The Making of a Cybercriminal w/ Brett Johnson

Adult Child

Andrea

Relationships, Health & Fitness, Education, Society & Culture, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.9 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2022

⏱️ 97 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Brett Johnson is a reformed cybercriminal who built the first organized cybercrime community - Shadowcrew - the precursor to today's Darknet Markets - and laid the foundation for the way modern cybercrime channels still operate today. In 2004, he was placed on the United States Most Wanted List , arrested in 2005, convicted of 39 felonies, and sentenced to 7 1/2 years in federal prison. Brett shares about his childhood trauma, his fear of abandonment, his experience in federal prison, and how he turned his life around after 30+ year criminal career. Today he uses knowledge and experience concerning cybersecurity, cybercrime, identity theft, and fraud to help individuals and companies protect themselves from the type of criminal he used to be.
Brett's Website
Brett's Interview on Lex Fridman's pod

Leaving Crazy Town workshop

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Transcript

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0:00.8	Passwords are like underwear. Don't let people see it, change it very often, and you shouldn't
0:06.0	share it with strangers. My name is Andrea and this is a Gold Child.
0:10.3	Welcome back to adult child, where we take a deep dive into the impact of growing up in
0:32.3	a dysfunctional family. How do you know my dearest shit shows? Today, we are diving deep
0:40.2	with Brett Johnson. Who the hell is Brett Johnson, you ask? Well, Brett Johnson is known as the
0:47.0	original internet godfather. He is a former US most wanted cyber criminal. And I heard Brett
0:56.0	on another podcast. I heard him on Lex Friedman's podcast. And I was like, boy, did this guy have a
1:02.0	dysfunctional childhood? And boy, does this guy have a dysfunctional relationship history? And
1:08.5	then when I heard him throw out the term fear of abandonment a few times, I was sold, gotta get
1:15.3	this mofo on the pod. So I reached out to him and he obliged. So Brett began his criminal career
1:23.2	at the ripe old age of 10 when he started stealing food from came art. But he like legitimately
1:31.3	needed to steal food from came art. Like him and his sister legitimately needed to eat. I was
1:37.6	trying to think about when was the first time that I stole anything. The first thing I can remember
1:43.7	was stealing a thong, a thong pair of underwear from Victoria's secret. I was probably, I don't know,
1:50.6	11 or 12 because my mom wouldn't let me buy a thong. So I had to steal it. But Brett's true claim
1:56.8	to fame is that he created shadow crew in the early 2000s. So shadow crew was essentially the first
2:06.2	organized cyber crime community. It's known as the precursor to today's darknet and darknet
2:13.3	markets. And he was very instrumental in developing many areas of online fraud such as modern identity
2:22.9	theft, account takeover fraud, card not present fraud and IRS tax fraud. We really focus mainly on his
2:32.8	upbringing in this conversation. We do not get into the nitty gritty technical details of all of his
2:41.1	criminal history because frankly it's it's rather technical as you can imagine that cyber crime is.
2:48.4	So I highly encourage you to go listen to Lex's podcast with him, I'll include it in the show notes
	...

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