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

1. 0:00 – 3:15

   Introduction

   1. BJBrett Johnson0:00

      I was on the run for four months, stole $600,000. I was in Las Vegas, Nevada. One day, I had stolen, the night before, I had stolen 160K out of ATMs. Went in the next, the next morning I woke up, signed on to cartersmarket.com, which was run by Max Butler, the Iceman. Um, and there's my name, US Most Wanted on it. And, uh, that gets your attention. It was my real name with US Most Wanted beside of 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 out, they're all like-

   2. LFLex Fridman0:37

      So, everybody's after you.

   3. BJBrett Johnson0:39

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

   4. LFLex Fridman0:43

      The following is a conversation with Brett Johnson, a former cyber criminal who built the first organized cyber crime community called ShadowCrew 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 cyber crime world for almost 20 years. Placed on the US Most Wanted List in 2006 before being convicted of 39 felonies for cyber crime, escaped from prison, and then eventually being locked up, served his time, and now is helping people understand and fight cyber crime. 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. I always wear my heart on my sleeve. If I get hurt for it, that's life. 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 on each of us. It's our responsibility and burden of being human in a complicated and dangerous world. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Brett Johnson.

2. 3:15 – 37:32

   Early years

   1. LFLex Fridman3:15

      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 ShadowCrew 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 cyber crime criminal begin?

   2. BJBrett Johnson3:45

      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 with robots when you were 10.

   3. LFLex Fridman3:52

      Mm-hmm.

   4. BJBrett Johnson3:52

      Usually kids are doing the Lego bit, getting involved with sports, everything else. And, uh, with me, it wasn't like that. With me, I'm, I'm from Eastern Kentucky. Eastern Kentucky is one of these, um, 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 wanna call it, man. I was, uh, my parents, my mom was basically the captain of the entire fraud industry. So, uh, this is a, this is a woman that at one point she's stealing a 108,000 pound Caterpillar D9 bulldozer, tramming it down the road. You know, 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 one point. That's my mom, uh, my dad.

   5. LFLex Fridman4:41

      Wait, wait. The neighbor acted as a pimp?

   6. BJBrett Johnson4:45

      My mom prostituted. I mean, she, she acted as a pimp for a neighbor. Um, her name was Debbie. And, uh, 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, a part of the cash.

   7. LFLex Fridman5:00

      So it sounds like she diversified the methodologies by which she, uh, hustled.

   8. BJBrett Johnson5:07

      Very, had that entrepreneurial spirit. (laughs)

   9. LFLex Fridman5:09

      Okay.

   10. BJBrett Johnson5:10

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

   11. LFLex Fridman5:16

       So what was the motivation you think for her? Is it, uh, is it money? Is it basically the, uh, the rush of playing with the s- system of being able to, um, know the rules and break the rules and get away with it?

   12. BJBrett Johnson5:33

       My mom's a complex character. She is. There's no one single motivation. 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. Um, she would cheat on the men she was involved with. She would abuse the, uh, our children, me and Denise. She would, uh, um-

   13. LFLex Fridman6:00

       Psychological, physical?

   14. BJBrett Johnson6:02

       Oh, it was mental, emotional, physical. Um, everything. Everything. I mean, she, uh...She used to beat me and Denise with, uh, with belt buckles. You know, and that, that ended (laughs) when, uh, she was... I forgot what we had done. It wasn't much. I think that, uh, um, it may have been the part where she, she accused me of stealing her marijuana. But, uh, 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, we were on the bed trying to get away from it, and Denise kicks her through a closet is what happens. And, um, Denise stands up and she said, "Uh, you're through hitting me." And that was the last time that Mom hit us at that point. But, um...

   15. LFLex Fridman6:50

       So, sorry to take us there. Your, uh, for people who know you, and people should definitely watch some of your lectures online, you're extremely charismatic and fun-

   16. BJBrett Johnson6:59

       Thank you.

   17. LFLex Fridman7:00

       ...and, uh, jolly, and whatever word you wanna use.

   18. BJBrett Johnson7:03

       (laughs)

   19. LFLex Fridman7:03

       But, you know, if we look at that kind of life, it's, there's darkness there, there's, uh, struggle there. There's-

   20. BJBrett Johnson7:11

       There's a lot of darkness.

   21. LFLex Fridman7:12

       So, if you, if you... How did you feel? If you go back to the mind of the kid you were with your mom, was, um, was there sadness? Was there things like depression, self-doubt, all those kinds of things? Or did you see this crime, this chaos as ultimately exciting?

   22. BJBrett Johnson7:34

       You know, I, I don't think... Uh, back then, I didn't view it as exciting. Now, it becomes exciting when I started being involved in cybercr- cybercrime, all right? But back then, it was simply a means to an end, was all it was. So, you, you take a 10-year-old kid, and the way I get involved in crime is, like I said, my, my mom was the fraudster, my dad was... My dad was a good guy, he just forgot he was this good guy. You know, he was always, he always had these principles, but his issue was, is he loved my mom so much, he was scared of the, 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. Um, the, the one 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 don't love you anymore. I want you to die," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This was my mom. Um, there were two instances where the man, where he can't take it anymore. And the first instance, I was, I guess I was seven or eight. My sister Denise is a year younger than I am. My dad actually files for divorce, files for divorce at that point. My mom, um, kinda goes crazy. Uh, my dad, I was with my dad, my, my sister was with my mother, because that's that Eastern Kentucky mentality, you know? Men stay with men, women stay with women. So, um, he was filing for divorce. Me and my dad, we were living in an apartment. My mom was living with, uh, with her grandparents and with her parents, bouncing back and forth between the two. And I remember, I was sleeping in the bed. We had a single-wide bed. My dad slept on the, on the sofa. I woke up one 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 gonna steal my son from me." My mom was this individual (sighs) 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 al- 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 had went too far, so what does she do? 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.

   23. LFLex Fridman10:02

       Mm.

   24. BJBrett Johnson10:02

       That was my mom in a nutshell. She had a history of doing this kind of stuff. Um, motivations as far as fraud with her, I think with her it was, uh, (sighs) she was an LPN. She had, uh... And a very good nurse. But she didn't want to work, (sighs) was a lot of it. So, uh, so with her, it was easier for her to commit fraud. And when I say commit fraud, it, it was against businesses, against people. I remember at one point, she's, uh, she's buying over-the-counter capsules and emptying the capsules out and putting some other crap in in there, in there and selling it as speed, and people were buying it. Uh, this, she did anything she could for money. And of course, I get involved with that. What happens is, is my, we were in East, we were in Panama City at that point, (sighs) and, uh, my mom leaves my dad. And the (laughs) way she left my dad, my great-grandfather had died, my mom tells all three of us, "Hey, I'm, we're going ba- I'm taking the kids and we're going back to Eastern Kentucky to attend the funeral."

   25. LFLex Fridman11:02

       Mm.

   26. BJBrett Johnson11:02

       Well, that was her leaving. Me and Denise didn't know it. She didn't pack in any of our clothes at all. She stows her clothes in the trunk of the, of the car, and she leaves my dad, and I don't get to see my dad again for, I think, five, six years, something like that. My mom, like I said, she used to bring men home in front of my dad. (sighs) She would, uh, he'd sit there and cry and beg her not to do it, she'd do it anyway. When she leaves him, she kept up that. So, we were, um, 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 one of the apartments underneath, and, uh, that whole side of the family was just nuts, was nuts. My, my granddad, Paul, he would... (laughs) This, this is a man that, uh, he didn't want you to eat any of his food. So, you know, 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 in, bathe in two inches of water one time a week, because he didn't wanna have to pay the water bill.

   27. LFLex Fridman12:10

       There's rules.

   28. BJBrett Johnson12:10

       They're rules. You know, if, uh, you, you couldn't have the TV on.... it, 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 st- 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, uh, for days, man. For days. She'd go out and, you know, party and, um, I mean sometimes she'd take me and Denise with her. We'd wait in the car. Sometimes we'd, uh, wait in the living room as she went and partied and everything else. Most of the time she left us, left us at home and, um, my entry into crime? Denise walks in one day, she's, she's nine years old, man. She walks in one day and she's got a pack of pork chops in her hand.

   29. LFLex Fridman12:57

       Mm.

   30. BJBrett Johnson12:58

       And, uh, looked at her and I said, "Where'd you get that?" And she's like, "I stole it." 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. I'm like, "Hell yeah, let's do that shit." So, uh, 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, uh, off the rack, take the tags off of it, wear it out, worked just fine, and the way you steal bread is you put the hoodie over your shoulder, stuff the loaf of bread down the sleeve, and you walk out with it. So we started doing that.
3. 37:32 – 55:36

   Phishing and social engineering

   1. LFLex Fridman37:32

      me ask you about that. So, um, your life of cybercrime.

   2. BJBrett Johnson37:37

      (laughs)

   3. LFLex Fridman37:37

      In describing some of the things you did or knew about, you said, quote, "I once stole several thousand dollars worth of coins from a family-"

   4. BJBrett Johnson37:45

      Hmm.

   5. LFLex Fridman37:45

      "... trying to sell them to put a new roof on their home. Another time, I sent a counterfeit cashier's check to a victim and he ended up being arrested for it. I lied to family, friends, everyone I knew. I was a truly (laughs) despicable person."

   6. BJBrett Johnson38:01

      True.

   7. LFLex Fridman38:02

      "One of my Ukrainian associates, Script, had someone who owed him money kidnapped and tortured. He posted pictures of it online. Another member, Iceman, used to flood his enemies' email addresses with child pornography, then called the police on them." That's some stories. Can you tell some of these stories that stand out to you that are particularly despicable or representative or interesting when you look-

   8. BJBrett Johnson38:31

      Sure. Sure.

   9. LFLex Fridman38:31

      ... back that, that, uh, defined your approach in who you were at that time?

   10. BJBrett Johnson38:36

       Let me say that I did not care about my victim, all right?

   11. LFLex Fridman38:41

       Mm-hmm.

   12. BJBrett Johnson38:42

       I cared about me, is what I cared about. Um, it's rough to, it's rough to admit that, you know, that you don't give a shit what you're doing to anybody else. You only care about you. But that's, that's the truth of the matter. I didn't care about the victims. Um, the lady, that was, that wasn't even at the beginning of my, uh, career as a cybercriminal. That was right at the last of it. Uh-

   13. LFLex Fridman39:03

       Which lady?

   14. BJBrett Johnson39:03

       The coin lady. I was, uh... By that point, ShadowCrew had made the front cover of Forbes, August of '04. October 26th of '04, Secret Service had shut us down, 33 people arrested, six countries in six hours. I was the guy that was publicly mentioned as getting away. Um, what happened was is I was the guy who was, uh... I'd c- uh, kind of invented this crime called tax return identity theft and, um, was stealing a lot of money. I went through all my stateside savings and ShadowCrew gets shut down. I don't have any way to come in with any money, so I start running counterfeit cashier's checks, defrauding people with that. Uh, having them send products or bullion collections, what have you, by COD, collect on delivery, and I would pay with it, with a counterfeit cashier's check. This lady was on eBay. She had been collecting these silver coins all of her life, you know. The US currency used to be, the coins used to be silver. So she had a whole collection of these things, uh, like, I don't know, 80, 90 pounds of this stuff. And, uh, I'm a very good social engineer, so convinced her that I was a legitimate person, that, uh, you know, "Hey, send it COD. You can use, um, my FedEx account to do that, or my UPS account to do that. I'll pay with a, uh, cashier's check. You can take it in same as cash." She believed that, she was, um... Even on the ad and we talked on the phone and everything else, she had told me that she would, she was a single parent and it was the only money that she had to, uh, to put, uh, a roof on the house for her and her kids. And, uh, I didn't give a damn. I didn't give a damn. It, what was more important was me at that point.

   15. LFLex Fridman40:44

       Can I ask you a question about the social engineering aspect? So maybe specifics like the methodology, email, you said phone. Maybe you could discuss this process from a bigger philosophical perspective-

   16. BJBrett Johnson41:01

       Sure.

   17. LFLex Fridman41:01

       ... of what is it about human beings that makes them possible to be socially engineered to be, uh, to be victims of fraud?

   18. BJBrett Johnson41:09

       So first let me say that, that I became a social engineer as a child, all right? Because the adults in my, (laughs) in my environment as a child, I had to know exactly what they were thinking and be able to try to manipulate that s- for survival. So I became a social engineer as, as f- for survival initially. All right? And one of the things that I've seen with a lot of cybercriminals is the exact same thing. The, they're really expert ones. They become a social engineer as a child, then later on they use those tools to victimize others. All right?

   19. LFLex Fridman41:43

       Which is fascinating because you're... in order to understand what others are thinking, you have to be extremely good at empathy. So you have-

   20. BJBrett Johnson41:49

       Right.

   21. LFLex Fridman41:49

       ... to like really put yourself in the shoes of the other person.

   22. BJBrett Johnson41:53

       Absolutely.

   23. LFLex Fridman41:53

       And yet, in order to do cybercrime, you have to not care about the pain that might cause them once you manipulate them. So you have to empathize and yet not care about the process.

   24. BJBrett Johnson42:07

       Exactly. And I would argue, I would argue that that is not a sociopath because a cybercriminal, and I was no different, most cybercriminals justify those actions. So the justification-

   25. LFLex Fridman42:17

       Yes.

   26. BJBrett Johnson42:17

       ... becomes what's important. With me the justification was, "Well I did it for my family, did it for my wife, did it for my stripper girlfriend."

   27. LFLex Fridman42:24

       Yeah.

   28. BJBrett Johnson42:24

       So, and I believed those justifications.

   29. LFLex Fridman42:25

       That's a good story. I heard that one.

   30. BJBrett Johnson42:26

       Yeah. (laughs)
4. 55:36 – 1:01:23

   SolarWinds cyberattack

   1. LFLex Fridman55:36

   2. BJBrett Johnson55:37

      Let, let's... Uh, so I've got 130-page class action lawsuit printed out at the house, I've been going through it, that catalogs how SolarWinds lied for years about their vulnerabilities and they lied to investors. The, uh, the people who came in, (laughs) the auditors who would come, who they would hire would, you know, they would, uh, not pay attention to them when they said, you know, "You got these issues." They would say, "Go away." Shit like that, for years, until SolarWinds, you know, the attacks become apparent. Um, my view on that is that the only person responsible for the crime are the criminals who did the attacking. The actual criminals. Not, not SolarWinds. Now does that mean that SolarWinds isn't, isn't all fucked up? They are and there needs to be so- (laughs) some accounting in place. But the, the, the only individual, the only people responsible for crime are the criminals. And that's either online, in the physical world, what have you. You could be... It, it's... Being an idiot is not-

   3. LFLex Fridman56:39

      A crime.

   4. BJBrett Johnson56:41

      (laughs) ... a crime. You know, being, being, being criminally negligent is.

   5. LFLex Fridman56:44

      Yeah.

   6. BJBrett Johnson56:45

      And I think that, that SolarWinds is certainly responsible. Not res- not responsible. They're culpable-

   7. LFLex Fridman56:51

      Yeah.

   8. BJBrett Johnson56:51

      ... for what happened.

   9. LFLex Fridman56:52

      Can you actually, uh, tell folks about SolarWinds? What is it? Um, what, what, what was, what are some interesting things that you're aware of?

   10. BJBrett Johnson57:00

       Yeah, SolarWinds was very, uh, was, uh, it, it provided a backgr- a backbone of security for hundreds, thousands of different companies. Um, if you looked at, a lot of security companies were u- using SolarWinds that would, that would allow you to get a snapshot of the entire system that they were working on. So what happens is, is you get a Russian group that comes in and they ... basically, they, they hack into SolarWinds and get access to it and it allows them to view every single thing, I mean every single thing, about every single client that SolarWinds had at that point. So entire snapshots of all the IP that were in, that was going on, all the emails, all the communications, every single secret that was going on with those companies. If a company had software like Microsoft, it allowed them to look at the source code of everything that was going on. I mean, it's just a complete and total nightmare, all right? And something that you are not going to recover from. You're not. I mean, it's done at that point. Um, you know, there's not been a lot of news lately about it. But the fact of the matter is, is that's the type of attack that's a catastrophic attack.

   11. LFLex Fridman58:17

       So there's a huge amount of information that was read, saved elsewhere probably.

   12. BJBrett Johnson58:23

       Oh, yeah.

   13. LFLex Fridman58:24

       And so now, there's people sitting on information.

   14. BJBrett Johnson58:27

       Absolutely. So think about-

   15. LFLex Fridman58:28

       So

   16. BJBrett Johnson58:28

       ... one of the attack vectors has, has been Microsoft Outlook 365, things like that. This allowed the attackers to look at the source codes of that. So they have the source code now, so they go through it line by line. What are the vulnerabilities? Let's find new vulnerabilities, new zero days. You know, I said zero days aren't common, but this opens up an entire new threat surface all of a sudden. So it's a, it's a completely catastrophic attack. Once all the chips are down, everything's tallied up, people are gonna be like, "Yeah, we're done. We're done."

   17. LFLex Fridman58:57

       Yeah.

   18. BJBrett Johnson58:59

       (laughs)

   19. LFLex Fridman59:00

       (laughs) All right, this whole computer thing, we tried it.

   20. BJBrett Johnson59:03

       We're done.

   21. LFLex Fridman59:03

       We're walking away.

   22. BJBrett Johnson59:04

       We're done. (laughs) So...

   23. LFLex Fridman59:06

       That's terrifying. So you's saying that there's not been obvious, uh, big negative impact from that yet. So but like the-

   24. BJBrett Johnson59:15

       I mean, there's been a lot of negative impact, but we're just starting.

   25. LFLex Fridman59:18

       Right. So the-

   26. BJBrett Johnson59:19

       Just starting.

   27. LFLex Fridman59:19

       ... the, the capacity for destruction is huge here. How much invol- involvement from nation states do you think there is on this

   28. BJBrett Johnson59:26

       You know, it's interesting, um, so you've got Iran, you've got, uh, North Korea, China, Russia. You've got the big four. You also got Brazil.

   29. LFLex Fridman59:35

       Yeah.

   30. BJBrett Johnson59:35

       You've got all these other countries that are interested in the United States as well. Um, nation states are interesting depending on who the nation state is. All right? So Russia's very good about working with the type of criminal I used to be. You know, they'll enlist these guys and steal information or what have you, then Russia will take the information they want to and they'll basically go off and sell whatever you want to and make some money. Um, China's all about IP. Um, North Korea's about stealing money because they really don't know what, what the hell else to do right now. But, uh...
5. 1:01:23 – 1:04:04

   Future social engineering fears

   1. LFLex Fridman1:01:23

      Um, is this terrifying to you, by the way? This, th- this world that we're living in, as we put more and more of ourselves on the, the internet and to the metaverse, that there are so many more attack vectors on our wellbeing?

   2. BJBrett Johnson1:01:41

      What's terrifying to me, uh, I used to preach it on ShadowCrew, is the idea that the perception of truth is more important than the truth itself. It doesn't matter what the facts are, it matters what I can convince you of.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:01:56

      Yeah.

   4. BJBrett Johnson1:01:57

      That's what's terrifying to me. So you look at deepfakes, you look at, uh, fake news, all the stuff that's going out, that becomes truly terrifying.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:02:07

      (sighs) Um, maybe there's an angle where it's freeing if nothing is true and you can't trust anything.

   6. BJBrett Johnson1:02:16

      (laughs) But, you see, we as human beings, we wanna trust. We do. We, we need human interaction. And, and for that human interaction, you have to have a degree of trust.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:02:27

      But it's more like you let go of an idea of absolute truth and it more becomes like a blockchain style consensus. So you let go of, like... You know what, uh, th- there's this human dream, you know, you get this on the internet, you, you get, like, facts as if there's, at the bottom, at the bottom, there's one turtle that's holding this, like-

   8. BJBrett Johnson1:02:50

      (laughs)

   9. LFLex Fridman1:02:50

      ... scroll that says, "These are the truths of the world." The, the problem is, I mean, maybe believing that is counterproductive. Maybe human civilization is an ongoing process of consensus. And so it's always going to be everything is shrouded in, you can call them lies or you can call them inaccuracies, or you can call them delusions. It's constantly going to be, it's going to be a sea of lies and, and, uh, delusions. But our hope is to, over time, develop bigger and bigger islands of consensus that allows us to live a stable and happy society. Don't call it true. Call it, call it a stable, uh, consensus that creates a high quality of life for the-

   10. BJBrett Johnson1:03:35

       I like it.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:03:35

       ... inhabitants of the island. (laughs)

   12. BJBrett Johnson1:03:37

       I like it. I mean, I like it. (laughs) I mean, that's... We're going to agree on this.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:03:40

       And then don't use Outlook. No, I'm just kidding.

   14. BJBrett Johnson1:03:42

       (laughs)

   15. LFLex Fridman1:03:43

       So maybe step back. You mentioned, uh, uh... I'd love to talk about ShadowCrew. Maybe this is the right time to actually... Yeah, let's go to ShadowCrew because-

   16. BJBrett Johnson1:03:51

       Sure.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:03:51

       ... it's such a fascinating story. So tell me the story of building ShadowCrew, the precursor to today's darknet and darknet markets. You're, this is why you're the original godfather.

   18. BJBrett Johnson1:04:03

       This is it.

6. 1:04:04 – 1:16:38

   Early cybercrimes

   1. BJBrett Johnson1:04:04

      This is it. So I, um, I get married. I, I faked a car accident to get married. Got some money from that.

   2. LFLex Fridman1:04:10

      You're a romantic.

   3. BJBrett Johnson1:04:11

      I'm a... Like my dad, man. I'm the guy that... You know, I get... From Mom, I get the criminal mindset. From Dad, I get that, don't want them to leave. (laughs)

   4. LFLex Fridman1:04:19

      Yes.

   5. BJBrett Johnson1:04:20

      You know? So...

   6. LFLex Fridman1:04:22

      So you get married, uh-

   7. BJBrett Johnson1:04:25

      I met this girl-

   8. LFLex Fridman1:04:25

      What's that story? That's, that's-

   9. BJBrett Johnson1:04:26

      Oh, dude. I was, uh-

   10. LFLex Fridman1:04:28

       How did you fall in love there?

   11. BJBrett Johnson1:04:29

       My, my first girlfriend was a preacher's daughter. And, uh, crazy over her. Dated her for five years, and, uh, she figured out pretty quickly that... Well, not quickly. It took her five years to figure out that Brett Johnson is not the man of God. (laughs) You know? I could, I could talk it, but, you know, more that agnostic than anything. She breaks up with me. So I was, um, I was at the community college. Uh-

   12. LFLex Fridman1:04:55

       You'd make one hell of a preacher, by the way.

   13. BJBrett Johnson1:04:56

       Thank you.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:04:56

       Let's, let's, let's put it that way. (laughs)

   15. BJBrett Johnson1:04:59

       (laughs) Yeah.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:05:00

       But, you know.

   17. BJBrett Johnson1:05:01

       So yeah, I've got that Langston Hughes problem, you know? I'm looking for Jesus to show up, and he just doesn't. So... (laughs)

   18. LFLex Fridman1:05:09

       (laughs)

   19. BJBrett Johnson1:05:09

       So I was, I was at the community college, and I was, I was a straight asshole. I was, uh, arrogant, conceited, everything else, and... I had posted an advertisement on one of the billboards looking for an adult babysitter, hot blonde, you know?

   20. LFLex Fridman1:05:21

       Yeah.

   21. BJBrett Johnson1:05:21

       Come, come visit me in the library. Buddy of mine shows up, and he's like, "Brett?" And I was like, "Yeah?" He's like, "Hottest girl in school right down the hall." And I was like, "Serious?" He's like, "Yeah." And I was like, "Well, let's go see." (laughs) So walk over, and there's, there's these two guys that are hitting on her. So I'm, I just walk up and... Uh, me and Todd, that was my buddy, walk up, and I'm just sitting there and listening, and they're, you know, they're giving the spiel and everything, and she's just kind of taking it in. Finally, I looked over and I was like, uh, "You wanna get out of here?" And, uh, (laughs) one of the guys looks at me, he's like, "Hey, we're talking to her." I was like, "Well, you're talking at her, you're not talking to her. I'm about to save her ass from you." (laughs)

   22. LFLex Fridman1:05:59

       Yeah, that's a smooth pickup line by the way.

   23. BJBrett Johnson1:06:01

       (laughs)

   24. LFLex Fridman1:06:01

       If I ever heard one. That's good.

   25. BJBrett Johnson1:06:02

       (laughs) Look at it.

   26. LFLex Fridman1:06:02

       You wanna get outta here?

   27. BJBrett Johnson1:06:04

       So start dating, and, um, she was the girl that screwed my brains out, man, and I fell... Uh, head over heels, we got married six months later. Six months.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:06:16

       That's what love does.

   29. BJBrett Johnson1:06:17

       That's what it does. And, um, I had, um... I was... She didn't know I was a crook. She had no idea. You know, she knew I was very bright, she knew I did a lot of theater, stuff like that-

   30. LFLex Fridman1:06:28

       Yeah.
7. 1:16:38 – 1:20:06

   Cybercrime entrepreneurship

   1. LFLex Fridman1:16:38

      so there's laws and rules that you're breaking nonstop. So there's also legitimate ways of doing that-

   2. BJBrett Johnson1:16:47

      (laughs)

   3. LFLex Fridman1:16:47

      ... which is break the rules of the conventions of the past. That's the first principles thing.

   4. BJBrett Johnson1:16:51

      Sure.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:16:51

      That's what Elon Musk and his ilk do all the time.

   6. BJBrett Johnson1:16:54

      Right.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:16:55

      That is guts and brilliance, but when it's crossing the lines of the law ... actually, sometimes th- the law is outdated. The, the thing is, as a human being, you have to then compute the ethical damage you're doing, like-

   8. BJBrett Johnson1:17:13

      Right.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:17:13

      ... ethically, the damage you're doing about other human beings. That is fundamentally the thing that you're breaking, is you're, you're adding to the suffering in the world i- in, in one way or another, and you're justifying it. But in terms of me sort of as an engineer, that is some gutsy thinking. That's how Woz and Steve Jobs thought.

   10. BJBrett Johnson1:17:33

       Sure.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:17:33

       It ... that's, that's innovation. And maybe just think y- your ... if you can introspect your thinking process here, (laughs) this is a new ... I, I like how you remember that it's an HP. Uh, like, what ... this is a totally new thing to you. Computers is a, is a, is yet another domain. How are you figuring these puzzles out? Presumably mostly alone?

   12. BJBrett Johnson1:17:58

       Alone. Alone.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:17:59

       When you were thinking through these problems-

   14. BJBrett Johnson1:18:01

       Alone.

   15. LFLex Fridman1:18:01

       ... is there ... this is a strange question to ask, but, you know, what, uh, what is your thinking process? What is your approach to solving these problems?

   16. BJBrett Johnson1:18:10

       So, so the approach is, is you do something, and you fuck it up, and you're like ... you think back, "Okay, how do I fix that?" (laughs)

   17. LFLex Fridman1:18:19

       Yeah.

   18. BJBrett Johnson1:18:19

       So you, you fix that aspect. You commit the crime again. And it goes a little bit further, and it screws up. "Okay, how do I fix that? What's the issue on that? How do I fix that?"

   19. LFLex Fridman1:18:30

       So there's not a deep design thinking, like, like, uh-

   20. BJBrett Johnson1:18:32

       Later on, it becomes that. Once, once you, once you lay that groundwork of the way these schemes are working, all right, it becomes that. And you can apply that to other things in, in cyber crime as a whole, all right? But initially, it's, it's basically trial and error. You know, you've got a problem. How do you solve that problem, all right? So how do I ... "I'm committing these crimes under my name. How do I solve that?"

Episode duration: 3:47:24