Brett Johnson was a US Most Wanted cybercriminal, called the Original Internet Godfather by US Secret Service for building the first organized cybercrime community called ShadowCrew, which was the precursor to today's darknet and darknet markets. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Brett's Twitter: https://twitter.com/GOllumfun
Brett's Website: https://anglerphish.com

PODCAST INFO:
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Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
3:15 - Early years
37:32 - Phishing and social engineering
55:36 - SolarWinds cyberattack
1:01:23 - Future social engineering fears
1:04:04 - Early cybercrimes
1:16:38 - Cybercrime entrepreneurship
1:20:06 - ShadowCrew
1:51:10 - Dark web
1:59:56 - ShadowCrew arrested
2:11:55 - Cybercrime
2:17:02 - Love
2:49:06 - Prison
3:17:18 - Life after prison
3:39:06 - Advice for young people
3:40:30 - Hope for the future
3:43:59 - Meaning of life

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I was on the run for 4 months, stole $600,000.

1 day, I had stolen, the night before, I had stolen 160K out of ATMs.

Went in the next morning, I woke up, signed on to cartersmarket.com, which was ran by Max Butler, the Iceman, and there's my name, US Most Wanted, on it.

Nobody knew my real name in that environment at all, but then they did.

And it was talking about me being part of the Secret Service, Operation Anglerfish, everything else.

So of course, they're all like- Everybody's after you.

Oh yeah, we're gonna get this son of a bitch.

The following is a conversation with Brett Johnson, a former cyber criminal who built the first organized cyber crime community called Shadow Crew that is the precursor to today's darknet and darknet markets.

He's referred to by the United States Secret Service as quote, the original internet godfather.

He has been the central figure in the cybercrime world for almost 20 years, placed on the US most wanted list in 2006 before being convicted of 39 felonies for cybercrime, escaped from prison, and then eventually being locked up, served his time, and now is helping people understand and fight cybercrime.

This was a raw, honest, emotional, and real episode.

Brett has caused a lot of pain to a lot of people.

And yet his own story is full of trauma and pain and also redemption and love.

This is a good time to say that I have and I will talk to people who have served time in prison and perhaps people who currently are in prison.

I will try to do my best to both empathize with the person across from me and not let them sugarcoat, explain away, or dismiss the crimes they committed.

This is a tough line to walk because if you close your heart to the other person you'll never fully understand their mind and their story But if you open the heart too much you can be manipulated to where the conversation reveals nothing honest or real This requires skill and willingness to take the risk.

I don't know about the skill part, but I'd like to take the risk.

As I've said, I want to understand what makes a person do these crimes, the particular characteristics of their temporary or permanent madness, their justifications, but also their humanity.

I believe each of us have the capacity to become both the criminal and the victim, the predator and the prey.

It's up to us to avoid these paths or to find the path to redemption.

It's our responsibility and burden of being human in a complicated and dangerous world.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, dear friends, here's Brett Johnson.

You were convicted of 39 felonies for cyber crime, placed on the US most wanted list in 2006, escaped from prison, you built the first organized cyber crime community called Shadow Crew that is the precursor to today's darknet and darknet markets.

And for all this, the US intelligence service called you the original internet godfather.

So first question, how did your career as a cybercrime criminal begin?

My life of crime begins when I'm 10 years old 10 years old man.

Think about that I mean, I you were probably playing the robots when you were 10, you know usually kids are doing the Lego bit get involved with sports everything else and With me it wasn't like that with me.

I'm from Eastern, Kentucky Eastern, Kentucky is 1 of these It's like parts of Texas parts of Louisiana that if you're not fortunate enough to have a job, you may be involved in a scam, hustle, fraud, whatever you want to call it, man.

I was, my parents, My mom was basically the captain of the entire fraud industry.

So this is a woman that at 1 point, she's stealing a 108,000 pound Caterpillar D9 bulldozer, tramming it down the road.

At another point, she's taking a slip and fall in a convenience store trying to sue the owner We had a neighbor she acted as a pimp for at 1 point.

a Neighbor acted as a Pimp my mom prostituted.

I mean she acted as a pimp for a neighbor her name was Debbie and My mom used to sell her out You know Debbie needed money and my mom would find men for her to sleep with for cash and she'd take a part of the Cash

so sounds like she diversified the methodologies by which she hustled.

You know, we see that a lot with cyber criminals, you know, that sense of being that entrepreneur.

So what was the motivation you think for her?

Is it basically the rush of playing with the system or being able to know the rules and break the rules and get away with it.

So my mom was the individual, she's still alive.

My mom was the individual who tested people.

She wanted to know how far she could abuse you and you come back and still love her So and that was with every relationship she's ever had She would cheat on the men.

She was involved with she would abuse the her children me and Denise she would Psychological physical.

Oh, it was mental emotional physical everything everything I mean she she used to beat me and Denise with, with belt buckles, you know, and, that ended when, She was, I forgot what we had done.

I think that it may have been the part where she accused me of stealing her marijuana, but she was hitting me and Denise.

We were living in a single wide trailer at that point.

She was hitting me and Denise, we were on the bed trying to get away from it, and Denise kicks her through a closet is what happens.

And Denise stands up and she said, you're through hitting me.

And that was the last time that mom hit us at that point.

For people who know you, and people should definitely watch some of your lectures online, you're extremely charismatic and fun and jolly and whatever word you wanna use.

But if we look at that kind of life, it's, there's darkness there, there's a struggle there.

If you go back to the mind of the kid you were with your mom?

Self-doubt all those kinds of things or did you see this crime this chaos as ultimately exciting?

You know, I don't think – back then I didn't view it as exciting.

Now, it becomes exciting when I start being involved in cybercrime, all right?

But back then it was simply a means to an end was all it was.

So you take a 10-year-old kid, and the way I get involved in crime is, like I said, my mom was the fraudster, my dad was a good guy.

But his issue was, is he loved my mom so much, he was scared of her leaving.

So if she wanted to do something, commit crime, cheat on him, whatever, he would pretty much just put up with it, the 1 instant.

So I mean, this woman used to, she used to bring men home in front of him Tell him that hey, I'm leaving you.

I want you to die blah blah blah blah blah This was my mom There were 2 instances where the man Where he can't take it anymore And the first instance I was I guess I was 7 or 8.

My sister Denise is a year younger than I am.

My dad, I was with my dad, my sister was with my mother, because that's that Eastern Kentucky mentality, you know, men stay with men, women stay with women.

So he was filing for divorce, me and my dad, we were living in an apartment, My mom was living with her grandparents and with her parents, bouncing back and forth between the 2.

And I remember I was sleeping in the bed.

I woke up 1 night and there was some sort of ruckus in the living room.

So I wake up and I walk into the living room and my mom has a knife to my dad's throat.

And basically you're not going to steal my son from me.

My mom was this individual that when she knew she went so far, like I said, she was always this person that tested, well, can I do this to you and you'll still come back?

She knew, she was always also this person that if she went too far, she knew it and she would always try to divert that into something else, all right?

So she knew at that point she'd went too far.

She gets up crying, goes to the bathroom and pretends to slit her wrists so that my dad Ray will respond to that, not respond to what she's just done to him.

She had a history of doing this kind of stuff.

Motivations as far as fraud with her, I think with her, it was, she was an LPN.

She had a very good nurse, but she didn't want to work, was a lot of it.

So with her, it was easier for her to commit fraud.

And when I say commit fraud, it was against businesses, against people.

I remember At 1 point, she's buying over-the-counter capsules and emptying the capsules out and putting some other crap in there and selling it at speed, and people are buying it.

What happens is We were in Panama City at that point, and my mom leaves my dad.

And the way she left my dad, my great-grandfather had died.

My mom tells all 3 of us, hey, I'm taking the kids, and we're going back to Eastern Kentucky to attend the funeral.

She didn't pack any of our clothes at all.

She stows her clothes in the trunk of the car, and she leaves my dad.

And I don't get to see my dad again for, I think, 5, 6 years, something like that.

My mom, like I said, she used to bring men home in front of my dad.

She would—he'd sit there and cry and beg her not to do it.

So we were living at my grandparents' house.

My grandfather, he had converted the house.

He had raised the house up and built apartments underneath of it.

So me and my sister and my mom lived in 1 of the apartments underneath, and that whole side of the family was just nuts.

My granddad, Paul, he would – this is a man that – he didn't want you to eat any of his food.

So there was no such thing as me and Denise going upstairs to eat.

If he found out me and Denise were was taking a bath We were allowed to bath and bathe in 2 inches of water 1 time a week because he didn't want to pay the water bill.

There's rules the rules, you know If you couldn't have the TV on When he went to bed at night you had to have the television the volume you could watch it but without volume because if he heard it, he would, he would get up in the middle of the night and he would kick the power breaker, turn off all the power on you.

This is my, this is my, the family, right?

So my mom, She used to leave me and Denise at home for days, man, for days.

Sometimes she'd take me and Denise with her.

Sometimes we'd wait in the living room as she went and partied and everything else.

Most of the time she left us at home and my entry into crime, Denise walks in 1 day, she's 9 years old, man, she walks in 1 day and she's got a pack of pork chops in her hand.

And I looked at her and I said, where'd you get that?

And you know, it's like, show me how you did that.

So she takes me over and she shows me how she steals food how she's stuffing it down her pants So we start stealing food.

Yeah, let's do that shit So start stealing food and we get to the point where we're wanting a sandwich Well, you can't stuff a loaf of bread down your pants.

So there was a Kmart in the shopping center.

I go over to, to the Kmart, get a hoodie off the, off the rack, take the tags off of it, wear it out, work just fine.

And the way you steal bread is you put the hoodie over your shoulder, stuff a loaf of bread down the sleeve and you walk out with it.

Yeah, you can't wear the hoodie and put the bread down here because you might mash the bread when you zip it up or they

But you got to realize by this point, hell, I'm already seeing what my parents are doing.

So that kind of puzzle solving was something you were already developing yourself in division, because you're pretty young.

But seeing how they act, how they respond to things.

And my mom, I guess you'd call it a good thing, they never kept any of that hidden from the kids.

You know, There was no discussions behind closed doors.

And from your young mind's perspective, seeing that kind of crime, you basically, you know, a lot of us kind of grow up thinking there's rules you're not supposed to break.

If you see other humans breaking those rules, then you realize those rules are just human made.

I was in an environment where there were no decent people.

I didn't really meet my first decent person until I was 16 years old.

So what happens is, is, you know, we start shoplifting food.

My mom finds out that we've been stealing stuff and you know, she joins us.

She, yeah, she comes in, you know, I've got the television, I've got the Atari 2600 playing the hell out of it.

She's like you didn't find that Denise Denise stands up.

We stole it my mom Show me how you did that And she gets her mom too to join in.

And she used to run me and Denise as these little shoplifters.

We'd take, you know, we'd steal stuff for her.

We would distract security and her and my grandmother would steal stuff.

And Denise, you know, I'm adamant, and I kind of mean it.

But the truth is, I say, and I do mean it, that I'm responsible for my choices as an adult.

I believe that when you're a child, you can't control that.

The adults in your environment control what you do.

Once you're an adult, though, your choices are yours.

Now that being said, there's some – you can't dismiss that childhood influencing what I did as an adult.

I mean it was kind of written on on slate that hey this guy's gonna be this guy when he grows up.

That said, like sometimes that 1 person you meet, that decent person, can turn the tide

So what happens is, you know, the abuse, everything continues on.

When I'm 15, my dad was in Panama City, Florida.

My mom was in, you know, we were in Hazard, Kentucky.

And my mom was this woman that the abuse would, it was crazy abuse, man, just crazy stuff.

She would tell me and my sister that she gave up her life for us, that she was gonna leave 1 day and never come back, that we'd find her dead in a ditch someplace.

She'd go out and date these men and she'd come back and she'd talk about how these men were abusing her.

So she'd be dating this guy and she'd come back and she'd start talking about how he had tried to rape her, trying to get me to respond to that.

Well, what happens is, and I knew that, I don't know if I knew it was abuse at that age, all right, but I knew things were fucked up.

And I was talking to my dad in Panama City and I really had it in my head that I was going to go down and live with my dad.

I was set to go to me and my cousins were going to go see Return of the Jedi.

So I called my dad, it was a Sunday, called my dad, and he told me he had either gotten married or he was about to get married to this woman.

And basically, Brett Johnson wasn't going to go down to Florida.

I had to call my dad from payphone, but the result of that was I walked into a hospital, got in an elevator, and a woman got in the elevator at the same time, and I snapped and beat the hell out of her, right there.

Didn't really know what the fuck happened.

And, you know, the elevator, beat the hell out of this lady.

Turned out she looked a shitload like my mom.

1 of the security guards, I played basketball with his son, so he saw me immediately.

I knocked the hell out of him, took off running, made it back to the house where my grandparents were.

They didn't know what had happened, so I didn't say anything.

About an hour later, Kentucky State Police, they pull up in the front yard, and 2 of them get out.

I'm sitting on the front porch, and me and my cousins are.

They start walking up, everybody starts walking out of the house.

And I'm like, I just remember saying, what do you want?

They didn't have juvenile facilities in that county, so I spent 3 months in solitary.

Went to trial, pled guilty to assault in the first degree.

The judge sentenced me to time served and a psychological evaluation where they sent me to Louisville, Kentucky And spent 30 days up there.

They wanted me to have counseling after that and Never went to counseling, you know wanted to but mom was like don't eat it so never went to counseling and I became this pariah in the county.

I mean, not a day goes by that I don't think about that, that.

So I go back to the high school that I was in and I'm this piece of shit.

So I move, we move, we were in Whitesburg at that point.

I finished up the year there and moved to back to Perry County, where, which is where Hazard is.

So we moved there and they've got 3 high schools here.

They've got MC Napier, they've got Hazard High School, and then they've got Dill Scombs High School.

So I was within, me and Denise were within half mile of MC Napier.

Show up there the first day of school, and I met me and my mom and my sister were walking into the school and the kids won't let me in.

So my mom starts raising hell and I'm like, no, let's just go.

So from there it was, we went down to the city school, Hazard, and the principal tells my mom, Denise can come, he can't.

So my mom wants to raise him and I'm like, no, let's just just take me to this other school.

So this other school was like 15 miles away.

And I walked in the first day and this English teacher named Carol Combs, I walked in and handed her the paper.

She heard this voice, as the way she explains it to me, she heard this voice and she looks up and she was like, son, have you ever done any drama before?

I'm like, no, ma'am, but I'm interested in the academic team.

I'm like, no, I'm not interested in theater.

Well, she was the head of the drama department and head of the academics department.

So the deal was, tell you what, you can get on the academics team if you start with theater too.

So what happens is she was the only, she was the first decent person I met in my life and she became this kind of surrogate mother to me.

So under her tutelage, I become 1 of the top academic team guys in the state.

I was this just scourge across all the counties in that part of Kentucky.

If we had a meet, it was like, Jesus Christ, that's Brett Johnson.

She used to tell people they would – the high school that I came from was Whitesburg.

And the first time that Whitesburg came against us, she told me – I was talking to her about a year ago, and she told me, she's like, Brett, she said, that first meet against Weisberg, she said, the captain came in, looked at you, and said, Oh, you've got that Johnson boy on your team.

And she said my response was that Johnson boy is our team So but did that and then with with theater I ended up my senior year.

I won best actor and actress in the state only guy to ever do that in the state.

So Did pretty well man did pretty well had had scholarships coming out of high school and everything else And I'm the idiot that turned him down.

Yeah You'd make a hell of a I mean of all the many things you could probably do, you'd make a hell of a actor.

We've done the college circuit, stuff like that.

What happened was, is so I turned down the Turn down the scholarships, you know scared of leaving I guess it's what it was start with starting Community College and The Community College there hires a new theater director out of California Well, he knew the guy that ran the San Jose State Theater program.

His claim to fame, he had written the 3 Ninjas movie.

Remember that, the 3 Little Ninja Kids back in the 80s?

He had written this for damn film, and it had made a shitload of money.

So, he invites Ed Emanuel to come down and see the play and Ed had written this, civil war piece.

So, we put that on, I was doing like, it was a multiple role thing.

I was doing like 18 different roles in the show.

So Ed sees the show and he was like, scholarship.

He said, look, he said, right now you're a big fish in a small pond.

And he was like, I'll be back in 2 weeks.

I'm out shooting ball with 1 of my cousins and friends.

He pulls up And he gets out of the car and I was like, I'm walk over to him.

I was like, hey, man I'll Walk in you can meet my parents.

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Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal | Lex Fridman Podcast #272