Modern WisdomThe United States' Most Wanted Hacker - Brett Johnson
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
145 min read · 29,020 words- 0:00 – 0:20
Intro
- BJBrett Johnson
I'm the guy that continues to break the law from inside Secret Service offices for the next 10 months, until they find out about it. I take off on a cross-country crime spree, steal $600,000 in four months. Wake up one morning, United States Most Wanted, and, uh, (laughs) that gets your attention. (wind blowing sound)
- 0:20 – 5:30
What Does it Mean to Be on US Most Wanted List?
- BJBrett Johnson
- CWChris Williamson
What does it mean to be on the United States Most Wanted list? Is there-
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... like, is there a particular type of criteria that you need to meet for that? Is it, is it like being top 10 in the Billboard charts?
- BJBrett Johnson
Well, I, I will say you did not probably do well in Sunday school. So, it's, you're not a good guy if you've made the United States Most Wanted list. You are the, uh, the bane of society at that moment in time. And, and me, I mean, for those who don't know the Secret Service, they called me the original internet godfather. I got that title. I was committed ... Uh, I committed 39 felonies. I was placed on the United States Most Wanted list. I had an escape from prison. And what, uh, the big thing of all that was is I built and ran the first organized cybercrime community. It was called ShadowCrew, precursor of today's Darknet and Darknet markets, that U.S. Most Wanted. So ShadowCrew makes the front cover of Forbes August 2004. Headline, "Who's Stealing Your Identity?" October 26, 2004, United States Secret Service, they arrested 33 people, six countries, six hours. I'm the guy publicly mentioned as getting away. I headed that ring. They picked me up four months later. They gave me a job. And I'm the guy that continues to break the law from inside Secret Service offices for the next 10 months, until they find out about it. I take off on a cross-country crime spree, steal $600,000 in four months. Wake up one morning, United States Most Wanted, and, uh, that gets your attention. Um, it's one of those oh-shit moments. You know, I was in Las Vegas the night before. I'd stolen $160,000 out of ATMs. Woke up that next morning and there's my name on Carter's Market with U.S. Most Wanted beside of it. And, um, I sat there and stared at it for a while. Finally, I said out loud, I was like, "Well, Brett, you've made the United States Most Wanted list. What now?" And I, I was like, "I'm going to Disney World." So that's what idiot did. Went to Disney World, lasted about six weeks. Secret Service, they came and got me, arrested me, sent me to prison, then I escaped. Uh, your question, what's it like to be United States Most Wanted? It is one of the scariest things on the planet. You, um ... I was already on the run, but you don't have any friends. You're, you're constantly watching your back. Every day is the highest high and the lowest low. You make it through a day without being arrested and you're like, "Yes, I've made it." And, but you're constantly scared of everything. I would, uh, you know, I'd just take these long drives. You couldn't talk to anybody. I would, uh, there's a ... You've seen Breaking Bad, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- BJBrett Johnson
So there's a scene that last season of Breaking Bad where Bryan Cranston's in a cabin and Robert, Robert Forster's bringing them- them these supplies. And Cranston looks at Forster and he's like, "Will you just stay and talk to me?" And he pays him, like, $18,000 to talk to him for an hour. And I, that's, that is really a very truthful moment, because I used to pay escorts not for sex, but to just sit there and fucking talk to me. And, and that's ... I mean, it's just a, uh, it's a completely different life and mentality when you've d- when you're on that type of list. Because you know your days are numbered, and so you try to make the most of 'em while you can. And, um, it's just complete despair. I mean, it's, it's really something to be there.
- CWChris Williamson
How much are you the architect of your own anxiety with this? Obviously, you, you are genuinely being chased by law enforcement. But the overthinking, the rumination, the perpetuation of fear, all of that must be generated, self-generated almost all the time. Uh, you know, you hear about people that go on the run. There was that, um, famous case, was it last year, of the guy whose girlfriend went missing and there was a bunch of body cam footage?
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. And you think about that, uh, not, not only do people who are on the run need to do the physical things of not being seen and using cash which is not trackable and, and not being recognized, all that stuff. But they also need to get past the sheer psychological trauma and, and torment, perpetual torment, that presumably they're, they're making happen themselves.
- BJBrett Johnson
Oh, it absolutely is. I mean, you, you, (laughs) you're driving down the street and you, you're aware of your environment like no one else. I mean, you, you're aware when a cop two blocks away pulls in behind you. You know, so you're, you're looking to get off the side of the road. You're making sure that you're obeying all the traffic laws in the area. You're making sure that, uh, you're watching everyone and every- everything that goes on in your environment. And you're right. It is, um, it's, it's ... You torture yourself more than law enforcement could ever think about, because you're always concerned and worried about what's going to happen. And, you know, I, I was constantly moving. I didn't stay any place, unless I was stealing money, which I was. But after the money was stolen, I would immediately leave that area. So you were constantly on the move. You, you couldn't trust anyone. You couldn't con- You didn't have friends. You didn't have family. Uh, you know, I deserved it. Uh, make no mistake, I deserved that. But, um, it's, it's a, it's a horrible ... You can't even call it life. It's a horrible existence to go through.
- 5:30 – 19:49
How Shadow Crew Began
- BJBrett Johnson
- CWChris Williamson
How did ShadowCrew begin?
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs) So ShadowCrew, I guess you have ... Uh, and I said this on a couple of other shows as well. My life of crime began when I was 10 years old. I'm from Eastern Kentucky and, you know, my mom was a fraudster. She was very negligent. She used to leave me and my sister home all the time. And the way my, my life of crime begins is my sister walks in one day. She's got this pack of pork chops. I'm like, "Where'd you get that?" And she's like, "I stole 'em." And I'm like, "Well, shit. Let's start doing that," so we start stealing food. Mom finds out about it and she joins us and starts running at us as little shoplifters. And, and-I refer to it as that Eastern Kentucky mentality, but that's the... The mentality in the South is that it's the man's job to provide. So, while my sister didn't have to engage in a lot of the crime, as a matter of fact, other than that one shoplifting experience, she doesn't break the law again. Me though, I was- I was the male, and you're expected to take part. So, I grew up committing these different types of frauds, from stealing coal, to drug trafficking, document forgery, charity fraud, burglaries, uh, all these different types of things I learned how to do as I was growing up. Branched off on my own in the, uh, mid-90s, faked a car accident to get the insurance money to get married, got married, and, you know, I said it before and I'll say it again, I get the worst parts from my mom and my dad. My dad, I get this fear of being abandoned. My mom, I get the criminal mindset. And, um-
- CWChris Williamson
What happens when you blend those two together?
- BJBrett Johnson
Oh, it's a nightmare.
- CWChris Williamson
How so?
- BJBrett Johnson
So, when- when you bl- when I- th- those two are blended with me. So, with me, I have never been able to show love in a healthy way in a relationship. I always go overboard. And typically, that's me showering money or items on whoever I love. And sometimes it's paying for sex too, but i- it's typically my love is worth this. This is what I'm worth, is whatever I'm giving you. I- I've not been able to... Only- only recently have I been starting to learn what a healthy relationship is. So, back then, it was, you know, my value is in what I can provide my mate, materially. And if I don't have the ability to do that legally, I didn't mind doing it illegally. So, I was always engaged in some sort of fraud or crime to- to satisfy that other side, that fear of the loved one, people that I love leaving me or abandoning me.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I think based on what I know about your background, there was abandonment from your mother, that anxious attachment style would be deve- developed from that.
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
And also, it seems like love was, at least in part, made to be contingent on whether or not you could offer up something, even if that thing was something that had been stolen.
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
So, you have the anxious attachment coupled with, uh, gifts and, um, money and items, are how you show dedication, loyalty and love.
- BJBrett Johnson
Absolutely.
- CWChris Williamson
It doesn't surprise me that that's what would... And- and, I mean, on top of all of that, you must have a genetic predisposition for this as well. If you have a mother that is a career criminal, y- y- there is something inside of you that can be flipped, switched pretty easily.
- BJBrett Johnson
I- I would agree that there's- there's certainly a switch there, without a doubt. It- it's, uh, it has not been an easy path for me to, um, give up crim- that criminal lifestyle and learn what it is to be healthy and legal in today's world. Um, you know, back then, I had no compuncture at all about breaking the law. I didn't mind scamming people. That was just what I did. Uh, my entry into cybercrime, I got married. I'm the guy that, again, I go overboard in a relationship, so it was, "I'll do all the work, I'll do all the cooking, I'll do all the cleaning, you just worry about going to school." So, I'm a bit of a control freak too. And, um, I couldn't do it all. What gave was the job. I go right back into fraud and start scamming people on eBay. And my first eBay scam was, they had a show on Inside Edition talking about Beanie Babies. I was watching that, they were profiling Peanut the royal blue elephant, and I figured, "Hey, what can I do?" So, I ended up dyeing... I bought a gray Beanie Baby elephant, bought some blue dye, went home, tried to dye the little guy, got him out of the bath, looked like he had the mange, but I ripped the lady off of $1,500. Um, posted a picture of a real one, she thought I had the real thing. She wins the bid and I scammed her out of $1,500. And that's my first-
- CWChris Williamson
What year is this?
- BJBrett Johnson
... crime. This was '90... Probably '96, '97 at this point. So, scammed her out of that. And that's the- that's when I start to be involved in cybercrime. I got away with that. And that's the first lesson that I learned is, hey, you delay a victim, keep putting them off, they go away and they don't report anything to law enforcement. So, that's the first lesson I learned there. Kept going and got better at it. Got to where I was, uh, installing- uh, selling pirated software and then installing mod chips into first gaming systems, then into cable television boxes so you could watch all the pay-per-view. And then finally, programming satellite DSS cards, those 18-inch RCA satellite systems. You can pull the card out, ou- of it, program it, turn on all the channels. Started doing that. A Canadian judge ruled that Canadian citizens could pirate those signals legally, so I started selling all those cards to Canada, making a lot of money, didn't have enough money to fill all the orders. I mean, didn't have enough, uh, you know, cards to fill all the orders. And quickly thought to myself, "Well, why fill any of them? They're not gonna complain to anyone." So, I stole even more money and got worried about how much was coming in. Figured the best thing that I could do was get a fake driver's license, use that to open up a bank account, launder the money through the account and cash out at the ATM. And-
- CWChris Williamson
What sort of money are we talking about here?
- BJBrett Johnson
I was, uh... At that point, I was stealing around $4,000 a week. So, $16,000 a month in '97, '96, '97. So, not bad money back then. Um, and, you know, no upfront cost really at all. So, started looking around, thought I found a guy to make me a fake driver's license, sent him $200 and my picture and the dude rips me off. And I got mad. I got really mad about that.
- CWChris Williamson
Did you notice, at this point, the fact that you've been ripped off by somebody on the internet for pretending to give you something that you-
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Did you- you- you... Was there any point at which you thought, "Wow, I'm doing this"?
- BJBrett Johnson
What I thought, and this- this is... I think this is one of the big differences between criminals and legitimate people. I to- I got mad about it...But I also took it as the cost of doing business online. Sometimes you're going to lose money to scammers, but if you keep just, uh, that, uh, endeavor to persevere, you just keep on going, at the end of the day you're gonna be all right. So I kept on going and the, the result was I ended up, uh, building and running two different websites. The first one was Counterfeit Library. Counterfeit Library transitioned over to ShadowCrew over a few years. There are three sites in general. There are Counterfeit Library, ShadowCrew, and then CarderPlanet. I built and ran both Counterfeit Library and ShadowCrew. Dmytro Golubov, a Ukrainian national, builds CarderPlanet, which is the genesis of all modern credit card theft as we know it. So before those three sites come into play, uh, spec- uh, uh, specifically Card, uh, uh, Counterfeit Library and ShadowCrew, the only avenue you had to commit online crime was an IRC chat session, this Internet Relay Chat, rolling chat board. You had no idea who you were talking to, if you could trust the individual, if they knew what they were talking about, if they had a product or service, if they had it, if it worked, or if they were just gonna rip you off because everyone there was a crook. So ShadowCrew specifically solved that problem. It gave a trust mechanism that criminals could use. I built that. It, um... So you had a large communication channel where individuals from different timezones could reference conversations days, weeks, months old. They could take part, they could learn from those conversations, engage in those conversations. You knew y- y- you could look at someone's screen name and you knew the skill level of that person, if you could trust that person, learn from them, or work with them. We had vouching systems in place, escrow systems in place, review systems in place, all with that singular purpose of establishing trust with one criminal and another when they didn't know each other's name or what they looked like and they would never meet each other. Um, ShadowCrew goes on a... And ShadowCrew, that... So that's the trust mechanism, but ShadowCrew was basically this communication channel and this marketplace, an eBay of criminal activity. ShadowCrew makes the front cover of Forbes, like I mentioned, in August of '04. A few months later, the Secret Service arrests 33 across six countries in six hours.
- CWChris Williamson
That is one hell of an operation for them to coordinate that.
- BJBrett Johnson
It is. It is. So what happens is, is, uh, my forum techie, he, his name is Albert Gonzalez, we hired him to take care of the forum, the software on the forum. And he was doing his job, but he was also selling, um, stolen credit card details and he was engaged in what w- what was called the CVV1 hack. So the back of your credit or debit card, there are three data tracks there. The first data track is the customer's name, second data track is the card number/16-digit algorithm outside of that. The third data track is called indiscriminate data. No one uses it. What's bought and sold is the second data track. Now, we were doing a lot of phishing at that point in time. We were getting the card numbers and the PINs, but for you to encode that on a counterfeit card and take it to an ATM and cash it out, you've got to have that complete track two data. That algorithm, you can't guess that. You can't generate it. You have to know it. Well, back then, we f- we found out, well, the Ukrainians found out through testing that none of the banks had implemented the hash for track two. So what that meant was is you could take the card number, put a forward slash, and any 16 digits outside of it, it would encode, you could take it to an ATM, start withdrawing cash. We started to doing, doing that and making a lot of money. Um, the profit on that... Before we were doing that, we were doing what was called CNP fraud, just ordering items online, reselling them on eBay or Amazon, something like that. When we started doing the ATM cash outs, for CNP fraud, we, uh, a good Carder would profit $30,000 to $40,000 a month. On the ATM cash outs, with that CVV1 hack, we started profiting $30,000 to $40,000 a day, and that started to get a lot of law enforcement attention. Well, my forum techie, Albert Gonzalez, he started to do this cash out at ATMs. And the way he got caught, he's in New Jersey one day, broad daylight, he's wearing a wig, he's standing at an ATM for 40 minutes withdrawing cash. He puts one counterfeit card in after another, starts pulling out $20s, stuffing them in a backpack behind him. Meanwhile, just so happens across the street, two New Jersey cops sitting there watching the guy. After 40 minutes, one of them looks at the other and says, "Let me go see what he's doing," and they walk up on the guy and, and Albert just falls apart. He's wearing a wig, everything else, this big disguise. He falls apart. He goes to work for the Secret Service. Well, no one told us he had been arrested and, uh, that was the downfall of ShadowCrew. He goes to work for the Secret Service, they didn't know what was going on really, and they asked him, "How can we catch these guys?" And Albert's like, "Well, have you tried a, uh, a VPN?" And they're like, "What's that?" Albert explains it to them. They set up a VPN, have all the traffic go through that, and that's how ShadowCrew gets busted.
- CWChris Williamson
How were you taking cash out of an ATM to make it usable for anything larger than shopping and buying TVs and stuff?
- BJBrett Johnson
That is a lot of money laundering. So what we were doi- uh, what I did... I didn't do the CVV1 cash out. I, at that point in time, I was doing tax return identity theft. So I would get a list of dead individuals and file tax returns in their name, and I would profit about $160,000 a week 10 months out of the year. So what you do is, is you get your... I, I got to the point I could file a tax return, a fraudulent tax return once every six minutes. I did that three to four days a week. On the off day, I would plot a map of ATMs, then I would travel to those, those ATMs the next two days, cash out, put $150,000 in a backpack, come back home to Charleston, South Carolina, take my backpack, throw it in the spare bedroom. Then one day you wake up and you notice you've got a spare bedroom full of backpacks. And you're like, "Well, shit, I've got to do something with all that money."So then, it's about learning, how do you launder money? And you have to have a lot of cash-based businesses, so think auto detail, think, uh, food trucks, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
This is the story of Breaking Bad again, right?
- BJBrett Johnson
This is the story of Breaking Bad again.
- CWChris Williamson
What, what were you using?
- 19:49 – 27:44
What Motivated Brett?
- CWChris Williamson
That's crazy. So y- it seems like you were incredibly motivated to do these crimes. What, what, what motivates you to go and do this? 'Cause $160,000 five days a week-
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, it, you, you can't spend that amount of money.
- BJBrett Johnson
No. Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
You know? You're talking professional athlete money there, uh, professional athlete money in 2020.
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Not in 2004.
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
So what motivates you to keep on going? Was it just a game?
- BJBrett Johnson
Well, I mean, it, it start, you know, you start out, um, uh, with me, the mo, the initial motivation was that love thing. You know, how do you, how do you give gifts and crap to people that you love is the initial motivation. But over time, what you see in those cyber crime environments is if you can do something that no one else can do, you know, if you can build ransomware and deploy it, if you can build bots, deploy those, whatever you, build skimmers, whatever that is, if you can do something that no one else can do, you gain the respect of every single person in that environment. You, you reach a god-type status where everyone comes to you, everyone asks you questions, you, you make and break people, and, uh, uh, with ShadowCrew and with, with Counterfeit Library, I ran both of those. I was the head of both of those. And if someone wanted to do business, they had to go through me. At, at, at one point, I was a part of every single transaction that took part on those websites. Everything went through me. Um, so you've got ego that plays a huge, huge role in that, you know, that, that respect and status and people fawning over you and things like that. It gets to the point where, yeah, money's not really why you're doing it. You've got money. You're doing it for the status and the ego drive, is what you're doing.
- CWChris Williamson
Are you familiar with Wall Street Bets on Reddit?
- BJBrett Johnson
I am.
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- BJBrett Johnson
I absolutely am.
- CWChris Williamson
So I've been following them for four years plus, right?
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Way, way, way before the madness of AMC and GameStop-
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... and stuff last year. And I remember watching that, and I think the thing that's so fascinating about that subreddit is people are prepared to risk real-world fiat money that has taken weeks and years to accumulate, and they're prepared to risk it all on livestream for internet points from strangers that they're never ever going to meet.
- BJBrett Johnson
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it-
- CWChris Williamson
That seems like a similar dynamic.
- BJBrett Johnson
It, it is. You know, with, with Reddit and, uh, Wall, Wall Street Bets or some of the crypto subreddits, it's really interesting the type of echo chambers that are built within those types of environments. You know, we as human beings, we seek out people that agree with us and, you know, continually kind of pump up our egos. And once we find those environments, we don't, we don't wanna hear anything that might conflict with that. So we stay in those areas. That's the problem with fake news in, um, in the United States. That's the problem with the left wing and the right wing. So a- and it's really kinda, you know, it's, it's ... Reddit is one of these environments where you can really see that crystal clear. And it's no different in cyber crime environments. So you find that echo chamber where you're told that you are this, you know, professional, that you're the head of everything, that you, that you are this basic god in the environment. And you tend to stay there. You don't wanna leave that, because you leave that environment and you're just a normal everyday person that no one pays attention to. So it, it ... that helps feed into those crimes. Absolutely.
- CWChris Williamson
What's the relationship, when it comes to cyber crime, between ability on the internet, coding, understanding of programming, and social manipulation and real-world exploits like that? Because as far as I'm aware, you were okay on the internet but quite good in the real world. But when you hear cyber crime, you think about some guy with a 200 IQ-
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... programming all day.
- BJBrett Johnson
I would say, you know, there, you're right. There's this perception that cyber criminals are computer geniuses, that they're code-savvy, everything else. I would say that there are very few attackers like that. There are some, maybe 1 to 2%, but the 98 and 99%, they're social engineers. They, they ... or they know how to manage people very well. All right? Um, cyber crime, when I was a cyber criminal, I'm not a coder by any stretch of the imagination. I, I, I break down cyber crime into three necessities. I break it down into gathering data, committing a crime, and then cashing out. When I talk about gathering data, I talk about that's the PII, the credentials, it's the tools that are needed, things like that. Then you gather that stuff, go out and commit the crime, and then finally put cash in pocket. The gathering the data aspect, I was never really great at. I am very good about knowing about what to do with that data and then laundering the money out from there. I'm, I'm exceptional with that, and I'm an exceptional money, uh, person manager as well, or manipulator, if you wanna call it that. Um-The thing about cybercrime is you don't have to know how to code, you don't have to know how to build a tool or steal data or anything else. You've got a group or a set that does that for you and they do it very well. We've said time and time again that criminals are very good about using legal off-the-shelf products and services and using those for criminal activities. So VM-
- CWChris Williamson
What like?
- BJBrett Johnson
Pardon me?
- CWChris Williamson
What like?
- BJBrett Johnson
Uh, VMBox, the Tor browser, um, you've got some, uh, some of these privacy browsers that are out now. So they're, they're very good about using those things and repurposing them for criminal uses. And that's typically what happens. Why would you, why go out and build it when you've got a group of people that are funded with millions of dollars that have done that for you, if you can just repurpose it for your activity? And that's what happens more often than not. You take Kali Linux or whatever the new test, pen testing software is, criminals use that all the time. Um, the software that's, I forgot what it's used for. I forgot what the thing is that does the credential stuffing, but again, a legal tool that's been used or repurposed for criminal activity. Um, stealing data. What you see about most cybercrime is without social engineering most cybercrimes fail. There's a, there's a reason that ransomware companies, ransomware attackers, anymore they offer that as a service. They build the ransomware, then instead of worrying about deploying it, they find somebody that can deploy it and then they take a cut of the profit because the deployment is the difficult part. The building it's not bad, but you have to be able to trick someone into getting it on their system and that takes a social engineer to do that.
- 27:44 – 31:16
Behind The Solar Winds Hack
- BJBrett Johnson
- CWChris Williamson
What do you know about what happened with the SolarWinds problem?
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs) I know that SolarWinds... Let me, let me get a drink here because it, it takes a minute. (swallows) SolarWinds I've got, uh, I've got the class action lawsuit that's been filed against them. I've, uh, spoken to the whistleblower as well. SolarWinds is, will be the largest breach in history when all, everything is said and done. It was a, it was a supply chain attack. The, uh, the way they got in, eh, there were, there were some sophisticated techniques that were used but entry to that falls right in within what I was saying about that 90%, these known exploits. The password for example was widely available online. The password was SolarWinds123. The, uh, they had had audits by security professionals saying, "Hey you've got these issues." Those people were either dismissed or not listened to. The, uh, they were warned over and over again that they had security vulnerabilities. They were never addressed because they were more interested in selling product than securing their system. So what happened was is you had, um, the Russian fan- I think it was Fancy Bear that got access to the SolarWinds, um, backbone. You had them, they got access to it and they were able to get snapshots of basically every single email of every client that SolarWinds had which was basically the entire Fortune 500, several US agent- US government agencies, um, read every single email they got to them, got, uh, IP, got everything else that, uh, that they needed. And the damage that was done from that will last for years, absolutely for years.
- CWChris Williamson
It feels to me like the serious damage that was done, that, that feels like a more technology heavy attack than what you were talking about earlier on. It seems like-
- BJBrett Johnson
It is.
- CWChris Williamson
... the actual, the, the ransomware, the code, the ability to shut that down and remain anonymous also assisted by being in Russia. Um-
- BJBrett Johnson
So and you've got, so you've got that and that's a nation state attack. All right. So that's, that along with the-
- CWChris Williamson
You think it was-
- BJBrett Johnson
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
You think that it was mandated or at least allowed by the state?
- BJBrett Johnson
I think it was allowed, absolutely, along with NotPetya. We know NotPetya is a nation state attack.
- CWChris Williamson
What's that?
- BJBrett Johnson
So you take both... NotPetya was where the, uh, the Russian Sandworm group they take over the, um, basically the QuickBooks of the Ukraine by faking a Microsoft certificate, they take over its update server.... then they, they put out an update, except it wasn't an update, it was a program that looked like it was ransomware, but it wasn't ransomware, it was a program that was designed to destroy hard drives. And it uses a variety of known exploits. It uses, uh, Mimikatz to harvest credentials out of RAM, it uses EternalBlue and EternalRomance, which were NSA vulnerabilities that were patched a year prior, it looks for outward-facing SMBs, which had been talked about for years and how people needed to turn off those ports, no one had, and it causes $50 billion worth of damage. So between that, and Solar- SolarWinds is much more sophisticated, ba- uh, absolutely much more sophisticated than NotPetya, much more sophisticated than what you'd see in any of these other, you know, cybercrime environments that go out at all. Um, but even though it's sophisticated, and it is, it still uses a variety of known exploits to gain that control or that access to that environment.
- 31:16 – 41:10
Which Countries Commit the Most Cybercrimes?
- BJBrett Johnson
- CWChris Williamson
Who in the, uh ... if you were to take all of the countries in the world when it comes to cybercrime, what would you rank the leaderboard as, in terms of effectiveness and who would be committing the most?
- BJBrett Johnson
Uh, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, you've got the Ukraine, you've got Brazil, um, then it goes down from there. You've got United States, places like that.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, could the, the USA not be up there? You think that those countries are doing more than the US?
- BJBrett Johnson
I, I don't think that the U- So I think, honestly, I think that the US doesn't have the testicular fortitude to do what Russia or China or North Korea does. I mean, we certainly don't assign blame to those countries when we're attacked by them, and I don't think that we would do the, uh, the same types of things either.
- CWChris Williamson
That is a really good point. The fact that it, uh, it almost feels like, um, this is the price that you pay for having that country on this planet.
- BJBrett Johnson
Right. Right. So, and, and think about it, I mean, so, so who was the g- who was the guy? Uh, John McCain. John McCain referred to Russia at one point as a gas station over in Asia. Euro-Asia. But, uh, uh, that's what he said, and if you think about it, you're seeing the conflict with Ukraine now, you're hearing these tales about Russian planes having GPS taped to the console, because it doesn't work in the plane itself. You're hearing all these stories, and you're like, "You know, it's pretty screwed up over there," and we've, we've yet to really assign blame for any of these attacks that have went on. We let NotPetya go, we let SolarWinds go, we did raise some hell about the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, we raised some hell about that. But still, we don't really like to assign blame, and we really don't like to enact any consequences which might cause more trouble. And because of that, I think that gives kind of a, you know, a, a free pass to these countries that seek to attack us. You know, we're not, uh, we don't worry about North Korea reaching out and stealing bitcoin, we don't really do anything about China stealing all the intellectual property and these things that they do. We just kinda let it happen, and I think there's something wrong with that.
- CWChris Williamson
Was there anything unique about the Colonial Pipeline hack?
- BJBrett Johnson
No, except, uh, known exploits. I mean, they got the password for the VPN off of Pastebin or something like that (laughs) . So other than that, not really. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
It is strange to think about the fact that when those hacks do come from those countries, you, it does seem a little bit just like that's, that's what we expect from them. That's, that's, that's the way that their culture causes people who have access to the internet to do it. I was listening to, um, The Lazarus Heist?
- BJBrett Johnson
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
Which is a podcast series, and in it, they're explaining about how these super, super smart kids from North Korea that go and do maths competitions over in Asia are basically locked in houses, working as computer hackers. They're the only people that have got access to the internet-
- BJBrett Johnson
Oh, wow.
- CWChris Williamson
... the, uh, the, the proper, full internet. And a number of defectors, these young guys, mostly guys, some girls, that go and do these maths competitions, they've lost, I think, maybe three or four of their best and brightest-
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... who, when they get released into China, and they've got handlers and they're supposed to go from place to place, and they've managed to evade somebody at some point and finally escape the clutches of North Korea, but-
- BJBrett Johnson
Oh, wow.
- CWChris Williamson
... yeah, make, make no mistake about it. Despite the fact that it is basically a, a third world country run by a dictator-
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... they are still incredibly sophisticated.
- BJBrett Johnson
Very.
- CWChris Williamson
They're just sophis- sophisticated in a very bureaucratic, totalitarian way.
- BJBrett Johnson
Very. You know, when I was, when I was a criminal, I'm the guy who brought, uh, Ukrainians, kind of made that connection between the Ukrainians and the United States as far as cybercrime goes. Those Ukrainians at that point in time, just at that point, they really had no other way to make a living, to provide or get money in, other than committing crime. They all wanted jobs, and, uh, they just couldn't get them. As a matter of, uh, one of the ways that, uh ... So there's a, there's a gentleman, a former FBI guy, um, Ed Hiddleston, I think is, is his name, something like that. There's an ar- there's a Wired article about it. But what he does is, is he captures, uh, they arrest one of these Ukrainian cyber crooks, and this cyber crook tells him, "Hey, we just wanna work." So they ended up advertising for employment on, uh, on monster.com and all these other employment websites, and you had these Ukrainian cyber criminals that would just apply hoping to get a job. So they, they just wanted to work. They weren't really about breaking the law, they just needed money. That's changed these days. These days, you see these Ukrainians or these Russians that their entire focus is, "How can I become a cyber criminal? Because of the money that can be stolen, because we're allowed to do it as long as we don't do it in our own country, let's do this."... to make money, to ser- to have a career.
- CWChris Williamson
I suppose, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. If your domestic country isn't going to prosecute criminals that are acting against other foreign nation-states, the, the US isn't going into Russia-
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... to try and take one of its citizens and bring it away.
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, that's very interesting. What's your thoughts on the Julian Assange debacle?
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
The entire arc of that.
- 41:10 – 47:27
How Much Violence is Involved in Cybercrime?
- BJBrett Johnson
- CWChris Williamson
How much violence was there in this?
- BJBrett Johnson
Back then, uh, no violence. But, and we started to see violence as ShadowCrew was coming to an end. Dmitry, he went by the screen name of Script, he's the guy that started CarderPlanet, that genesis of credit card theft. So what happens is as ShadowCrew was coming to an end, Dmitry comes in and starts to post pictures of an individual that he had kidnapped and had tortured, and this individual had owed him money or stolen money from him or something like that. And Dmitry said, "Hey, this is what happens when you steal money from me." That was the first instance of violence that we saw in those criminal communities at that point. Up until that point, we were just people who stole money and scammed people. What happens though is, that's the first instance of violence, but we started to see the profit potential of allowing drugs in those environments as well. For years we had, uh, we had banned drugs and we started to first allow marijuana, then we allowed ecstasy, and then finally we started to deal in opiates as well. That brings an entirely different clientele into that environment, so you start to see gangs start to be involved, you start to see people that, if they're caught, they're going to do 20 or 30 years in prison because of the dollar amount, because of the drugs that are involved. And when you're looking at that much time-... you are more likely to commit violence against an individual so that you're not arrested. So, we- s- it's- so today's environment, vi- to, to quote Monty Python, "Violence is inherent in the system." It's part of it.
- CWChris Williamson
What happened where you were somehow stealing money from the Secret Service whilst working for them?
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs) So, I was arrested, uh, February 8th of 2005, um, three weeks before I was supposed to get married. And, um, they let me sit a week in the county jail. Two agents fly in from s- from New Jersey. They pull me out of the cell, and they tell me they've got my laptop. I'm like, "Yeah." And they're like, "You got anything on your laptop?" I'm like, "Yeah." And they're like, uh, "You're gonna be charged for it." And I'm like, "Yeah, I figured." So then they're- the, the next question out of their mouths is, "Can you do anything for us?" And my exact words were, "You let me get back with my fiance, and I'll do whatever you want me to." Well, again, I'm the guy, my motivation is to buy love. So that's, that's my main motivation. Nothing else, just that. So they let me out. The only thing I've got left is that fiance. I don't wanna lose her. So I- the day I get out, I go back into committing crime. That same night, they, um, they move me up from Charleston, South Carolina, to Columbia, South Carolina, and I'm working in an office anywhere from, in the Secret Service offices, anywhere from four to six hours a day, six days a week. They've got me hooked up to a laptop, hooked connected to a plasma monitor on the wall, outside internet line. Beside of me, they've got a desktop system, outside line as well. Two Secret Service agences- agents in the room at all times, a South Carolina law enforcement officer and the agent in the room at the same time. And that's- I- so I was supposed to be monitored. My computer had, uh, Camtasia on it, and it had SpectraPro, so they could record the keystrokes and then take screenshots of the screen every night, uh, every few seconds. So the first two weeks, they're very diligent. They're asking questions, everything else. Then after two weeks, they start to get bored, and they get-
- CWChris Williamson
What are, what are they getting you to do here? What are you actually doing for them?
- BJBrett Johnson
My job is to surf the web, find targets, and start investigations. So, uh, for example, there's a Netflix show called, uh, Web of Make Believe, which is about Daniel Rigmaiden. He's a guy I taught while I was working for the Secret Service. I taught him how to do tax return identity theft, and then I set him up to get arrested. So that was my job, is to find targets so that we could arrest, build cases against them, put them in prison. Daniel Rigmaiden was one of these individuals. Um, so that was- that's what I did, four to six hours, and I was very fast about doing that. I would have multiple screens open up, bounce around between the screens, everything else. Two weeks of watching that, they get bored, and they start to watch porn on the side. Well, I'm sitting there watching them, like, "Well, shit, no one's watching me." And at the same time, all the data that they're recording every night on my laptop goes on a DVD on a spindle. They don't catalog it or anything. And I'm sitting there going, "Shit, no one's gonna look at that." So I start breaking the law from inside Secret Service offices. And I do that for the next 10 months until they find out about it. And the way that-
- CWChris Williamson
What are you doing in terms of breaking the law? And then what happens? How do they find out?
- BJBrett Johnson
I'm, uh, buying stolen credit card details. I'm getting the information to commit tax return identity theft. Um, anything, anything that I need to try to make money is what I- or steal money, is what I'm doing. The way they find out about it, a contact of mine, his name is, uh, Sean Mims, out of Los Angeles, I taught him how to do tax return fraud. They were set to arrest him, I think it was like March 17th, the operation was called Operation Rolling Stone. They were set to arrest nine individuals across the United States. They go to arrest Sean. They pick him up at his apartment. His apartment manager comes out and says, "Hey. Don't know what went on, but last night, this guy had a U-Haul truck and loaded it up full of stuff and bugged out." So there was no evidence in Sean's apartment whatsoever of anything that he had been doing. So they come back to me, and they're like, "Hey, we need you to take a polygraph to make sure you didn't tell this guy anything." Well, I, I failed the polygraph. They revoked the bond. I go back to the county jail. I was only under state charges. I hadn't been federally indicted at that point. So the judge, a week later, the judge lets me out, because they revoked the bond improperly. And I'm, I'm of the opinion, hey, if you're gonna fuck me, you're gonna have to find me. So I take off on a cross-country crime spree with the idea that I'm gonna bug out to Brazil. And, um, I end up stealing $600,000 in about four months, and that's where I make the United States Most Wanted list at that point.
- 47:27 – 1:02:17
Experiencing Jail
- BJBrett Johnson
- CWChris Williamson
What's it like going to jail?
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs) It's, it's an experience. It's, um, I've referred to it as, uh, I refer to it in a few different ways. One of the ways I've referred to it in the past is it's a lot like kindergarten, except there's some third and fourth graders with knives.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BJBrett Johnson
So, I mean, so that, that's one, that's one way to look at it. The other way to look at it is, is it's, it's an extremely frightening environment. County jail is probably the worst, because you're mixed in with inmates who are only there for a couple of days, and then you're mixed in with inmates who are going to never get out. So the violence is through the roof in county jails. But county, a county jail educates you on how you need to serve your time in a real prison. So you get to the real prison, and you find out pretty quickly that guards are just there to do their job. Who runs the prison is the inmate, and you're met at the door by whatever race you are. So I'm a white guy. I was met at the door by the treasurer of the Aryan Brotherhood, who asked-
- CWChris Williamson
Did you have any skinheads as well then?
- BJBrett Johnson
You did. There were skinheads there, absolutely. There were-
- CWChris Williamson
No, did you have- did you have your current...
- BJBrett Johnson
Oh, no, no, no. This- this is just because I'm follicly challenged.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs) So... No, back then I- back then I had the mane, but I was losing it.
- CWChris Williamson
I was gonna say-
- BJBrett Johnson
So... (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... if you turned up- if you turned up looking like that, they would have s- thought that they'd seen another one of the brothers already.
- BJBrett Johnson
I know, right? So, uh, Nick Sandiford was that guy's name. I- I- he meets me at the door and he was like, "How many more white guys come in?" I'm like, "Hell, I don't know. Four or five." His next question was, is, "What are you in here for?" And idiot that I'm in- that I am, I looked at him, I'm like, "Computer crime!" Well, it turns out that you can't say computer crime. Back then, that didn't mean credit card theft and skimming and everything else. When you said computer crime then, it meant child pornography. So, he goes and gets a hold of his shot callers. They gather around and they're like, "What the hell did you say you were in here for?" So I'm trying to explain it to him. What saves me is, unless they know for sure that you're a pedophile, they won't attack you. So, no one had told them that I was. They were waiting on the guards to confirm that. Well, it took... Within that first month, Wired Magazine hits the compound. I'm in it and it's talking about the hacking, the financial cyber crime, everything else. And I'm like, "Hell, I'm saved." And then it's got one line in there that says, "Brett Johnson, Secret Service informant." And I'm like, "Oh, shit!" So they shut down the compound. And, uh, warden calls me in, he's like, "Did you give an interview to Wired?" I'm like, "Yeah." And he's like, "Don't you know they'll kill you here?" And then he asked me, he's like, um, "Do you feel safe?" Well, I just got through doing eight months of solitary confinement because of the escape. And if you tell them you're not safe, they put you back into solitary for another eight months until they transfer you. So I'm like, "Oh, yeah. Completely safe." So they try to... They do a locker search to try to get the magazines out. They can't. He tells me that if anyone says anything, to come back to him. So I go back to the bunk. The next day, I walk into the unit and there's the treasurer of the brotherhood. He's got the magazine on his bunk, reading it. I'm like, "Oh, shit." So I walked up to him, I'm like, um, "Hey, Nick. What you doing?" He's like, "Oh, doing some reading." "Anything interesting?" "It's getting there." I was like, "Well, let me save you the trouble." Point out the line to him and he's like, "Man, I already knew." And I was like, "Are we gonna have any issues?" He was- and he asked me, he's like, "Did you snitch on a- on anybody that's here right now?" And I'm like, "No." He said, "Until someone gets here you told on, we don't have a problem. But we need you to do something for us." So the something was, in federal prison, everyone works. Doesn't matter what job you get, you gotta get a job. So my job was in education, teaching a literature class. And, um, taught it every Wednesday, 6:00 to 8:30 PM. All the Aryans signed up for the lit class. Few of the guards used to attend too. And what I taught was not literature. What I taught every Wednesday, 6:00 to 8:30, was fraud. Help me help you. Whatever you guys need to know, I got you. So because I did that, I was not beaten. And, uh, the other thing I did was, is I- somebody called me on my YouTube channel. They said, "You were the liaison between the pedophiles and the Aryans." And that was my job. You'd see a- you'd see a bunch of white guys come off a bus. The ones that looked like they were pedophiles, you'd walk up to them and I- my job was, "Hey, I don't know what you're in here for. I don't care what you're in here for. But if you're in here for something fucked up, you need to tell me. Because if you mess with those guys, they're gonna kill you." And usually if they were a pedophile, they'd just look at you and say, "Hey, man, I just wanna do my time." And you would go back, I'd go back and tell the Aryans, "Hey, that guy, don't wanna mess with him." And they would leave him alone except for maybe extorting them, but he was not allowed to, like, uh, work on the... He- he could not lift weights. He could not watch television. He could not-
- CWChris Williamson
I thought- I thought that pedophiles would be KOS. I thought that would- they would be kill on sight.
- BJBrett Johnson
So what happened, the reason... And- and a lot of the times they are beaten. Before I got there, at Big Spring... So who ran that compound was a Mexican- Mexican gang called the Pisas, all right? The Aryans had a population there, but they didn't control the compound. They were so tired of the pedophiles that were being sent to Big Spring and the population of pedophiles was about 20%, that they paid the Pisas to attack the pedophiles. And they had this bright idea. They- they thought that by beating up all the pedophiles, that the pedophiles would be transferred out of Big Spring. That didn't happen. What happened was, is the Pisas beat up all the pedophiles and who got transferred out were the Aryans. So the Aryans had a very small population when I got there. And because of that, they were very scared to beat up any pedophiles. So (laughs) the- the thing was, is we'll extort them. We will not let them watch television. We won't talk them- to them. They're only allowed to talk to their type. And that was the way the c- the- the environment was at Big Spring, because they had tried to attack and kill them previously and had failed miserably at that point.
- CWChris Williamson
What happens if one of the- one of those inmates tells you a lie?
- BJBrett Johnson
Depends on who's telling you the lie. Um, you know, if it's a pedophile telling you the lie, and I- I just spoke about this on a show that I recorded this morning. We had an inmate, his name was, uh, Wesley Evans, and he came in. He was a pedophile, but he came in and I had this talk with him and he told me, he's like, "No, I'm not a pedophile. I'm in here for selling marijuana on eBay." And I was like, "How much time did you get?" And he's like, "I got 18 years for selling pot on eBay." And I'm sitting there looking like, "Really?" And he's like, "Yeah, really." So that was a lie that he told. And all the inmates knew it was a lie, because you had people that were serving time for selling dope on eBay and they didn't get anything like that. So everyone didn't believe him.What happens is, is because it wasn't confirmed, they didn't beat the guy yet. Ultimately, they catch the guy gone from his bunk. They break into his locker, get his appeal paperwork out, and then find out he's a pedophile at that point, and then they planned on literally killing him. But word got to him beforehand, and he was able to check himself in before he got attacked.
- CWChris Williamson
What does check himself in mean?
- BJBrett Johnson
He goes up to the, uh, warden's office, or up to a counselor or a guard, and he says, "Hey, I'm in fear for my life." They send him to solitary confinement for eight months until they transfer him out.
- CWChris Williamson
That's a heavy price to pay. That's a choice between two pretty terrible options.
- BJBrett Johnson
It's a, it's a heavy price to pay, but at least you've got your life at the end of the day.
- CWChris Williamson
When you were talking about the escape, is that the release from, uh, the improper bond being taken away-
- BJBrett Johnson
No.
- CWChris Williamson
... and then you going-
- BJBrett Johnson
No. I was, uh, I was sent to prison, but, uh, there's nothing romantic about it at all. I escaped from a minimum security prison, um, so a camp is where I escaped from. I went to prison, uh, got a job working outside of the fence, and one day, I just left, escaped like that. I lasted about three weeks. US Marshals, they canvass a three-state area, finally found, find me holed up in a hotel, and arrest me, and send me back to prison. I spent eight months in solitary confinement, and they sent me from... I was in Kentucky at that point. They sent me from Kentucky out to Big Spring, Texas, where they know how to buil- build prisons.
- CWChris Williamson
Would it have been an easier prison journey had you have just stayed in that minimum security thing? I'm gonna guess you would've been... Would you have just been held in there had you not have contravened the, the rules?
- BJBrett Johnson
I would've done my time there and served out at that camp, but I forgot to tell you, I was very fortunate that, uh, looking back, because hindsight's 20/20. Looking back, if I would have stayed in that camp environment, there's not a doubt in my mind that I would've gotten out and committed crime again, went right back into cybercrime and everything else. Um, I was very fortunate that I escaped, got sent to a real prison, and then had the opportunity to think about my life, and also to take this cognitive behavioral therapy course that was a nine-month cour- course in prison that teaches you that your thoughts determine your feelings, feelings determine your actions. And that really changed my life, along with the help of my sister, my wife, and then finally, the FBI.
- CWChris Williamson
How long were you in prison for, then?
- 1:02:17 – 1:14:23
Coping with Crime Triggers
- BJBrett Johnson
- CWChris Williamson
What are the triggers for you?
- BJBrett Johnson
The triggers are that pressure of not being able to, um, of not being able to provide. It's not an ego trip anymore or anything else like that. I just wanna be able that, uh, the people that are around me are taken care of and not having stress or worry or anxiety. I just wanna be able to pay my bills and make sure that there's food on the table, that the power's running and not cut off, you know, stuff like that. So, during the pandemic, that was one of the big things. I, I, you know, "You're not speaking during the pandemic. All those consulting gigs are gonna end." So March, when that began, I called the family in the kitchen, my two stepsons and my wife, and I was like, "Hey, the way this story ends is with me back committing crime and in prison for 20 years." And, uh, because I voiced it, I did- I didn't just tell them, I told my FBI contacts, I told all the people that I worked with, and that was the first time in my life that I had ever voiced that concern before. And when I did that, everyone kinda rounded up and kinda took me in under their wing. They would call me and check on me. The FBI, about every two weeks, they'd call and say, "Hey Brett, how you doing? Let's have lunch." (laughs) And it, it continued from there. And, uh, we got our mortgage delayed. We got all of our car payments delayed. I had, uh, two $20,000 loans from the stimulus program that helped get us through and everything else. Um, credit went through the... I mean, credit bottomed out completely. But I didn't break the law, and, uh, found out I was a lot stronger than I thought I was.
- CWChris Williamson
And that's really beautiful to hear. I mean-
- BJBrett Johnson
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... the, the brutal thing is that it kind of highlights the vicious cycle that people who are potentially coming out of prison, or people who are g- generally struggling to find work and maybe coming from deprived or, um, like malign upbringings have, in that the thing that they need to be able to get themselves going is the exact thing that they can't find, and the solution-
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... to getting the thing that they can't get is to do a thing which is going to further ingrain them into a lifestyle which pushes them more toward crime.
- BJBrett Johnson
You know, the, what I've seen time and time again, and I, I, I get a lot of people on my channel, um, responses to interviews talking about how criminals are sociopaths. I do not believe that. I do not. I believe that, uh, most criminals are not sociopaths, th- they've just made very bad decisions that have resulted in being convicted and serving time in prison. The people that I served time with, 99% of them just wanted to do their time, and they were very hopeful that they would be able to get out and lead a productive, healthy life. The problem is, is that, and I said it before, you're released from prison with the exact same tools you go in with. Unless you've got a support or a safety net outside of individuals that are willing to help you, that can help you, and unless you, you take the assistance that they're offering, the chances of you recidivating, I think it's almost 100% you're gonna go back-
- CWChris Williamson
It's a huge number of people that-
- BJBrett Johnson
You are.
- CWChris Williamson
... do that, right?
- BJBrett Johnson
You, you have to, people have to be willing to help you. You have to accept the help that they're offering. And, and it ta- it takes that village. You can't do it yourself. You cannot do it yourself. You have to have people helping you, and you've gotta be a- and you know, the people that are out there, they have to be willing to help you too.
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think that there needs to be, um... It, it, it almost sounds like when you're talking about the fact that you've got your, uh, FBI guy that checks in on you every couple of weeks and that you can have this conversation with the family-
- BJBrett Johnson
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... in the kitchen and stuff, I'm getting AA vibes from it, almost.
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I'm getting 12-step-
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
No, really. Uh, it's, it-
- BJBrett Johnson
You're right. Right.
- CWChris Williamson
It actually sounds like, "Oh, I've got a s- kind of like a sponsor. I have somebody that I can call if the, the (laughs) , the credit card fraud gremlin appears," or whatever, like, in the back of my mind.
- BJBrett Johnson
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, I'm wondering whether there needs to be a more formalized version of this, whether there needs to be a rehabilitation program for people who are using crime as a method to help them get love or recognition or status or identity in the world. Um, because it, it really does seem like you've cobbled together, not through design, but simply by trial and error, a lot of error, um-
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... a, a, a format that works for you where you have a structure, you have support, you understand the triggers, you're able to verbalize it. You've got external accountability, you've got external support, you've got internal frameworks that you can rely on. That, I mean, that to me seems like something that potentially could be scaled out to help ex-crimina- criminals and, and people that are coming from a life of crime to perhaps try and integrate themselves more effectively.
- BJBrett Johnson
Actually, I think you're right. I do. I, I think that, uh ... And I've put some thought into that, but, you know, hell, I wouldn't know how to go about doing that. Uh, what I do is, uh, you know, if, if someone gets out of prison or someone needs help ... Like, there was a gentleman on LinkedIn that I talk about on my show today that I'm releasing later today. But, uh, he reached out to me. Uh, he's a computer science, uh, kid, and he's got some problems. You know, he's, he's thinking about, because times are hard, he's thinking about going into crime. And I, I gave the kid ... I was like, "Hey, here's my phone number. Give me a call. We will talk about it. I'll listen to you. I'll give you advice, whatsoever. Just keep your chin up. It's gonna be all right." You know, a- and I agree. If you, if you could come up with a structure where you're able to do that, like an AA type structure, I think it would be a great thing. I think it has to have that cognitive behavioral therapy aspect to it, uh, because there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in the world. But, um, I think you have to have that, and you've got to be, you, you've got to be that mentor. You know, I, I really, I really take it seriously if I see somebody that, that I think that is really trying to turn things around. You know, I, I'll sit down and I'll talk to them as much as they wanna talk. I'll listen everything else, and I'm adamant about telling them, "Hey, you're right now in this recovery mode, and recovery is never a straight line. You're going to backslide at some point. You're going to, so understand that. And that doesn't mean you failed. That just means, hey, this happens. As long as you're moving forward at the end of the day, that's what matters. You're gonna get there." You know, I, I think that, um, there, there's so much, there's so much negativity in the world. You know, we look at, uh, we look at people who have made these mistakes, who have ended up in prison, and we judge them and we think that they're not, they're never gonna change. But we have to be willing to give them the opportunity to change. I think that's what matters. And A, I understand budgets, I understand our economy, and I understand we've got a whole shitload of people out there that have never broken the law, and they deserve to, to have these opportunities too. But I will tell you this. That person who's broken the law, you're gonna pay for them one way or the other. You're either gonna help them rehabilitate and then lead a healthy, productive life that helps people, or you're gonna pay for their incarceration time when they recidivate again. So, where do you want to pay that bill? Is what I would say. And we have to start understanding that or, uh, you know, things are just gonna continue to spiral and get worse.
- CWChris Williamson
It's strange at the moment, the relationship I think the general public has with criminals and the criminal justice system generally. It, it still feels, even though it's, uh ... Anybody that's read anything about this topic knows that retributive justice is kind of pointless. You don't need to take the, uh, free will doesn't exist de- determinism red pill to-
- BJBrett Johnson
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... to get that. Simply just look at the stats. Uh, what are you achieving through that? And yet I can completely see that if you were the subject of a home invasion or of a stolen car or of a whatever, there is a, a sense of righteous venge- vengeance that, that kind of needs to be delivered. And this is the balance. I mean, uh, I've said it before on the show, it's, it reminds me slightly of the abortion debate that both-
- 1:14:23 – 1:15:31
Where to Find Brett
- CWChris Williamson
more of you, check out your show and all of that, where should they go?
- BJBrett Johnson
Sure. So, uh, my show is The Brett Johnson Show on YouTube. Just search for it on YouTube. I'm gonna pop up. I've got 35 episodes as of today, and we talk about cybercrime, cybersecurity, stuff I may wanna bitch about. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. Just look for Brett Johnson or Google or anything else like that. I'm very easy to find. Uh, let me, let me end with this, Chris, and, and say that for people out there watching, to protect yourselves, I need you to do three things. Freeze your credit. Freeze your credit of every single person in the house. It's free. Okay? So, freeze the credit across, across all three bureaus. Monitor accounts, place alerts on those accounts. And then finally, use a password manager. Do those things and you're gonna be okay. You won't be, uh, as victimized as 97% of the population that's out there.
- CWChris Williamson
Brett, I appreciate you.
- BJBrett Johnson
All right. Thanks again. Take care.
- CWChris Williamson
What's happening, people? Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks. And don't forget to subscribe. Peace.
Episode duration: 1:15:32
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