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riverside edit stephen & matt matt oneill's studio: In the early two thousands, a Secret Service agent, who by his own account wasn't a technical guy, ran the first wiretap ever done on an entire computer network. It took down the Shadow Crew Forum and put him in a room with a hacker named Albert Gonzalez, who he flipped. Gonzalez then ran one of the largest data thefts in the country while cooperating with the government at the same time. And later named the agent as part of it. Twenty years on, he's investing in cybersecurity instead of kicking down doors. Steve Ward, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for joining us, man. I really appreciate it. Good to be here. Good to see you. So, Steve, I was like to try to start off sort of like an origin story. can you tell the listeners kind of where you grew up and what did you think you were gonna be when you grew Yeah, I grew up in between two farms in the northern west point of New Jersey, a place called Sussex County, two older brothers, family. middle to lower class depending on the year. And honestly, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I liked computers early. We just couldn't afford them. So I had a neighbor who had a Commodore sixty four and I used to go down even when he wasn't home and ask his mom if I could use it in his bedroom. So it was pretty early. I was into computers, but no idea what I wanted to do. Joined the Coast Guard right out of high school and told my dad, Hey, I think I want to go do search and rescue, be a rescue swimmer. And his exact quote was, Do you even know how to swim? So that was the first jump of many jumps that people just shook their head at and was like, I'm not sure you're gonna be able to do this. But yeah, very basic, simple life. Sometimes miss that life of just simple growing up, working on farms and doing construction and things like that. So did you know how to swim? I did. We didn't have a swim team or anything like that. We didn't have a pool, but there was a lake. Okay. That we used to swim around in and let's just say when I went and did the rescue swimmer stuff, I was not top of my class. So so how did the Secret Service get on your radar? I heard something about a priest at Seton Hall had something to do with it? Yeah, I got done with the Coast Guard and went to Seton Hall and then once again, like didn't know what I wanted to do. I was gonna go to law school and I met a priest who had been sort of a mentor for two or three years there and he introduced me to the special agent in charge of the Norwich Field office. And he did it with the Secret Service FBI and DEA. He was the chaplain for those agencies. So an agent passes away or something like that and he would go and help the families. So he knew all these agents and he introduced me to them, but I didn't even know what the service did. I was just an adrenaline junkie and it seemed like, okay, one of these agencies will work for me. I think it'll fuel that adrenaline that I missed from the
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military. So did you apply to all those agencies? And was the service just the first one that knocked on the door? the deal. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I think when I was in training I got the FBI one or something like that or the D D A, I can't remember. And it was like, Well, I'm already here. I might as well stick it out and see how it goes. And your first office was at in Newark. They put you into Newark. And obviously you've said you're not a technical guy. I don't necessarily agree with that. I think that there's different levels but I get what you're saying. Do you remember the first case that you worked? how did you get into what we'll call electronic crimes back in the day? Yeah, most of us ended up in bank fraud or check fraud back then. It was like where they sent all the newbies. And I was working a bank fraud case. The guy's name was Alvin Collins, and he was all over the East Coast. Eventually grabbed him in Miami at a hotel we had tracked him to because he's using someone else's car down there. So that was my first case. I moved pretty quickly into the counterfeit squad and then came back to fraud and really before we even had like a technical unit. And the deal with the service. I became group leader of the fraud squad, which the technical group was in at the time. And I thanked my ATSAC for the opportunity. And his famous quote was, Hey, you're not getting this on merit. You're getting it 'cause Danny screwed up. But that was my first perceived authority type role as a group leader over there. And that had the ex sap guys in there, like the technical crew, and that's sort of how I, you know, started getting into it. Now that case where you locked the guy up in Miami, was it one of those where you had to send a request? We would call them for the listeners an IOD to Miami, or did you actually get to go to Miami? No. No, sent an IOD. Yeah. the deal up here. It was hard to even cross the Hudson River at the time without getting permission. So Yeah. W one of the things that when I was in the criminal investigative division, I always encouraged every office to travel, travel, travel. If it's worth working a case and sending an IOD, send your agents because If they're the ones that actually put the cuffs on the person and see it through, that that adrenaline that you talked about, that's real. And people get addicted I know I did get addicted to that. There's nothing more deflating than spending nine months to a year or whatever working a case and then somebody else made the arrest and then you didn't really get to be part of it. You didn't get to debrief. You're relying on another office that doesn't know anything about your case. And it could jeopardize the entire case because you have that one time to get that guy to start talking. And if you don't know anything about the case and he perceives that you don't know anything about it, he's gonna bullshit you and then all of a sudden you've lost that opportunity. And it was just being cheap.
The agency was just being cheap at that time. Yes. And I never understood it. It was like think about how much money we would spend on a protection assignment. You'd think nothing of sending fifty guys to Des Moines for five days. But the idea of sending one case agent to Miami is, my God, that's sacrilegious. it made no sense. What was the Secret Service's cyber capacity? What did it look like? What was the capabilities in the early 2000s, late nineties? We didn't have anything what I would say like offensive in any way. It was all defense because it was all, hey, there's a case that involved the computer and we're going to do an exam on that computer and pull evidence off of it. So looking back, I definitely classified it as reactive and defensive. for me, I didn't really like that stuff. It's one of the reasons why I I always say I joined the wrong agency because I didn't really like protection. I didn't like being defensive in a way. I wanted to go do shit and I wanted to open doors and grab people. And so it was tough for me to kind of be on that defensive side. So I was always very aggressive in investigations. I think at one point I had more arrests in work than anyone else. Like I just loved it. And I was never bored. And I remember, and you probably went through this too, you had groups of people who wanted to do investigations and groups that don't. And I remember some of them are still down in headquarters and running the agency, that I would be walking in early in the morning in jeans and a t-shirt and be hey, we're gonna go down to Newark or Jersey City and we're gonna go hit this, this, and this. Do you want to come? And I remember people just looking at me going, No. Yeah. Yeah. And I never understood that because it was like you're here, we're not doing protection what are you gonna do all day? And so I very rarely wore a suit when we were in the office because I liked being out on the street and whether it was Fugitive Squad or JTTF a little bit after September eleventh, any of that stuff. Just get me on the street and get me around people and I was happy. And the idea of standing post, I suspect you and I are the same. That was miserable. Hey, go stand up in the well of the Waldorf from eight P to eight A. That doesn't scratch the itch. At least it didn't for me. And so any opportunity you could to do something different, you would take it. And the more you got wrapped up in cases, the more meat you put in the pot, the less likely you'd have to go stand post. Because at the end of the day, that was something that I know down in Newark and when I was in New Haven, it was something of interest to the boss. And if everybody else was fine to go stand post, well then fine, let them go do that. Let me do what I like doing. Because there wasn't many of us. And unfortunately there still isn't. It was more, it's been said, a coalition of the willing. more than anything else. And so the capacity to teach people isn't really there because
it's really just these fragmented groups of guys all throughout the country. So how did you learn about the criminal underground? There's no manual, there's no training course. Basically, how did you get involved in Shadow Crew? Walk us through sort of like the origin story and how the case became Operation Firewall. Look, you've probably been there. I got back to the fraud squad as a group leader and there were about ten cases on my desk. And you had to go through them and assign them out to people and everything. And I went through and it was seven o'clock at night. I was in the office pretty much by myself and I went through all ten of them. Nine of them I threw in a burn bag. I knew you were going to say that. Yeah. And there was one that was just some SARS in there, some ATM photos, some reports from JP Morgan's fraud unit, basically saying there was somebody going around New York and New Jersey hitting ATMs. And they couldn't figure out how. he had the pins, how he had the track one, track two data. And in and of itself, it wasn't that unique or nothing that jumped out. I've said this for 20 years. What made me keep the case on my desk was his photos in the ATM. His face pissed me off. Just as stupid as that. I looked at him and he irritated me. And I was like, I'm gonna go get this guy. Gonna like him. Yeah. That was basically I went to a guy named Dave who was on the case. He was right out of the academy. He was like a a counterfeit specialist for a year and then he got accepted. He went to the academy, just got out, and I was like, Hey, this is gonna be like your first case, I'm gonna work it with you and walk you through the whole thing, but we're gonna go find this guy. And that's literally the luck of how that started. was that Albert Gonzalez? Yeah. No kidding. So he wasn't covering his face he just had a very punchable face. He had a wig on. He wear disguises. Okay. But it was always, yeah, his face. And we used to joke around and say that because the ATM was up, he had really big nostrils and we're like, Well, we're gonna be able to identify him in two seconds in person because no one has the nostrils like he does. And yeah, that's like if criminals knew sometimes that that's how you got selected for me to go after you, they'd be like, Holy shit. Yeah. So I threw nine away and I kept one and was like, We're gonna go find him. And that's literally how it started. We just old school investigations of calling every bank. And every PD and sending photos and being like he hit this one in your town, this one in your town, this one on 42nd Street in Broad, and all worked within your field office. And then eventually NYPD had a special car theft unit that they were patrolling Manhattan. And they watched him on the street and were like, This dude's weird. We think he's gonna boost cars because he was wandering around and he was hanging out in ATM vestibules too long. So they thought he was a lookout. So they sent a detective in undercover to use the ATM. And when they saw him, he had a stack of white plastic and he was just banging out one after the other. And what he would do is he would do it at eleven forty five, hit fifty of At midnight, the balance would switch over and he could take out another five hundred at twelve one AM. And so they grabbed him. Just by luck, they called a JP Morgan fraud investigator at two in the morning who said Steve is looking for him in the Northfield office. Call this number. And that's how he got him. Crazy. Steve, what that speaks to to me is a couple things. Obviously, that's how a lot of cases happen, right? Good things have to happen along the way. But back in those days, banks did a really good job with having bank investigators that were local that we knew that and they knew what we were working. They got rid of that sometime in the early two thousand tens. And I think that that has been a huge disservice to fraud. Because you'd pick up that guy's call at two in the morning. He would pick up your call at two in the morning. And I would imagine you weren't dissimilar to me. Sometimes they'd go out on surveillance with you. They were part of the team. And so the fact that they happened to call the one guy at one of the largest banks in the world that happened to know that you were looking at him. I mean, that's just it sounds like it's too coincidental to happen, but in those days, that was the point. And it was probably a former, you know, post inspector or former cop or whatever that knew the deal. So how long after he got picked up were you able to talk to him? We called New York that morning. I think it was a Friday night that turned into a Saturday. And again, you'll love these stories 'cause I know you've been there. We called over to New York and said, Can you send a duty agent over and interview him? Because going from New Jersey to New York as an agent was like going to Russia. Right? Like still except for protection to your point. So the duty agent didn't wanna go on a Saturday, so he said, You guys go and that's how we got the case because we got in our cars and drove over to the precinct and interviewed him and knew just enough to know that he was somebody. That's how I explained. We didn't get everything right away, but he did give us a consent to search on his apartment where we f was a gold mine. But when he started talking, I didn't go. It was a guy, Dave, and another duty agent that went I went to the office and basically started building out what we had. And they went and interviewed him and yeah, I always say we knew just enough to know that he was somebody and that's how the whole thing started. Well, it's funny about the guy not wanting to go, the duty agent, because obviously he missed out because they probably would have claimed the case and it would have been one of the biggest cases in the New York office. I remember I was in New Haven or probably around the same time and I was a duty agent. And so for the listeners,
a duty agent basically if somebody calls, you go respond. And the rule was basically if somebody is locked up for a counterfeit, even if it's a ten dollar bill, you have to go. And I remember it was a Friday in the summertime and I was gonna go on a boat on the Connecticut River about four forty five and I get a call that all the way down by New York, they arrested this one woman who didn't speak any English at all for a fifty dollar counterfeit bill. And no, I'm sorry, it was a hundred. And I called my boss, I'm like, boss, do I really gotta go out on this? I'm doing this. He's like, You know the rules, you gotta go. Well, I go all the way down there, I get a consent. We flippered trunk and there was a half a million in counterfeit in Columbia notes. So it's just one of those things and that just taught me a val valuable lesson is you just never know until you go out and you gotta go do it. So it made sense to me. And whoever that duty agent is probably has no idea, but that's huge for you guys. He knew because it wasn't long after when they realized we had something that they tried to take the case in there on that. yeah, we had to have a conversation and be like, Come on, guys. Is Albert living in their district in New York? What helped us is he lived in Jersey. He lived in Carney Kearney, New Jersey. So yeah, that definitely helped. Okay. So then you guys go and you basically flip him. How long did it take for him to start talking about basically Shadow Crew and how did that operate? Yeah, we got him over to a jail in Morristown, New Jersey, which a hell of a lot better than Rikers Island or anything like that, and eventually got him out on bail. And then we just brought him to the office and it was no exaggeration. I think it was fifteen hours a day for like a week. And I'm an inquisitive guy, and maybe that's why I liked investigations. I'll ask you questions all day. And it was just question after question after question. And by the end of that week, it was holy shit, this is a world that we had no clue existed. And we kept calling it the eBay for criminals. And that was just the moment where I was like, okay, this is much bigger than me and him. Like th this is a whole network of 4,000 people that are just trading illegal goods. And by the way, there's another one with 4,000 people that is Russian speaking and a little bit English. That's a sister site. So they have the whole globe covered. And once I realized, like, hey, the Russians are getting the data in Moscow, sending it to Albert in Kearney, New Jersey over email, encrypted email. He's cracking the pin, the track two data on the back of the card that the Russians didn't know how to do. And that's how he was getting the ATM data. It was just something like we're not used to this. And it happened so fast and it was so much money that on the weekend he would have to send Western Union them a hundred and fifty grand. And it was just like it was just so much bigger than what I was used
to. I'd never worked a case like this, never something transnational like this. I knew I was in over my head really, really quickly. There was no ego involved in that. I was okay, I need help. I'm four years into the agency. I'm still a junior guy. Mm-hmm. Holy shit, this is huge. So it didn't take long. But we didn't have at that time a robust cyber intel section built out, did we? So when you needed help, where did you go? You know what's crazy is I told the SAC of New York was very supportive. It took a little convincing, but he was supportive. So I went to recruit people. And looking back on it, it was pretty insane. The amount of people that just looked at me and were like, no, I'm not helping you. I don't want to be a part of this case. Like it was insane. So we always joke around the five or six people that were like, We'll join and help you. They were the last out of the 60 people they asked. And we were all like kind of like misfits in a way, but it just it worked. We were all sort of Jersey guys who were kind of blue collar kids growing up. And these guys were like, Yeah, I'll help. I'll help. Like, I'll learn it. I'll figure it out. And I went and grabbed a couple agents from New York. Who came over and helped real technical guys, like this guy Matt Ferrante, who who helped. And then the two dudes that helped the most were Pablo Martinez and Robert Villanueva at CID down at headquarters. It would have never happened without them because no one believed me on what I thought it could be. It was just them. So every time I hit a brick wall with headquarters about getting funding, those guys would support us. And we're better at storytelling and articulating what the need was. So I just went to Robert and Pablo in the beginning. And man, they don't get enough credit for the blockers, as in headquarters sometimes. They can either make or break a case by how they support it. Well, without yeah, that's how it all cracked where they finally gave us money, but it took three months. where as well as I do, the FBI, you'd have cash the next day. The DEA, right? For me, it was three months of fighting and convincing and taking the Amtrak down there and being like, this is the art of possible. And all of them were just like, hey man, we got a campaign year coming up. I was like, my God, if I made that one more fucking time. Well, and also I'm sure what you asked for was ashtray money compared to what other agencies would get. And I remember working cases and it was almost like they wanted us to do it on consignment. It's like this is not how the real like if you want to be taken seriously, you gotta put some meat in the pot, at least on their side as well. Can I tell you by the way, you'll love this I needed an undercover computer to use. They sent me to Best Buy with a government check. My God. And when I walked up to the register and said, What's the total amount? and started to write the check out and hand it to the cashier, she was like, I need a
supervisor. Like, that's how archaic we were. my God. That's wild. That's wild. So yeah. And then of course, obviously, like the OPSEC of doing that. What was your relationship? With Gonzalez Were you basically his handler? Yeah. So Dave and I controlled him. He was a good teacher. And that's how we built the relationship. He liked teaching and I liked learning. And so did Dave and Kevin Gilbert and and the rest of these guys over there with me. Pete Angelone, we were the opt guys around him. And we respected him in a way that he just knew a world that we didn't know. So I used to like make a comment to him. Hey, I know there's a little arrogance involved in this. We're the Secret Service and you're sitting here teaching us the technical aspect and the fraud aspect and all of it. more than me today, you won't tomorrow. And every day I'm gonna learn from you. I'm gonna catch you and surpass you eventually. You're never gonna know what we know, but eventually I'm gonna know what And that was the goal with all of us. It was just a competitive nature of okay, I hope he enjoys it over the next year, because sooner or later we're not gonna need him and we're gonna know more than he does. So That's where it became a very good relationship of a teacher student and just a student of the game of trying to figure it out. Other than that, there wasn't much of a relationship, but that part was a strong relationship because he helped us do a lot of things and it's not often that you're sitting with an informant figuring out how to go catch someone. They're usually not involved in that stuff. Yeah. But he was the one that came up with ideas of, hey, is there any way you can get ATT calling cards? Because we can sell them online and whoever uses them, you can go grab That was his fucking idea. Right. So that's where it was very difficult and the service wasn't used to managing informants long term. We did smash and grabs a lot with them. W we weren't trained on how to manage the relationship with him and what to involve him in and what not to involve him in. And so it was very difficult. And I think ultimately we paid the price for it. But the relationship grew over time. In the beginning, there wasn't really any. So yeah. The interesting story in that whole thing is when the case got started, I got a T number to PPD. So me, Mikey Ball, you probably remember Mike from right. We all me, Mike, and Vinny all went to train together. They were like best men in my wedding. We all got our numbers and we were gonna go do Barbara at Yale, I think, for a year. Yep. And then go down to the house and the sack Got me in the office and he's like, Hey, congrats, your T number came up. And I was like, Oof, like, okay. He's like, You're not excited? You're going to the show. And I was like, my, can I just let me go home and talk to my wife real quick? He was like, What the hell do you need to talk? You know how they were back then. Like, what you mean you need to talk to your wife? Like, this is PvD. I went home, I talked to her, I came back, I was like, Hey, I don't want it. I think this cyber thing is gonna become something. And I got blackballed. that most of that office was just like, you're an idiot. Remember my atSec told a buddy of mine, hey, stay away from Ward. He's gonna go from hero to zero in about two seconds. And just hearing that, being like, fuck guys, like I'm working a good case. Maybe this is gonna be something. So now when I look back on it, I'm like, I guess I chose you chose wisely. The right thing. But yeah, that hurt. back then of not going to the detail, I took some hits over that. So it's funny because I was in New Haven and Barbara got to Yale in August of 2000 and I was December of ninety eight higher and they called me and said, You're going to Barbara. And I said, I don't want to go there. I've already been in New Haven for four and a half years. I want to go down to DC. My parents were there and I wanted to to go down to the vice presidency tell because I had a bunch of friends down there. And they said, well, you got to find somebody to take your spot. And so I started calling around and my memory is, and Mike Ball probably can correct me on it, but I remember calling down saying, Hey, you want this? He's Yeah, I'll go. And that's what saved me from having to go down to Barbara and spending two more years following her around. That's amazing. So when Firewall Gonzalez was helping you guys identify other cyber criminals, do you get the sense now that it was his competition? Was he selective on who he was targeting? How did that kind of work? No, because up in in Norc we selected all the targets. Okay. So he didn't have as much leeway up in Norwork. I think Norc, he was on the up and up. Okay. I think what caused him to go bad was we told him to go to Miami. That's where his family was. We wanted to get him out of Jersey in case anyone found him. We were actually worried about him. we were like the Russians, if they have a chance, I think they're gonna take a shot at him. we had arrested in one night, twenty four people. Ultimately we grabbed forty-one people in eleven countries. Wow. Just from that one case. Wow. So we were a little worried about him. So he went down to Miami, but just look, typical service, not blaming anyone. We're just not good at it. Everyone wanted you to do it again. And everyone was bugging me. Let's do it again. Let's do it again. Go to Miami and work it with him out of the Miami field office. And let's do it again. So I'd gone down to Miami a couple of times and met with the crew there and helped them with a couple of cyber cases. We grabbed a couple of dudes down there and they're like, Yeah, we really want you to go down there and do it again. So I called Brian Nagel at the time, who was like, You give one favor for this case. And I called him and was like, All right, let me go to Miami. My wife's father was sick with cancer and we wanted to go down there and
take care of him anyway. And her mom was down there, so it was a good family decision. But it took like over a year. And in that year, there were three of the largest breaches that have ever occurred. So it was in between. So in some ways the service takes a bit of a hit that we shouldn't take because we were done with him and he was signed off. And he didn't know that. Yeah. He was in between. So then when I got down there, I don't think he ever even thought about coming back to the good side. I think he got another taste of it. And that's when he just kept doing it. And that's when it was just me. So I got to Miami and I didn't have my crew of guys with me. It was just me in a small interview room with a little one-way window. It was like jail every day. No windows, no nothing, in a room with two desks, just doing the same thing. And it was that mistake we made of, hey, lightning's not gonna strike twice in the same place. Why are we trying to do this again? And we arrested people, but I just started to have a feeling that like he wasn't into it and he Came into the office with a duty desk agent called me and they let him into the office because Miami had this gate that opened, and he came in with a new BMW. And the duty agent called me, was like, hey, your boy's got a new BMW. the fuck is that? Yeah. And that's when this started to be like, hey, something's not right. He's coming in late, wasn't really interested, wasn't helping me find big targets. We were just plucking off like low players. So not necessarily going after competition, but not going after the top dogs who ultimately he was working with. Right. Just never really helped me find anybody good. Do I have it right that one of the big data breaches was TJ Maxx, Sports Authority? I can't remember the other one. Heartland. Was it Heartland? Yep. Payment system. Yeah. So because TJ Maxx is out of Boston, Boston starts working that case. And it was through that case that Gonzalez got basically uncovered. Do I have that right? Okay. Yeah. So I left the service and went to JP Morgan. And a year after I left, eight months after I left, that's when I was taking the Amtrak down to DC, helping them with cases. I wasn't even an agent anyway. Did you move back up to Yeah, I moved back up to Jersey. Yep. I moved back up to New Jersey for the JP Morgan job. It was in Manhattan. And then I was going down to DC and I was talking to DC a lot. And DC would call me and then I would call Halbert, ask him something, and then I would call C I D again and give him the info. And I was like a router for him, not knowing the whole time that Boston had him as a suspect and DC didn't know for a little while. I certainly didn't know. So it was messy because Boston was like, Why is this guy still talking to him? Not knowing that I was talking to him because CID was asking me to. Right. And then when everybody started talking together, again, this is my view. The agents in Boston and C ID may have a different view. When everyone started talking, it was sort of like I literally got a phone call and was like, Hey, you're cut off. We're not talking to you anymore. And that's when I knew, okay, something's wrong. I've helped catch all these guys. And I volunteered to help catch Albert again. I even thought about going back and joining the service again. I called and was like, what does it take to come back? I wanted them. And then for a year we went back and forth. I was on the phone with US attorneys as a civilian, listening to evidence, being like, I'll never forget the moment I was in Miami visiting my mother in law and I was on the phone with some agents at CID and a bunch of US attorneys. And they're like, Hey, we think it's Albert, but we're not sure. Can you just confirm some things? And they're like, Hey, this guy's constantly saying he's going to the gym. It still gives me chills to remember this. He's constantly going to the gym, but Albert's pretty scrawny. And I go, But he's not scrawny anymore. That kid goes to the gym all the time. I actually think he's on Royce, a little bit of juice. He's gotten bigger and he's gotten pretty obsessed with going to the gym. And they were like, okay. Then it was like, he's complaining about his contact lenses. He wears glasses. I go, He doesn't wear glasses anymore. He switched to contact lenses like three months ago. And we started piecing things together. And at the end, they're like, What do you think? I'm like, I I don't know, guys, but there's enough here to think that it could be him. And yeah, shortly thereafter I went from Boston being like, Hey, we think Steve's involved and CID being like, He's not, he's helping us. Like, how would he be involved? And then when they finally grabbed him in Miami, I think they grabbed him like thirty thousand in cash. He had a Glock nineteen. That's when the agents called and said, Hey, we got him. Like he's saying you're involved. Like you're done with the agency. You're cut off. And it To be honest, you've been there. I only did nine years in the Secret Service, but probably one of the worst conversations I've ever had in my life is telling me that I'm cut off from an agency that I loved. I fucking loved that place. Seeing what I see now, it drives me crazy because I want to go back and fix it. That's how much I loved it. So that, man, that hurt. I was done. Like there was a year where I couldn't get out of bed. Well, and also agency aside, all of the work that you did on the case itself. Aside from that, and then leveling accusations based on a criminal saying that obviously without any evidence, how long did it take for basically those allegations? did they polygraph? what did they do? That would have been the first thing I would have done is boxed him up and said, Okay, well we gotta take this seriously. You're saying this, but what did they do? No, it went a year where at one point they're like, Hey, you're gonna be the key witness for defense. And then we're
going to come after you as far as the US attorney's office concerned. It was like, okay. And I ended up getting a former US attorney as a lawyer and was like, I'm not retaining you because I don't want to send a message. But here's my wife's cell phone number. I gave his number to my wife and was like, if something happens to me, this is the guy you call. But I'm like, I'm not getting a lawyer. Fuck them. They told me to get one. I'm like, I'm not doing it. I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not getting one. You ask me whatever you want to ask me. And then it turned into hey, we're going to send you a subpoena to show up. Boston, I was like, you don't have to send me a subpoena. Just tell me when to come. I will come. There was nothing I could do to make them feel comfortable. And I knew there was no evidence. It was just his word. And he was basically doing it to try to get a lighter sentence. So eventually he came back and said, it's not true. He wasn't involved. He apologized at his sentencing hearing, which meant shit to me. Like you just ruined, I think it was about a year, year and a half of like, and I don't talk about it that publicly. I mean like suicidal. I that's just I can't even imagine going through that. And then I also think like you volunteered to talk to federal prosecutors without counsel, without a subpoena, looking back, would you ever recommend anybody doing that? Like I know that you are innocent and I know like you're I had my own run ins that I had to get cleared and I did the same thing and I looked back and went, you know what? At the end of the day, I would tell everybody, get counsel, don't say shit, keep your mouth shut. But you didn't do that. Looking back, would you have given yourself obviously it worked out, but would you have given yourself that same advice today? No. No. I don't give my kids that advice. So I tell my kids same thing. Don't say shit. Get a lawyer. Yeah. Keep your mouth shut. Yeah, you just can't you can't win. You know the deal. Like it's a ninety nine percent conviction rate in the AUSAs. And if they want you, they're gonna get you because they're gonna give you ten charges and you're gonna plea out nine and one's gonna stick and it would have like obstruction of justice or some stupid thing. Yeah, man, I would not give that same advice. I'm glad it worked out. And in a way, it really damaged the relationship between me and the service that eventually, thankfully, Mike, Vinny, the rest of these guys got promoted up and it improved the relationship with everyone. But there was probably five to seven years where I got a call from someone that I won't name who's when it was all over said, Hey, you're no longer persona non grata, you can come back and you can deal with people. And my exact words were, hey, I don't know who told you that, but whoever it was, tell them to go fuck themselves. You just ruined a year and year and a half of my life where I I couldn't I had two young kids, you know, one who
had just gotten diagnosed with autism at the same time as all this was going on and I was a mess. So Yeah, it was tough. It obviously builds character. Yes. And now looking back, like I get it. Like I get why they looked at me. I just wish they looked at me faster. And cleared me sooner so that everyone could have moved on. And why believe in informant who already screwed us over once? Like, how does that make sense? So yeah, we got through it, but it was not fun. I don't recommend it to anyone. I think of like Comey and the stuff that he's going through right now, the FBI director, and it resonates because you never know when somebody's gonna come through the front door like we used to. Right. And you start squaring the block back in the day and looking over your shoulder and man, it's a horrible way to live. Yeah. what's going on right now is insane with him and so many others. And when you look, I was reading the information that they filed on Comey, and it was interesting to me that every single prosecutor was a special assistant, meaning they're like a SASA, a special assistant. So for the listeners, not like a seasoned federal prosecutor, they had to bring other people in. That tells you all you need to know about the quality of what they were doing. And for what? It just doesn't make any sense at all. And also when they called and said you're no longer persona non grata. Just the arrogance, why would you think I'd ever want to come back? Like who do you think you you know what I mean? Like, yeah, you know, I'm done with you. This relationship is over on in both ways. So now, you know, twenty years on, you're now investing in cybersecurity instead of kicking in doors. Looking back, what has changed about this world since Shadow Crew and what's exactly the same? I think what's the same is that when someone has the tools available to them, good people will do bad things. It's never changed. The easier you make it for them to make a bad decision, the more likely it is a good person will make that bad decision. We've all put people in cuffs. You know, we like grabbed the guy who did the Paris Hilton hack back in the day. And I think we vilify people when we go after them and sometimes don't realize that some of them are good people who make mistakes. Having a son with autism now who's twenty one, realizing that a lot of these kids that I grabbed back in the day probably were on the spectrum in some way. And needed social interaction and that was it for them. They're not bad people. So I don't think that ever changes. It doesn't mean that somebody shouldn't grab them, they gotta suffer consequences and all that, but they're not all hardened criminals. I think that's the same. I think what's changed is I think where AI is going scared about where it's going from a criminal standpoint. I think you've been there and worked these cases where we know that a generalist criminal has a certain level of capability and a nation state has a much greater capability. Well now that gap is basically nil. And you can take a regular criminal who can do nation state damage. I think we're in a world of hurt over the next couple of years. It won't be forever. We will catch up on the defensive side. We will build good companies like the next Palo Alto and CrowdStrike. Great. But we're usually late in cyber. So I think it's gonna take some time and I think we're gonna feel pain over the next couple of years. And I think people should have a little extra water on hand and a little extra generators on hand. And I think We're gonna fight some more wars through electrical grids and water supplies and things like that in the future. Instead of sanctions, they're just gonna hold you hostage with water and electricity. Yeah, it's a scary time. The fact that AI has lowered the barrier to entry so much that to your point earlier, you had Albert Gonzalez that was able to crack track two data that the Russians were providing him and you needed a specialized skill set and now you don't. You just need access basically to the internet and The commoderization of the technical aspect is something that I'm also very concerned about. I had Chris Inglis on a couple of weeks ago. He's awesome. Yeah. he's more of an optimist than most people, which actually gives me comfort because I'm like he knows a hundred X more than I know. But his point is the same thing. there's going to be some really nasty bumps in the road over the next few years before we eventually figure it out because that's it's what we do. And there is a financial incentive to do it. So whatever that next rate company is, that's probably in its series A round right now, like to know who they are and invest and invest in them. That's the fun part. But it's hard. So last question. We talk about a a post quantum world and everyone's focused on a AI. Is that really where our I should be? Or should we also equally be focused on what does a post quantum world mean to whether it's encryption, to our daily lives? One might have a more immediate impact, but Which one do you think will have a more lasting generational impact, AI or a post quantum sort of world? Or is it way too early to even tell? I think the quantum piece for a long time we've been saying in the next five years, quantum will be X. And it has not happened. I think we're much closer to it than we were, because I think the capabilities that AI is providing us will one hundred percent make quantum much more realistic for us over the next couple of years. But I still think we're A ways away from it. I think nations have to worry about quantum. I think people have to worry about AI. That's how I split it in my head. And I think right now we're fearful of what its capabilities are. But I just had, my best friend just got diagnosed with cancer and it was fifty and healthy. And all we keep talking about is, Hey man, we're like weeks away from major cancer breakthroughs with AI. And every time I get worried about cyber and AI, I think healthcare and AI and it balances my fear because I think it's going to do incredible things for human life. And that's where I focus on the positivity. Because if not, I can be a little bit of a doomsday prepper. Yes. Right. With AI and quantum. But I think it's going to do incredible things and have amazing breakthroughs for us in our longevity and the health for us and our kids and everything. And that's what I think is the immediate. So I think we're going to have some amazing breakthroughs in a bunch of different domains. And I think quantum when they say five years from now, I think they actually mean it this time. And I think five years from now, the nations if I'm the US government, I'm petrified because China's really s kind of stole most of our shit. Mm-hmm. The only reason why they haven't been able to do what they want with it is because they haven't been able to crack the encryption yet. And that's all gonna go away. So I'm not a politician, I'm not a world leader or anything like that, but I think I'm smart enough to know that in five years, countries will become on such level playing fields with one another because of it. And I think sanctions won't work like they have over the last fifty years. And I think you're going to see some big shifts in what countries become powerful and which ones don't. Maybe it's a good thing. But I I think the next five years are pretty scary. And I just hope we lead the place better than where we found it for our kids, the way our parents did. And that's my biggest goal. Yeah. Although I'll joke with our parents' generation is thanks for that. massive debt you left us. No, I'm kidding. But did they leave it better? I don't know. Yeah. Certainly not. Certainly not that part. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. But Steve, I really appreciate your time. And that was a really fascinating story. I've heard a lot about firewall, but I've never really got the sort of inside knowledge that you just give to our listeners. So really, really appreciate your time and best of luck with Brightmind and everything that you're doing. Thank you. Thanks for the time. Keep doing what you're doing. Love it. Thank you. And thank you, listeners, for listening to this week's episode of Detonation Point presented by Elastial. We'll see you next week. Thank you.