station, and it doesn’t

00:26:28.800 --> 00:26:35.820
look anything like what you’re selling. I’m like oh, it comes with a certificate of authenticity.

00:26:35.820 --> 00:26:41.460
He was like, Mr. Johnson, we think that you sold those – that you signed those baseballs. I was

00:26:41.460 --> 00:26:46.920
like, no sir. And we think that you printed off those certificates. No, sir. Susan, the entire

00:26:46.920 --> 00:26:52.320
time, is looking right at me. So, he’s like Mr. Johnson, you’re gonna send these people their

00:26:52.320 --> 00:26:57.780
money back or we’re gonna put you in jail. Do you understand? I was like, yes sir. So, they leave.

00:26:57.780 --> 00:27:02.340
I look over; Susan has not – she has not looked at them the entire time. She’s just looked at

00:27:02.340 --> 00:27:07.200
me. She’s not said a single word. Now, up until this point, she doesn’t know that I’m a criminal.

00:27:07.200 --> 00:27:11.040
So, the door shuts. I look over at her and I’m like, what? She’s like,

00:27:11.040 --> 00:27:16.380
you son of a bitch. That’s why you bought those goddamn baseballs. I’m like, yeah. So,

00:27:16.380 --> 00:27:17.820
that’s when she found out I was a criminal.

00:27:17.820 --> 00:27:20.820
JACK: We’re gonna take a short break here. Stay with us.

00:27:20.820 --> 00:27:24.180
So, did you get arrested for the fake autograph baseball thing?

00:27:24.180 --> 00:27:28.560
BRETT: No, no, no. That’s one of the things you see about – and even today you see that

00:27:28.560 --> 00:27:35.460
a lot about cyber-crime and scams and fraud, is law enforcement will identify the person,

00:27:35.460 --> 00:27:41.580
but it’s such a low level at that point or such a hassle that they basically just come in and

00:27:41.580 --> 00:27:45.240
say hey, send the money back to these people, okay? Well, the only thing that tells someone

00:27:45.240 --> 00:27:51.060
like me or – ‘cause there’s this whole mindset with these online criminals. The only thing that

00:27:51.060 --> 00:27:56.400
really tells someone is hey, I got away with it. I just need to make sure I’m more careful next time.

00:27:56.400 --> 00:28:00.900
That’s exactly what happens, and you also learn that they, you only return the money

00:28:00.900 --> 00:28:06.240
to the people who are complaining. So, you’re profiting at the same time, alright? And that

00:28:06.240 --> 00:28:11.880
continues this trajectory, so you become an even better criminal, and basically law enforcement,

00:28:11.880 --> 00:28:17.640
that consequence of just law enforcement visiting trains you to become more careful the next time.

00:28:17.640 --> 00:28:21.600
JACK: He was twenty-six years old when that happened, and after that he learned how to

00:28:21.600 --> 00:28:26.580
install mod chips in PlayStations, and he was good at this, and he was starting to do it as

00:28:26.580 --> 00:28:30.720
a service. Like, anyone who needed a mod chip installed, they could come and pay him to do

00:28:30.720 --> 00:28:34.980
it and he’d get it done. There was no scam here; it was just something he enjoyed doing for cash.

00:28:34.980 --> 00:28:40.440
BRETT: So, I was installing mod chips. I was actually – I had partnered with the Electronic

00:28:40.440 --> 00:28:46.140
Games Boutique in the County Mall at that point so that any PlayStation 1 they sold,

00:28:46.140 --> 00:28:48.720
the kids that were selling them to these people would ask them hey,

00:28:48.720 --> 00:28:52.860
you want a mod chip on that? If they said yes, I would install the mod chips for the guys.

00:28:52.860 --> 00:28:57.000
That led into installing mod chips into cable boxes, turning on all the channels,

00:28:57.000 --> 00:29:03.720
which in turn led into programming the satellite DSS cards. So, that – the eighteen-inch satellite

00:29:03.720 --> 00:29:08.940
systems. At about the same time I start programming those cards, a Canadian judge

00:29:08.940 --> 00:29:14.460
ruled that it was legal for Canadian citizens to pirate satellite DSS signals. He said that hey,

00:29:14.460 --> 00:29:20.100
since RCA is not selling the systems up here, my citizens can pirate the signal.

00:29:20.100 --> 00:29:25.140
Overnight what happens is, is you go down to Best Buy, you buy a system, take it out to the parking

00:29:25.140 --> 00:29:29.220
lot, pull the card out, throw the system away, program the card, ship it to Canada; you’re making

00:29:29.220 --> 00:29:36.420
$500 a pop. [MUSIC] At about the same time, that – PayPal really becomes popular, alright? So, I was

00:29:36.420 --> 00:29:41.520
making a lot of money on PayPal, having people pay by PayPal, $500 a pop, shipping cards to Canada.

00:29:41.520 --> 00:29:46.200
I had so many cards – I had so many orders I could not fill them all,

00:29:46.200 --> 00:29:50.880
figured out pretty quick I don’t need to fill any of them. Who are they gonna complain to?

00:29:50.880 --> 00:29:55.140
They’re in Canada; it’s not like they’re gonna do anything to me. So, I don’t fill any of the

00:29:55.140 --> 00:30:00.180
orders, start stealing a lot of money, got worried about how much was coming in. I was

00:30:00.180 --> 00:30:06.660
stealing about $4,000 a week at that point. This was 1996, ‘97, somewhere through there.

00:30:06.660 --> 00:30:10.200
Got worried about how much was coming in, thought they were gonna look at me for money laundering,

00:30:10.200 --> 00:30:14.820
figured the best thing I could do is get a fake driver’s license, open up a bank account under

00:30:14.820 --> 00:30:19.680
that, launder the money through that, cash out at an ATM. No one will ever know it’s me.

00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:23.580
Didn’t know where to get a fake ID. Got online, looked around, looked around,

00:30:23.580 --> 00:30:27.900
found this guy named Fake ID Man who had a forum and everything else, and all the

00:30:27.900 --> 00:30:33.180
people on the forum were talking about how good his IDs were. He advertised all fifty states.

00:30:33.180 --> 00:30:39.060
I fell for that shit. So, I sent him $200, I sent him my picture, he rips me off, and I get angry.

00:30:39.060 --> 00:30:45.240
I get really angry because I still need that ID and I had never been ripped off like that before.

00:30:45.240 --> 00:30:51.600
So, here I am, the victim. I keep looking around, find this website, Counterfeit

00:30:51.600 --> 00:30:55.680
Library. Counterfeit Library, what they were doing was, is they were – their main business

00:30:55.680 --> 00:31:00.840
was selling counterfeit degrees. It was a degree mill type thing or counterfeit degrees as well.

00:31:00.840 --> 00:31:05.940
They had a forum on there that was somewhat defunct. No one was really using it, so I get

00:31:05.940 --> 00:31:10.740
on the forum and I – really, the only thing I’m doing is bitching about being ripped off. About

00:31:10.740 --> 00:31:15.900
the same time I’m on there, these other two guys kinda buddy up with me. Their names were Mr. X;

00:31:15.900 --> 00:31:21.720
he was out of Los Angeles. Beelzebub was out of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and we become buddies.

00:31:21.720 --> 00:31:28.020
I bitch every day, they’re talking about some of the crimes and scams that they were doing. We also

00:31:28.020 --> 00:31:33.780
start talking on ICQ. Beelzebub reaches out to me after a couple weeks and he gets me on ICQ,

00:31:33.780 --> 00:31:38.640
and he’s like, I can make you an ID. Well, by this point in time, I’m pretty much friends with the

00:31:38.640 --> 00:31:44.580
people who run Counterfeit Library. We’re talking by e-mail, by ICQ and everything else like that,

00:31:44.580 --> 00:31:50.040
and I’m – was like well, make me an ID. He’s like no, no, no. He’s like, I’m gonna charge you $200.

00:31:50.040 --> 00:31:54.420
I’m like yeah, like hell you are. He’s like look, man – he’s like, if you’re gonna do this kinda

00:31:54.420 --> 00:31:58.560
stuff online, you’ve gotta learn how to trust people at some point. So I’m gonna make your ID,

00:31:58.560 --> 00:32:03.300
but I’m gonna charge you $200 because you have to learn to trust people.

00:32:03.300 --> 00:32:07.020
So I thought about that and I was like, I tell you what. I said, I’m gonna send you $200,

00:32:07.020 --> 00:32:12.300
so that way when you rip me off, I’ll have them boot your ass off here, too.

00:32:12.300 --> 00:32:17.220
So he was like, done. Just send me the $200. So, I send him $200, send him my picture.

00:32:17.220 --> 00:32:22.020
A couple weeks later I get this ID in the name of Steven Schwecki. To me, it was the prettiest

00:32:22.020 --> 00:32:27.840
damn thing I had ever seen. [MUSIC] So, I use it to set up bank accounts, to go to cheque cashing

00:32:27.840 --> 00:32:32.600
services, to commit all these different types of crimes. I’m very happy with that.

00:32:32.600 --> 00:32:38.760
JACK: He makes friends with the people on this site, Counterfeit Library, and he learns to trust

00:32:38.760 --> 00:32:42.960
them. He was teaching them the scams he knew and they were teaching him the scams they knew,

00:32:42.960 --> 00:32:47.280
and by this point, Brett was using the name Gollumfun on these online forums,

00:32:47.280 --> 00:32:52.800
so everyone in the forums and chat just knew him as Gollumfun. Now, this site, Counterfeit Library,

00:32:52.800 --> 00:32:58.020
changed the game. I mean, this was way before darknet marketplaces came around, but criminals

00:32:58.020 --> 00:33:02.640
still needed a place to come online and buy and sell criminal things. But the thing is,

00:33:02.640 --> 00:33:07.980
how do you know you can trust a person that you’re buying something from? There’s no real reputation

00:33:07.980 --> 00:33:14.160
system from someone you meet in a chat room or forum. So, Counterfeit Library added a reputation

00:33:14.160 --> 00:33:21.060
feature. Specifically you could vouch for someone, which meant if someone doesn’t go through with a

00:33:21.060 --> 00:33:27.120
deal and you vouched for them, now it’s on you to make things right. Now people suddenly had

00:33:27.120 --> 00:33:31.860
a way to have a more trustworthy interaction when buying illegal things from this website.

00:33:31.860 --> 00:33:38.700
BRETT: The forum really takes off. When the forum takes off, it was initially me,

00:33:38.700 --> 00:33:44.640
Beelzebub, Mr. X. The first real seller that comes in at that point was this guy who went by

00:33:44.640 --> 00:33:51.600
the screen name of Mubin, M-U-B-I-N. He was from Pakistan and what he offered was is he said hey,

00:33:51.600 --> 00:33:58.500
anyone needs any type of computer certificate from A+ on up through CCIE, I will take that for you

00:33:58.500 --> 00:34:04.860
in whatever name you need it taken in, and that way you get the certificate in your name. So, he

00:34:04.860 --> 00:34:10.080
started selling that and he provided that product, and it was really good, so if someone had – if

00:34:10.080 --> 00:34:15.600
someone wanted to be a CSO or whatever the hell they wanted, they could come up with any number

00:34:15.600 --> 00:34:20.940
of certificates, pay the price. So, CCIE, Mubin charged I think $2,500 for that at that point.

00:34:20.940 --> 00:34:27.060
JACK: This is hilarious to me. Some guy in Pakistan who’s skilled enough to pass a CCIE exam,

00:34:27.060 --> 00:34:32.280
which is very hard, is willing to sit for any test and give your name to complete

00:34:32.280 --> 00:34:37.440
it. Unreal. I’m taking a bunch of these IT certification tests, and I remember after a while,

00:34:37.440 --> 00:34:42.060
they started requiring to have your picture on the test results, and I always wondered

00:34:42.060 --> 00:34:48.240
why they added this extra security layer, but yeah, it’s for stuff like this. Now I know.

00:34:48.240 --> 00:34:53.940
BRETT: The thing about love – and Susan loved me to no end. She really did. I have no doubt

00:34:53.940 --> 00:34:59.520
about that. Love tends to blind people. They don’t want to think that you’re this bad guy,

00:34:59.520 --> 00:35:04.740
and certainly I was the social engineer and I was a manipulator and everything else, and I

00:35:04.740 --> 00:35:09.720
was able to convince her for three years that that wasn’t happening until the police started to show

00:35:09.720 --> 00:35:16.740
up at the door through – not Beanie Babies, but autographed – fraudulently autographed baseballs,

00:35:16.740 --> 00:35:23.040
an entire shipment of FrontPage 98 that were – that was shipped with a patch,

00:35:23.040 --> 00:35:27.780
turned into the real program, stuff like that. Cops start to show up and Susan finds

00:35:27.780 --> 00:35:31.860
out pretty quick that I’m a criminal. Then the next six years were me manipulating her,

00:35:31.860 --> 00:35:35.520
telling her that I’ve stopped, I will stop, I’m going to stop,

00:35:35.520 --> 00:35:40.260
and finally flying mad and telling her hey, you like spending the money, don’t you?

00:35:40.260 --> 00:35:44.820
The way she got away from me – and I think that she – I think she inherently understood

00:35:44.820 --> 00:35:50.460
that the only way that I would ever give up on the marriage was through infidelity, so she

00:35:50.460 --> 00:35:54.960
starts cheating on me and I find out about it, and that is the line in the sand for me right there.

00:35:54.960 --> 00:36:02.820
So, it took – I found out what it was, and some of your listeners may recognize this; you walk

00:36:02.820 --> 00:36:07.080
past someone’s computer and they’ll minimize the screen or hide the phone or whatever, and you’re

00:36:07.080 --> 00:36:11.760
like okay, some shit’s going on there. Well, she – I would walk by her computer and she would switch

00:36:11.760 --> 00:36:17.700
to another screen or minimize it or whatever, and I’m like okay, something’s going on there.

00:36:17.700 --> 00:36:22.620
So, I catch her in bed one morning and I go in – I had placed key-loggers on the computer

00:36:22.620 --> 00:36:26.040
and everything else, so I go and start seeing what she’s been into, and she’s been cheating

00:36:26.040 --> 00:36:32.760
with this guy. So, I sit there kinda stunned, and finally get up that morning. She’s asleep in the

00:36:32.760 --> 00:36:38.160
bedroom and I walk in and I open up the wardrobe door and I get out a suitcase, and I open it up

00:36:38.160 --> 00:36:42.060
and I start putting her clothes in it. She wakes up; she was like, where are you going? I’m like,

00:36:42.060 --> 00:36:48.780
I’m not going anywhere. You are. I talked real big then, but the truth of the matter was is

00:36:48.780 --> 00:36:54.120
it took about a week of me crying and everything else for me to – for us to end that relationship.

00:36:54.120 --> 00:36:59.220
I took her back to Hazard, Kentucky, came back to Charleston, South Carolina,

00:36:59.220 --> 00:37:04.140
and that fear that I had always had of being abandoned, of the people that I love leaving,

00:37:04.140 --> 00:37:10.260
that became real. I caused it, of course, but it was still real to me. I started – I was

00:37:10.260 --> 00:37:17.220
walking around the house in a complete daze, just getting suicidal. The only person I was talking to

00:37:17.220 --> 00:37:22.620
was a criminal friend of mine. His name was Sean Mims. I had gotten to the point – I had told him

00:37:22.620 --> 00:37:27.000
through ICQ what was going on. We started talking over the phone at that point.

00:37:27.000 --> 00:37:32.820
So, I was talking to him and I was getting more and more suicidal. Realized it, picked up the

00:37:32.820 --> 00:37:37.080
phone book, went through – it’s always been that weird shit with me; I went through the phone book,

00:37:37.080 --> 00:37:41.280
went through Psychology, and I saw this criminal psychologist, and I was like obviously I need

00:37:41.280 --> 00:37:47.220
that. Called her crying, and she was like, come in today. So, I went in and I told her – I mean,

00:37:47.220 --> 00:37:51.660
I told her everything. After I asked her if she could ever tell on me. She’s like no,

00:37:51.660 --> 00:37:55.380
I can’t tell on you as long as you’re not actively trying to break the law. I was like, okay.

00:37:55.380 --> 00:38:00.000
So I told her who I was and what was going on, and she was doing some good. I mean, she did a

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:05.940
lot of good about talking about motivations and my life and things that were going on with me,

00:38:05.940 --> 00:38:12.900
and listening to me. What happens is is after about four months, I get – you get lonely, man.

00:38:12.900 --> 00:38:17.460
I didn’t have anybody to talk to. I didn’t have any friends or anything. I had associates online.

00:38:17.460 --> 00:38:21.780
So, I got lonely, I got horny. I had started drinking by that point. I was thirty-four; I had

00:38:21.780 --> 00:38:27.360
never really drank before, so I started – I was a big fan of the Big Lebowski, so I thought hey,

00:38:27.360 --> 00:38:33.960
let’s start with White Russians. So, I start drinking, get lonely one night, and I’m horny,

00:38:33.960 --> 00:38:38.460
and I’m like, let’s go to the strip club. I had never been to a strip club in my life,

00:38:38.460 --> 00:38:43.740
and I am that idiot. I walked in, and I had actually looked it up online. I was that big

00:38:43.740 --> 00:38:46.980
guy that always researches everything. I was trying to find the strip club I’d be – I’d

00:38:46.980 --> 00:38:51.420
get laid at. So it was called Joe’s Roundup, and it was this little hole-in-the-wall place.

00:38:51.420 --> 00:38:58.740
I walk in and there’s literally two dancers there. The first one I see is Elizabeth, and

00:38:58.740 --> 00:39:02.040
she comes over and she’s like, you want to buy me a drink? I was like yeah, how much is a drink?

00:39:02.040 --> 00:39:06.480
She was like, $25. I was like, that’s a hell of a drink. We spent, I don’t know, three or four

00:39:06.480 --> 00:39:11.100
hours just talking. That’s it, just talking. Little did I know that a lot of strippers,

00:39:11.100 --> 00:39:17.580
it’s just talk. That’s all you do. So, I found myself infatuated with her. I didn’t realize

00:39:17.580 --> 00:39:21.780
at that point in time she had – she’s asking me what kind of watch I wore and where I lived and

00:39:21.780 --> 00:39:28.740
what type of car I drove and everything else. She was sizing me up. So I left that night, walk back

00:39:28.740 --> 00:39:32.640
in a week later, the second time I had ever been to the strip club. Walked back in a week later,

00:39:32.640 --> 00:39:36.840
looked at her, and I was like hey, would you like to go out to dinner with me? She was like well,

00:39:36.840 --> 00:39:40.560
I’m working tonight. I can’t go out to dinner, but I can do lunch. I was like well, hell, let’s

00:39:40.560 --> 00:39:46.260
go see. Let’s go do lunch. So she picked out one of these really expensive restaurants, of course.

00:39:46.260 --> 00:39:52.200
JACK: Elizabeth had a taste for expensive things, and Brett thought that if he could buy her those

00:39:52.200 --> 00:39:58.260
things she wanted, then it would show his love and she’d like him. She was also a stripper

00:39:58.260 --> 00:40:03.720
and got wasted a lot, so maybe she didn’t quite care where the money was coming from,

00:40:03.720 --> 00:40:09.240
either. So, this gave Brett an incentive to kick the online crimes into high gear.

00:40:09.240 --> 00:40:16.140
BRETT: [MUSIC] We were pretty big on fake driver’s licenses, eBay, PayPal fraud.

00:40:16.140 --> 00:40:24.300
Little did we know that there was this kid by the name of Dmitry Golubov who – he was a spammer

00:40:24.300 --> 00:40:28.620
and he had been watching what we were doing with Counterfeit Library. So,

00:40:28.620 --> 00:40:32.700
he picks up the phone one day. He calls his buddies, they call their buddies.

00:40:32.700 --> 00:40:38.160
They end up having a physical conference in Odessa and they hatch this idea for a site

00:40:38.160 --> 00:40:44.460
called CarderPlanet. So, CarderPlanet is basically the genesis of credit card fraud as we know it.

00:40:44.460 --> 00:40:50.940
JACK: This Dmitry guy who went by Script on the forum was trying to sell credit card stuff on

00:40:50.940 --> 00:40:56.940
Counterfeit Library, but since nobody had ever done this on the site, nobody believed him. At

00:40:56.940 --> 00:41:01.860
this point, Brett, or Gollumfun, was pretty senior on the site and all sellers had to be

00:41:01.860 --> 00:41:06.780
checked out by him before they could sell on the site. So, Dmitry gets in touch with Brett.

00:41:06.780 --> 00:41:12.480
BRETT: He comes on as the screen name Script, and he starts talking about how he’s got

00:41:12.480 --> 00:41:16.860
credit card information that hey, you give me an address, a phone number,

00:41:16.860 --> 00:41:19.820
wait five business days, you can order whatever you want to order.

00:41:19.820 --> 00:41:25.500
JACK: Well, since Brett had to confirm that these stolen credit cards that Dmitry was selling

00:41:25.500 --> 00:41:31.500
were real, he called up Dell and ordered $5,000 worth of computers with this stolen credit card,

00:41:31.500 --> 00:41:35.820
then calls up Thompson’s Computer Warehouse and buys another $4,000 worth of stuff,

00:41:35.820 --> 00:41:41.700
all with the stolen credit cards Dmitry gave to him to try. He waits five business days.

00:41:41.700 --> 00:41:46.380
BRETT: All that product ships. It arrives at the drop address. I’m sitting there looking at

00:41:46.380 --> 00:41:55.080
$9,000 worth of computer stuff. Post the review on Counterfeit Library, and I say overnight,

00:41:55.080 --> 00:41:57.840
but – and it may have been overnight. It was no more than forty-eight hours,

00:41:57.840 --> 00:42:05.160
but that review posts and literally everything shifts from that eBay fraud, PayPal, and fake

00:42:05.160 --> 00:42:12.360
ID stuff to credit fraud. Everyone sees the potential in that and everyone says we want this.

00:42:12.360 --> 00:42:19.260
From that point in time, Dmitry brings over Boa, who sold – his name was Roman Vega – he sold

00:42:19.260 --> 00:42:23.820
dump information and he sold counterfeit credit cards as well. He brings over a guy named Big

00:42:23.820 --> 00:42:29.100
Buyer. He brings over all these other Ukrainians that provided a slew of different products and

00:42:29.100 --> 00:42:35.340
services so that you can hide identity, you can get counterfeit credit cards, dump information,

00:42:35.340 --> 00:42:41.100
CVV information online, whatever you wanted to steal, any type of credit.

00:42:41.100 --> 00:42:45.720
JACK: What people on the site were doing were buying shipments of expensive things

00:42:45.720 --> 00:42:48.300
like laptops or something with stolen credit cards

00:42:48.300 --> 00:42:50.580
and then turning them around and selling that stuff on eBay.

00:42:50.580 --> 00:42:57.540
BRETT: A good carder – and I term myself a good carder – you would – you could put cash in pocket,

00:42:57.540 --> 00:43:06.000
$30,000 to $40,000 a month on profit on that, alright? That changes with CVV1. With CVV1,

00:43:06.000 --> 00:43:10.800
that became $30,000 to $40,000 a day that people were pulling out of ATMs.

00:43:10.800 --> 00:43:17.400
JACK: Oh, the CVV 1 hack. Okay, so think about it; suppose you had a picture of the front and back of

00:43:17.400 --> 00:43:22.260
someone’s credit card. Yeah, sure, that’s enough information to buy whatever you want online,

00:43:22.260 --> 00:43:27.120
but if you want to make money from that, it takes that extra step of selling whatever

00:43:27.120 --> 00:43:32.040
it is you bought for actual cash, and that’s what people were doing on the site. But what

00:43:32.040 --> 00:43:36.480
people wanted to do was skip that whole step of buying something just to sell it so they

00:43:36.480 --> 00:43:42.360
can make money. Why not use that card and just put it into an ATM and pull money out? But if

00:43:42.360 --> 00:43:47.340
all you have are the numbers of the card and not the actual card, you can’t walk up to an ATM and

00:43:47.340 --> 00:43:54.600
just type those numbers in and get the money out. You need that physical card, and nobody had that.

00:43:54.600 --> 00:44:01.140
So, Counterfeit Library began exploding with chatter about how to get magstripe writers and

00:44:01.140 --> 00:44:05.460
blank credit cards and ways to write the data to the card. But here’s the problem;

00:44:05.460 --> 00:44:09.600
there’s a security code on all the cards to fight this exact problem,

00:44:09.600 --> 00:44:14.520
so that if someone gets your credit card numbers, they can’t just write it to a new card. It’s a

00:44:14.520 --> 00:44:18.780
special code that the bank will check, but it’s not visible when you just look at the card. Well,

00:44:18.780 --> 00:44:23.640
what someone found out is that there were some banks that didn’t implement that security code at

00:44:23.640 --> 00:44:28.560
all. You could just write any data to the card and put anything in the security code, and the ATMs

00:44:28.560 --> 00:44:35.580
would accept it. This enabled carders to just buy a ton of credit cards from customers at that bank

00:44:35.580 --> 00:44:43.980
and write them to blank cards, and then go to ATMs and cash out. This became known as the CVV1 hack.

00:44:43.980 --> 00:44:50.100
BRETT: The Ukrainians simply could not put cash in pocket literally themselves, so they had to

00:44:50.100 --> 00:44:58.140
rely on money mules. The order came down, or the offer was we will provide the track data.

00:44:58.140 --> 00:45:03.120
We need money mules. At that point you will send us back 60%. You will keep 40%.

00:45:03.120 --> 00:45:08.700
JACK: So, this became the thing. The Ukrainians on the site would give you some stolen credit cards,

00:45:08.700 --> 00:45:13.320
you’d then write that data to a blank credit card, and then take it to an ATM and cash out

00:45:13.320 --> 00:45:17.220
whatever you could. Then you’d have to send 60% of your take back to the Ukrainians,

00:45:17.220 --> 00:45:22.020
and they’d send you more cards. If you had enough cards and could hit up enough ATMs,

00:45:22.020 --> 00:45:27.540
you could make $30,000 to $40,000 a day with this. It was around this time that

00:45:27.540 --> 00:45:33.540
a new site showed up called ShadowCrew. Yeah, so let’s talk about ShadowCrew.

00:45:33.540 --> 00:45:34.620
BRETT: Okay.

00:45:34.620 --> 00:45:36.960
JACK: So, you started ShadowCrew?

00:45:36.960 --> 00:45:40.374
BRETT: No. So, what happened was…

00:45:40.374 --> 00:45:41.700
JACK: Wikipedia says you did.

00:45:41.700 --> 00:45:47.520
BRETT: Yeah, Wikipedia says I did, and here – and I will accept that to a degree,

00:45:47.520 --> 00:45:53.640
with this caveat. What happens is, we were running Counterfeit Library, okay? Counterfeit

00:45:53.640 --> 00:46:00.060
Library had transitioned over to strictly credit, so we had people on there that were

00:46:00.060 --> 00:46:04.860
selling driver’s licenses. We had Grey Wolf, we had a couple Michigan guys. Lighthawk was

00:46:04.860 --> 00:46:11.820
one of them. Seth Sanders was an ID-maker. Seth really hated, and I mean he hated,

00:46:11.820 --> 00:46:17.760
the entire credit game. His only interest was in making fake IDs. So, he comes to me and he was

00:46:17.760 --> 00:46:23.340
like – ‘cause we always talked on Sunday night on ICQ, all of us did. He was like Gollum, can I – do

00:46:23.340 --> 00:46:29.520
you mind if I go off and I make a website that just deals in fake IDs? I’m like dude, I don’t

00:46:29.520 --> 00:46:35.400
care about that. Go off and do that. I wish you the best. So he goes off and builds ShadowCrew,

00:46:35.400 --> 00:46:43.920
okay? Just him. He builds ShadowCrew. The problem was is ShadowCrew was only fake IDs. No one was

00:46:43.920 --> 00:46:49.260
interested in fake IDs unless you needed one to run a credit card. No one was interested in that.

00:46:49.260 --> 00:46:54.660
So he’s got maybe sixty members over there. All the business is over on Counterfeit Library.

00:46:54.660 --> 00:47:00.600
Our problem was, Counterfeit Library was really the wild west. There was no moderation,

00:47:00.600 --> 00:47:08.220
anything else. If I wanted somebody booted off one of those forums, I had to contact the owners of

00:47:08.220 --> 00:47:14.340
Counterfeit Library and say hey, get rid of this guy. Because of that – and again,

00:47:14.340 --> 00:47:19.260
Counterfeit Library was – its prime business was the degree mill stuff, of counterfeit

00:47:19.260 --> 00:47:24.900
degrees. There was a real distance learning guy that had been on Good Morning America.

00:47:24.900 --> 00:47:30.840
He was well respected throughout the country and everything else. He found out about Counterfeit

00:47:30.840 --> 00:47:36.780
Library. He had a large forum and a large following on his forum. He posts about Counterfeit

00:47:36.780 --> 00:47:42.900
Library on his forum. What happens is is those members on his forum start to flood our forum

00:47:42.900 --> 00:47:49.860
with just bullshit, just troll post, enough so that you had to go five or six pages deep to start

00:47:49.860 --> 00:47:55.380
getting the real meat of Counterfeit Library. So, it’s starting to get overran. We’re having

00:47:55.380 --> 00:48:01.980
Joe job attacks, everything else like that, just very hard to moderate, especially since we didn’t

00:48:01.980 --> 00:48:08.760
have moderators onsite. So, Seth comes over to me, I don’t know, two months later, and he was like,

00:48:08.760 --> 00:48:12.960
Gollum, why don’t you come over to ShadowCrew? I’m like, what are you talking about? He’s like well,

00:48:12.960 --> 00:48:17.820
look; he said, I’ve got the platform built. Not only that, but I’ve – we’re running PHP,

00:48:17.820 --> 00:48:22.680
we’re not logging IPs at least on the forum side. We’re logging it on the server side.

00:48:22.680 --> 00:48:26.700
He said but we’ve got all this going on, it’s much more secure. We’ve got moderators,

00:48:26.700 --> 00:48:31.860
we’ve got admins and everything else. I’m like look, man – I said it sounds like a good idea. I

00:48:31.860 --> 00:48:36.720
said I’ll come over. Make me superadmin; I’ll come over as long as you let me put in charge of the

00:48:36.720 --> 00:48:43.980
forums who I want in charge, and you let me add whatever forums I want to add. He was like, done.

00:48:43.980 --> 00:48:51.180
JACK: [MUSIC] So Brett, or Gollumfun, was a moderator and admin of ShadowCrew,

00:48:51.180 --> 00:48:55.620
and he made an area for carding and he got the Ukrainians onboard to the new site,

00:48:55.620 --> 00:49:00.060
and things were looking good on this new site. Carding was big on ShadowCrew,

00:49:00.060 --> 00:49:04.800
probably its biggest draw, but he started seeing people posting database dumps to the site,

00:49:04.800 --> 00:49:09.120
too. This was cool to Gollumfun. He started looking through these to see if there’s anything

00:49:09.120 --> 00:49:14.100
useful for him in that data. Sometimes he’d find some data to be able to open accounts under other

00:49:14.100 --> 00:49:17.940
people’s names and stuff, and there were little things that he was doing to make money from this.

00:49:17.940 --> 00:49:20.520
BRETT: Then after that, the next real database of

00:49:20.520 --> 00:49:24.780
consequence that I got was the California State Death Index.

00:49:24.780 --> 00:49:30.540
So, I had access to that, started doing a lot of research on okay, how can you use this? The

00:49:30.540 --> 00:49:36.240
idea – the first idea that I had was, I wonder if you could apply for Social Security benefits

00:49:36.240 --> 00:49:42.180
for these people, because part of the research I found out was the federal government doesn’t

00:49:42.180 --> 00:49:48.600
know you’re dead unless there’s been a Social Security death benefit filed for that person.

00:49:48.600 --> 00:49:53.580
So I was like okay, can I file for Social Security benefits? Tried to do that; turns out you could

00:49:53.580 --> 00:49:57.900
not because the Social Security Administration wanted that person to come in for a physical

00:49:57.900 --> 00:50:03.120
interview. The number had been dormant for so long. So, that didn’t work. So, the next idea

00:50:03.120 --> 00:50:09.960
I had was well, I wonder if you could file income taxes on these people. Turns out you can. [MUSIC]

00:50:09.960 --> 00:50:15.840
So, I started filing income tax returns, fraudulent income tax returns, on dead people

00:50:15.840 --> 00:50:21.180
and stealing a lot of money. I got to where I could file a tax return once every six minutes

00:50:21.180 --> 00:50:29.160
manually. I’d file tax returns Sunday through Wednesday, usually 100, 180 tax returns a week.

00:50:29.160 --> 00:50:35.580
Thursday I’d take a road trip, plot out a map of ATMs, Friday and Saturday cash out

00:50:35.580 --> 00:50:40.500
to the tune of usually $150,00, $160,000 a week. Put that money in a backpack,

00:50:40.500 --> 00:50:45.060
come back home to Charleston, South Carolina, throw the money in a spare bedroom that I had.

00:50:45.060 --> 00:50:52.020
JACK: Whoa, that’s a lot of money. What he was doing was just submitting tax returns for random

00:50:52.020 --> 00:50:56.700
people and then getting the money back from their returns, put on a prepaid debit card,

00:50:56.700 --> 00:51:02.280
and then cashing that out. Now by this time, ShadowCrew had attracted quite a bit of users.

00:51:02.280 --> 00:51:07.800
At its peak, it had 4,000 users. So, there was a certain amount of critical mass at this point.

00:51:07.800 --> 00:51:12.060
More criminals attracted more criminals and more criminal behavior. Keep in mind,

00:51:12.060 --> 00:51:18.240
this is way before Tor or the dark web, or even Bitcoin. This is all going on in the year 2004,

00:51:18.240 --> 00:51:22.380
so this was a website just on the clearnet, right, on the internet for anyone to see,

00:51:22.380 --> 00:51:27.540
and some of the stuff Gollumfun saw going down was just crazy.

00:51:27.540 --> 00:51:33.360
BRETT: There were three roles that we – that I implemented that I wanted followed by. Those

00:51:33.360 --> 00:51:37.260
three rules were no counterfeit currency, ‘cause I was scared to death that we were

00:51:37.260 --> 00:51:41.280
gonna get Secret Service attention, and at my – my view at that point in time is

00:51:41.280 --> 00:51:46.020
there’s no law enforcement agency better than the Secret Service. So, no counterfeit currency.

00:51:46.020 --> 00:51:52.080
I didn’t want any drugs because I had historically had this prejudice against drugs. I didn’t want

00:51:52.080 --> 00:51:57.240
anyone using drugs or selling drugs, and finally, no child pornography. The only

00:51:57.240 --> 00:52:03.300
one we really obeyed was no child porn. We had the Thomas Cook travelers’ cheques,

00:52:03.300 --> 00:52:08.340
which were – I mean, they were one-to-one as far as not being able to tell the difference. We

00:52:08.340 --> 00:52:13.680
had the USA superbills that were coming in. We had the EU superbills at one point. So, we had

00:52:13.680 --> 00:52:21.060
counterfeit currency out the wazoo. Drugs, so we allowed first pot and ecstasy and then it turned

00:52:21.060 --> 00:52:25.800
into Oxycontin and everything else from that point. Even I dealt in Oxycontin at one point.

00:52:25.800 --> 00:52:28.860
JACK: [MUSIC]

00:52:28.860 --> 00:52:35.400
As you can imagine, ShadowCrew was a wild place, the site that launched a thousand criminals. Now,

00:52:35.400 --> 00:52:40.740
the site was started by a guy named Seth, but at some point, Seth gave the site to Brett.

00:52:40.740 --> 00:52:51.600
BRETT: So, I get David Thomas a job working with Big Buyer. Big Buyer sends David enough money to

00:52:51.600 --> 00:52:57.360
go from – I think David was hiding out in Texas at that point. Big Buyer wires him the money to

00:52:57.360 --> 00:53:04.680
go from Texas up to Issaquah, Washington, and to rent a temporary office space, the idea being

00:53:04.680 --> 00:53:10.140
that Big Buyer is going to cart items to the Issaquah, Washington temporary office space,

00:53:10.140 --> 00:53:16.260
David’s gonna pick them up, sell them on eBay, give 50% of the profit to Big Buyer. Okay? That’s

00:53:16.260 --> 00:53:23.460
the deal. So, Big – so, David goes to Issaquah, gets this temporary office space. Big Buyer places

00:53:23.460 --> 00:53:28.980
the first order. Now, I’m friends with Big Buyer at this point. Big Buyer places the first order,

00:53:28.980 --> 00:53:35.580
outpost.com. The first order is like, $18,000. At that point in time, it was the largest order that

00:53:35.580 --> 00:53:40.980
Outpost had ever been hit with, alright? Order goes through, Outpost ships the items. David

00:53:40.980 --> 00:53:46.440
gets the items in, takes them back to the hotel happier than a pig in shit. He starts bragging

00:53:46.440 --> 00:53:51.600
about it to me and Kim. I’m happy; we’re make – gonna make a lot of money. Kim, the bookseller,

00:53:51.600 --> 00:53:58.140
the guy who thinks he’s Jason Bourne, hears this and he comes to me on ICQ. He’s like – he knows

00:53:58.140 --> 00:54:01.320
my name by this point. He’s like Brett, I want to go to Issaquah to make some money. I’m like dude,

00:54:01.320 --> 00:54:05.040
you’re making money. He’s like no, I want to go up there. I was like, go. Just be careful.

00:54:05.040 --> 00:54:12.360
So, Kim gets in his Saturn, drives his ass from Denver up to Issaquah, Washington.

00:54:12.360 --> 00:54:19.620
They get there the night before, so Big Buyer – in the meantime, Big Buyer has placed a second credit

00:54:19.620 --> 00:54:28.620
card order with outpost.com going to the exact same drop address. Meanwhile, outpost.com has

00:54:28.620 --> 00:54:35.040
found out that the first order is fraudulent. They have notified the Issaquah PD. The Issaquah PD has

00:54:35.040 --> 00:54:41.220
asked outpost.com hey, can you guys just send some empty boxes? Outpost just said why, we’d be happy

00:54:41.220 --> 00:54:49.320
to. Meanwhile, David and Kim meet at the hotel. They party; they literally party all night long.

00:54:49.320 --> 00:54:54.420
Now, the rule was at that point in time, you get up the next morning. Before you go to your drop

00:54:54.420 --> 00:54:59.340
address, you sign onto the – you use the credit card login, you sign on to make sure you can

00:54:59.340 --> 00:55:05.700
sign on. If you can sign on, you go pick up your packages. If you can’t sign on, then that means

00:55:05.700 --> 00:55:12.600
that the bank has been alerted to possible fraud. You go back to sleep that day. They didn’t sign on

00:55:12.600 --> 00:55:19.140
that day. Meanwhile, Big Buyer though, Big Buyer has tried to sign on and he can’t. So all day

00:55:19.140 --> 00:55:27.000
long he’s been trying to contact David and Kim. David and Kim have been out of service. They are

00:55:27.000 --> 00:55:35.160
en route to pick up the packages. Big Buyer is on ICQ, frantic; I need to contact David Thomas. I’m

00:55:35.160 --> 00:55:40.920
like, let me see what I can do. I can’t contact him, either. What happens is David’s got this old

00:55:40.920 --> 00:55:46.980
Cadillac. David’s in the driver’s seat, Kim’s in the passenger seat. David’s girlfriend Brigitte is

00:55:46.980 --> 00:55:54.360
in the backseat. They pull into the complex where the drop address is, the temporary office space.

00:55:54.360 --> 00:56:02.340
As they pull into the complex, David sees this van. The van has somebody sitting in it,

00:56:02.340 --> 00:56:09.840
but the seat is turned incorrectly. It’s turned where the guy is looking directly out of the

00:56:09.840 --> 00:56:17.220
driver’s window. David looks at Kim; that’s an undercover officer. Kim’s like, nah. So, they pull

00:56:17.220 --> 00:56:23.340
on up – they pull on up to the drop address. Kim’s like, I’ll go in and get the packages. He walks

00:56:23.340 --> 00:56:28.620
in, looks at the kid behind the counter. I believe you’ve got some packages for me. The kid’s like

00:56:28.620 --> 00:56:35.580
yeah, hold on just a second. The kid disappears behind the wall. Out pops the Issaquah PD, arrests

00:56:35.580 --> 00:56:43.800
Kim. David in the driver seat of the Eldorado sees the arrest take place, hightails it out of there.

00:56:43.800 --> 00:56:52.320
The police arrest David on the interstate. David – and here’s the other fuckwit that he does – David

00:56:52.320 --> 00:57:00.120
has several fake IDs in his wallet with his real ID. So, they arrest him. Now, what happens is is

00:57:00.120 --> 00:57:07.560
David has the outstanding warrants out of Nebraska for cheque fraud, so we can’t bond him out. Seth,

00:57:07.560 --> 00:57:14.100
though – Kim Taylor didn’t have any outstanding warrants, so Kim Taylor has a bond. Seth uses

00:57:14.100 --> 00:57:21.480
his girlfriend’s credit card to pay for Kim Taylor’s bond. That gave a really bad taste

00:57:21.480 --> 00:57:25.740
in Seth Sander’s mouth. So, he comes to me and he’s like, I quit. You have it.

00:57:25.740 --> 00:57:31.560
JACK: Seth was the guy who started and owned ShadowCrew. It was this whole event that made

00:57:31.560 --> 00:57:37.740
Seth quit and give the site to Brett. So, Brett took over shadowcrew.com, and he was even paying

00:57:37.740 --> 00:57:42.780
the hosting bills. By the way, this site was never profitable on its own. It didn’t charge

00:57:42.780 --> 00:57:48.840
users or anything, so it did cost Brett to keep it going, which is wild because seven years later,

00:57:48.840 --> 00:57:54.480
Silk Road was making millions of dollars doing basically the same thing. Because ShadowCrew

00:57:54.480 --> 00:58:00.840
became a marketplace for illegal things, it was like a darknet market before the darknet existed.

00:58:00.840 --> 00:58:07.320
But over time, Brett started noticing some of the writing on the walls. As he just explained, a few

00:58:07.320 --> 00:58:11.580
people on the site were starting to get arrested. Around this time, Brett was starting to see some

00:58:11.580 --> 00:58:20.040
IP addresses of users on the site that resolved to .gov domains, meaning they could be feds. A couple

00:58:20.040 --> 00:58:25.800
more users were getting arrested too, and so, Brett suspected some of these users might be cops.

00:58:25.800 --> 00:58:30.120
BRETT: I mean, to this day you can peg law enforcement pretty easy because they just

00:58:30.120 --> 00:58:35.700
stand out. They ask the wrong types of questions the wrong way at the wrong time. You’re able to

00:58:35.700 --> 00:58:39.960
see what time they’re logged in and everything else, and they operate the same damn hours every

00:58:39.960 --> 00:58:44.280
single day, everything else like that. So, we were able to peg law enforcement that was coming in,

00:58:44.280 --> 00:58:49.260
so people were getting picked up and I started getting really, really worried. At the same time,

00:58:49.260 --> 00:58:53.880
I’m doing the tax return frauds, doing a lot more money, and decide that hey,

00:58:53.880 --> 00:58:56.940
it’s time for me to leave. So, I announce my retirement, I believe,

00:58:56.940 --> 00:59:03.780
of – April 15, 2004 was my retirement date, and that’s when I leave the site.

00:59:03.780 --> 00:59:09.420
JACK: Just because he left ShadowCrew didn’t mean he stopped running scams. In fact,

00:59:09.420 --> 00:59:14.340
his scams were getting bigger now than ever at this point. Specifically, he still loved

00:59:14.340 --> 00:59:22.440
doing tax refund fraud. In his best week doing that, he made $160,000. Huh, and that’s just

00:59:22.440 --> 00:59:29.460
one week of work. A lot of this money was going to Elizabeth, his stripper girlfriend. We’re at

00:59:29.460 --> 00:59:34.920
an hour into this episode now, and I don’t even think we’ve covered half of what Brett did. So,

00:59:34.920 --> 00:59:39.697
I need a break and maybe you do, too. Okay, I think this was good for day one.

00:59:39.697 --> 00:59:39.714
BRETT: [LAUGHING]

00:59:39.714 --> 00:59:47.580
JACK: I would like to pick it up again maybe next weekend where we talk about you going on the run.

00:59:47.580 --> 00:59:48.420
BRETT: Yeah.

00:59:48.420 --> 00:59:50.160
JACK: Stealing 600k…

00:59:50.160 --> 00:59:53.640
BRETT: Big story, big story, Jack.

00:59:53.640 --> 00:59:55.080
JACK: I know, I know.

00:59:55.080 --> 00:59:57.600
BRETT: It’s a lot of crap.

00:59:57.600 --> 01:00:08.400
(OUTRO): [OUTRO MUSIC] Big thank-you to Brett Johnson, AKA Gollumfun, for sharing this crazy

01:00:08.400 --> 01:00:12.780
story with us. Don’t forget to come back in two weeks where you’ll hear the final installment of

01:00:12.780 --> 01:00:17.940
this story. You’re not gonna believe what happens, so don’t miss it. This show is made by me,

01:00:17.940 --> 01:00:22.260
the snaker, Jack Rhysider. I did the sound design for this one, too. Editing help this

01:00:22.260 --> 01:00:26.400
episode is by the spontaneous Damienne, and this episode was assembled by Tristan Ledger

01:00:26.400 --> 01:00:31.800
and mixed by Proximity Sound. Our theme music is by the cyber-gang, Breakmaster Cylinder. I found

01:00:31.800 --> 01:00:37.500
a really big spider by my front door the other day, and I tried calling Amazon web services to

01:00:37.500 --> 01:00:42.480
take care of it, but no help, strangely. I decided to just try talking with the spider

01:00:42.480 --> 01:00:49.140
and pleading with it. Well, it turns out he’s a web designer, so I showed him my computer. Well,

01:00:49.140 --> 01:00:56.580
he crawled into my keyboard. He’s still in there; he’s under Ctrl. This is Darknet Diaries.