Episode 233: How Brett Johnson Made $160,000 a Week

Summary

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Podcast Summary: What the Hack? – Episode 233

Title: How Brett Johnson Made $160,000 a Week
Date: January 6, 2026
Host: Beau Friedlander (DeleteMe)
Guest: Brett Johnson (“Original Internet Godfather”, former cybercriminal, fraud consultant, and public speaker)

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Main Theme

This episode delves into the criminal evolution and later redemption of Brett Johnson, a notorious former cybercriminal who once earned $160,000 a week through tax return identity theft and other forms of online fraud. Johnson discusses his criminal history, techniques, personal life changes, and the mechanisms of modern online crime, offering both a cautionary tale and practical insights for online safety.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Brett Johnson’s Criminal Background

• Introduction to Brett’s Notoriety
  Johnson admits responsibility for significant delays in tax returns due to crimes he perpetrated.

  “So the reason that everyone's tax return is delayed to this day is this SOB that's talking right now.”
  (Brett Johnson, 00:06)

• Cybercrime’s Evolution: ShadowCrew and the Dark Web
  Johnson ran ShadowCrew, a precursor to today’s Darknet marketplaces, facilitating crimes such as credit card fraud, phishing, and identity theft on a global scale.

  “Shadow Crew is absolutely that precursor of today's Darknet and Darknet Markets”
  (Brett, 06:35)

• Relationship with Law Enforcement

  • After his arrest, Johnson worked as an informant with the Secret Service—while secretly continuing to commit crimes for nearly a year even from inside their office.

    “I continue to break the law from inside Secret Service offices for the next 10 months.”
    (Brett, 00:46/10:49)

2. Mechanics of Cybercrime

• Tax Return Identity Theft
  Johnson details how he innovated large-scale digital tax refund fraud using identities from public records and how easy access to such data enables widespread scams.

  “I made it online. I made it instead of depositing to a bank account, I started using prepaid debit cards... That fraud is what delays people's tax returns to this day. And that's called tax return identity theft.”
  (Brett, 17:10)

• Value of Personal Data (“Lead Gen” for Crime)
  The host and guest discuss how criminals combine various sources: dark web dumps, people search sites, and public records to build victim profiles.

  “Everyone's information is available... I can go on the dark web, I can buy someone's complete identity... Then you go to a people search site... You get the background check, maybe of all the associates.”
  (Brett, 26:24)

• Scaling the Scams
  Johnson would manually file a fraudulent tax return every six minutes, then use ATMs to cash out prepaid cards—all possible due to the abundance of accessible victim information.

  “I got to where I could manually file a tax return once every six minutes... Friday and Saturday, I'd take those prepaid debit cards... and cash them out at ATMs.”
  (Brett, 23:41)

3. Psychological Manipulation & Social Engineering

• Exploiting Emotional States
  Cybercriminals target people at times of transition—divorce, loneliness, stress—when logic is easiest to bypass.

  “Cybercriminals hack humanity. Not just code. They weaponize transition states, loneliness, divorce or stress. Because that's the easiest way to bypass logic.”
  (Beau, 45:48)

• The Power of “Make Believe”
  Success in scams comes from giving just enough plausible information to let victims believe what they want, often leveraging public data for credibility.

  “If you want to believe that I have that beanie baby... it only takes me the slightest reason... The perception of truth is more important than the truth itself. Facts don't matter. What matters is what I can convince you of.”
  (Brett, 38:44)

• Illusion of Choice
  Victims often think they're making informed decisions, when, in reality, they’re being subtly manipulated by criminals.

  “I'm manipulating that individual into a choice that they don't know they're being manipulated into.”
  (Brett, 38:18)

4. Personal Life, Choices, and Redemption

• Life Changes and Vulnerabilities
  Johnson candidly discusses his divorce, noting that personal upheavals make people more susceptible to scams.

  “Life changes, like a divorce, are a prime time for people to get scammed.”
  (Beau, 01:51)

• The Psychology of “Should” vs. “Will” Actions
  Johnson challenges the notion of “should”—advocating self-awareness and acceptance of reality over wishful thinking, both in life and cybersecurity.

  “Should is a thinking error... What matters is what you are actually doing... When you start saying should, you start to dismiss that person... and you don't see that individual as the person that they actually are.”
  (Brett, 32:13)

• Criminal Mindset vs. Rational Security Training
  Johnson argues that security training must address emotional manipulation, not just logic and policies.

  “I'm not really big on security awareness training ... as an attacker, I'm getting you to set aside reason, logic, rationale, and to react emotionally.”
  (Brett, 44:21)

5. Defensive Action Steps

• Takeaways and Tinfoil Swan Segment
  • Develop situational awareness; recognize when you’re at risk emotionally.
  • Don’t trust just because things seem familiar—data from people searches are often used to fake credibility.
  • Change digital hygiene (passwords, shared locations, account access) after major life events.
  • Set your social media profiles to private and remove unnecessary personal information from the web.
  • Security behaviors must become habits, not just rational recommendations.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Tools of Crime:

  “Those identities, that's a tool. The stolen credit card data, that's a tool... That’s what I need to then launch the crime...”
  (Brett, 30:01)

• On Victim Empathy:

  “I didn't start caring about victims until I came over to the good guy side and started listening to victims... and having to sit down with these people and say, hey, you're not getting your money back, it's gone.”
  (Brett, 09:48)

• On the Psychology of Scamming:

  “The perception of truth is more important than the truth itself. Facts don't matter. What matters is what I can convince you of.”
  (Brett, 39:01)

• On Emotional Blind Spots:

  “If someone wants to believe something, they tend to shut out anyone who disagrees or who might disrupt that belief.”
  (Brett, 40:31)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:06] – Johnson claims responsibility for delayed tax returns
• [06:35] – Creation of ShadowCrew and its crimes
• [10:49] – Continuing crime inside the Secret Service
• [17:10] – The mechanics and impact of tax return identity theft
• [23:41] – Making $160,000 a week and how crimes scale
• [26:24] – How criminals gather and use personal data
• [30:01] – The “Three Necessities of Cybercrime”
• [32:13] – The “should” thought error and facing reality
• [38:18] – Manipulating the victim’s illusion of choice
• [44:21] – Security training’s failure to address emotional manipulation
• [45:48] – Practical defensive advice (Tinfoil Swan)

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Tone and Style

The episode was candid, darkly humorous, and direct, with both participants using frank, at times irreverent language. Johnson alternates between self-deprecating admissions and critical analysis of his past, while consistently grounding technical concepts in relatable stories and emotional realities.

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Conclusion

Brett Johnson’s story is both a confessional and a masterclass in cybercrime mechanics and psychology. His journey from “POS” career criminal to global security educator underscores the critical importance of recognizing the emotional drivers of victimization. The episode calls for heightened situational awareness, regular digital hygiene, and a sober, honest appraisal of both people and risks—at work and at home.

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Memorable Takeaway:

“You need to develop situational awareness. Brett was just talking about it. It’s your biggest vulnerability out there. What, not paying attention? No, it’s your emotional state, right? So you, you gotta kill the should error. Stop focusing on how things should be. Right?”
(Beau, 45:48)

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Transcript

[Beau Friedlander]

This week we're going to talk to a person who has a pretty weird distinction that he can claim.

[Bret Johnson]

So the reason that everyone's tax return is delayed to this day is this SOB that's talking right now.

[Beau Friedlander]

He's a famous criminal shadow.

[Bret Johnson]

Crew makes the front cover of forbes. August of 04, October 26th for the United States Secret Service. They arrested 33 people, six countries, six hours. I'm the only guy publicly mentioned as getting away.

[Beau Friedlander]

He's not someone you want to run into online.

[Bret Johnson]

150,000 in 20s will fit in basically that college backpack you see on kids shoulders. And I would put under 50,000 and 20s in there, Chuck it into a bedroom, and then one day you wake up and you open that spare bedroom. You're like, I got to do something with those backpacks. That's when you find out how to launder money.

[Beau Friedlander]

You won't win if he's got you in his sights.

[Bret Johnson]

I continue to break the law from inside Secret Service offices for the next 10 months.

[Beau Friedlander]

Thankfully, that's not going to happen because he's no longer a bad guy. We're going deep this week with cybercrime OG Literally. Bret Johnson, I'm Beau Friedlander, and this is what the Hack, the podcast that asks, in a world where your data is everywhere, how do you stay safe online? Bret Johnson, welcome to the show. It's great to have you back. It's been a while and I'm really glad, Glad to see you, Bo.

[Bret Johnson]

I, I'm glad you asked me on, I truly am. And I, I needed something to occupy my time.

[Beau Friedlander]

I heard. Oh, my goodness. So, so if you don't know and you're a fan of the show and you like Brett Johnson, I'm here to tell you he's soon to be an eligible bachelor.

[Bret Johnson]

Oh, wow. Wow. Now you broadcasting that.

[Beau Friedlander]

No, I'm really sorry. I'm very, very sorry to hear your news. And, and actually, one of the things you said. Well, I, I. When I, When I called Brett up, I was like, well, let's. Let's do something on the potty. Was like, well, I gotta, I gotta admit, I'm gonna want to talk about my divorce. And I was like, well, we're gonna have to talk about privacy because that's what we do on this show. And then, then I realized, Brett, you know, life changes, like a divorce are a prime time for people to get scammed.

[Bret Johnson]

Dude, I'll say, man. It is, it is. Geez, I don't, I don't even know where to start this Conversation.

[Beau Friedlander]

Let's, let's start at the beginning.

[Bret Johnson]

As for people who haven't seen me and you know who I am, I'm this former United States most wanted criminal responsible for a lot of the cybercrime that's going on today. I built the trust mechanism that a lot of online criminal communities still use today. I was able to turn my life around. And when I say that, what that actually means is, hey, a lot of people took a lot of chances on me and kept trying to give me opportunities and I kept shying away from it until finally I decided to accept that. And today I'm very fortunate. I speak across the planet, I consult, I'm filming documentaries all over the place. I lead a very blessed life and I try to, I work my off to protect people from, from that type of person that I used to be. I had met and we'll get into crime, no doubt, but I had met my wife that I'm getting divorced from 2011. I just got out of prison and I, yeah, I went to prison for all that. Yes, I did, you know, seven and a half years. I had an escape from prison, everything else. And when I got out, I was very fortunate that I met this woman. Her name was Michelle and she was a very healthy, stable person, something that I'd never had in my life before. And I gravitated to that. I needed that. We've been married this year 11 years and increasingly become unhappy in the relationship. And both of us were unhappy. And the way I looked at it is someone had to call it, let's stop this before me, before I get to the point where I'm just angry at everyone and walk away and maybe, maybe be friends. Now it doesn't look like that's going to happen, but you reached out to me and I said this thing of, you know, it strikes me that a lot of people, there's a choice that they need to make or should make and should is a thinking error, but they should be making a choice, but they don't because they're scared of hurting someone. They're scared of losing a contract, a paycheck, of angering someone, something like that. And that oftentimes keeps someone from making that choice that they should be making. And that, that doesn't just apply to divorces, it applies to everything. You know, I chose to break the law. I chose to victimize people every single day. When I was an active criminal, I chose to do that. I chose to file for divorce. I brought this topic up to you about choice because it's not just divorces. It's. It's people who are trying to implement securities, people who are out there committing crime. It's a choice every single day. You know, when I was committing crime, there were certainly opportunities where I could have done the right damn thing, where I knew. Where I absolutely knew I was doing the wrong thing. And I chose to continue on committing crime because it was just an easier path. Because me setting that aside and understanding that the woman that I was victimizing that was trying to sell a coin collection to put a roof on her house for her children, it was easier for me to continue to commit crime than it was for me to recognize that, hey, I'm a pos. And you know, a good person would, Would, Would stop what they're doing, go out and get a damn job and do the right damn thing.

[Beau Friedlander]

And what was this coin collection that you targeted? Is that what landed you in prison?

[Bret Johnson]

No, but I was charged with it. Thankfully, I was charged with it.

[Beau Friedlander]

Why were you imprisoned?

[Bret Johnson]

Why was I in prison?

[Beau Friedlander]

Other than the fact that you were. You were a no good, lousy no good nick.

[Bret Johnson]

Oh, I was. I was. Pos. Absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever. What landed me in prison Shadow Crew as is, is the site. I ran a couple of of the precursors of today's Darknet and Darknet markets. One was counterfeit library. The other Shadow Crew. Shadow Crew is absolutely that precursor of today's Darknet and Darknet Markets/ CRE front cover of Forbes August of 04, October 26th for the United States Secret Service. They arrested 33 people, six countries, six hours. I'm the only guy publicly mentioned as getting away. Pick me up four months later, give me a job. I continue to break the law from inside Secret Service offices for the next 10 months.

[Beau Friedlander]

Wait, so you got a job with the Secret Service?

[Bret Johnson]

So when I say I got a job, they, they had arrested me, FBI. FBI arrested me in Charleston, South Carolina, within 45 minutes. Secret Service comes in, takes over the investigation. They let me sit in a county jail for two weeks, pull me out of a cell. One day, two agents have flown in from New Jersey. That's where all the hub of all cyber investigations at that point in time, pull me out, tell me they've got my laptop. I'm like, yeah. They're like, do you have anything on your laptop? I'm like, yes, I do. Well, you're going to be charged for it. I'm like, I figured. Then they looked at me and said, is there anything you could do for us? At that point in time, I was. My first wife had left me, and I was engaged to this other woman. And my exact words were, you let me get back with Elizabeth, and I'll do whatever you want me to do.

[Beau Friedlander]

Now, the Secret Service isn't only charged with protecting the president. In fact, it started as an agency that protected currency. It stopped counterfeiters. Which is why I'm guessing, they were interested in you.

[Bret Johnson]

Correct.

[Beau Friedlander]

So.

[Bret Johnson]

And. And Shadow Crew is one of the foundations of financial cybercrime as we know it today.

[Beau Friedlander]

All right, okay.

[Bret Johnson]

So I was. I was. I was responsible for that. I ran the damn thing at one point and figured out a lot of the crimes and that should be committed online.

[Beau Friedlander]

What were those crimes? Some of them. Just some of them.

[Bret Johnson]

Credit card theft, phishing schemes, PayPal type fraud, eBay fraud. Those types of scams like that. Any type of social engineering types of attacks, really. Anything. A lot of the stuff that still goes on today was the stuff that we figured out back then, how to run that.

[Beau Friedlander]

And they scaled back then or not. Did they scale? You could do a lot of people at once.

[Bret Johnson]

Someone who was using those stolen details, he could profit 30 to $40,000 a month just doing credit card fraud. All right, now, that's still possible today. It requires a more set degree of skill to do that, but it's still possible today. Back then, those crimes, law enforcement did not really understand how those crimes were committed, and they certainly didn't understand who was committing them. So when they picked me up, it became a boon for them that I was able to go in there and help with investigations, help teach law enforcement the types of mindset that we have, things like that.

[Beau Friedlander]

Essentially, the Secret Service flipped you because you wanted to get back with Elizabeth. I'm seeing a thread here, too. So you were with a woman named Elizabeth at the time?

[Bret Johnson]

Yeah.

[Beau Friedlander]

And I guess you guys had hit a hard patch and you wanted to get back with her. Maybe the hard patch was that you got arrested.

[Bret Johnson]

Well, the hard. And she didn't know what I did for a living. She had no idea.

[Beau Friedlander]

Oh, okay.

[Bret Johnson]

Yeah, I lied to everyone. And here's the thing, guys. I did not care anything at all. I didn't give a damn about any of my victims and didn't start caring about victims until I came over to the good guy side and started listening to victims who were talking to me, who thought that I could somehow help them get their money back. And hearing story after story and having to sit down with these people and say, hey, you're not getting Your money back, it's gone. And then seeing the effects of that and the damage caused at that, at that point is when I develop some empathy for victims. But not until then. All right.

[Beau Friedlander]

Back to 2011 when you were arrested. And, and the Secret Service says, is there anything you can do for us? And, and you say, yeah, you weren't, you didn't just magically become a good guy then you were, did you?

[Bret Johnson]

No. No, I did not. What happens is the Secret Service, I was, I was arrested in Charleston, South Carolina. Secret Service has their field office in Columbia, South Carolina. So they let me send the county jail for three months, moved me to Columbia, South Carolina. I was, I started committing crime inside of the Secret Service offices within three weeks.

[Beau Friedlander]

Using their, Using their computers and their phones.

[Bret Johnson]

Yeah. So what happens is they had me on a laptop computer to an outside line. That laptop was connected to a 50 inch plasma monitor mounted on the wall. The laptop had Camtasia and Spectra Pro installed. So they were capturing screenshots and all the key logs of everything that I was doing. Screenshots taken every 10, 15 seconds.

[Beau Friedlander]

Now, for those of you who don't know, the names that he just gave you were our software that capture activity on a computer.

[Bret Johnson]

Right. And all that data, all that evidence goes on a DVD at the end of the night. DVD goes on a spindle the first two weeks. And in the room with me at all times were two Secret Service agents and a South Carolina law enforcement official. So three people. Okay, so not bad. I mean, yeah, so. But the problem is, is that when I'm, when I'm online doing this stuff, I'm really, I'm really scary with it. I'll have like 30 different windows open and I'm popping between all of them and carrying on conversations and doing all this stuff. It was very hard for agents to follow along. At the same time, you know, they're at. They're very diligent the first couple weeks. Sure they are. But seeing the same thing over and over and over again, they got bored and some of them started to engage in things that they shouldn't have engaged in. And because of that, I'm sitting there watching like hell, why not? Now they were next to me on a desktop computer, hooked up to an outside line. So they started paying attention to the stuff they were surfing at the same time I'm there and I'm realizing that, hey, all the evidence is going on a DVD on a spindle. No one is a. No one is cataloging it or trying to reference the information that's on there. The only thing they're going to do is anyone that's arrested, they're going to give them a spindle of DVDs and say, hey, there's your discovery. You find it. All right? So because of that, I'm like, why not? And I start committing crime inside of the offices.

[Beau Friedlander]

And were you being a Carter or what were you doing?

[Bret Johnson]

Credit card fraud. And I'm the guy that creates this thing called tax return identity theft. So the reason that everyone's tax return is delayed to this day is this SOB that's talking right now.

[Beau Friedlander]

You invented tax return fraud.

[Bret Johnson]

I did not invent tax return fraud. Absolutely did not. Absolutely did not.

[Beau Friedlander]

So you invented tax return tax return identity theft. Tax return identity theft. What is that?

[Bret Johnson]

Ah, you see now. Now you're like, maybe he's not full of. No, no, no.

[Beau Friedlander]

I never thought you were full of. But I want to know, what did I get wrong? So it's not tax return fraud, which is just me filing your taxes.

[Bret Johnson]

That was going along. And even what's interesting is law enforcement does this kind of crap where they'll see a crime and they'll add something new to it or call it something new, that fraud. What happened was, is I was getting access to these different databases. First database I had access to was the Indiana State sex offenders. And I use that to open up bank accounts and then sell the bank accounts to other fraudsters that might need them.

[Beau Friedlander]

All right, bank accounts, the name of sex offenders.

[Bret Johnson]

Yes. And the idea being. So that that database, at that point in time, it had the social date of birth, mother's mate, and everything else on there. So it was easy.

[Beau Friedlander]

It wasn't that you thought they deserved it. It just was like, easy data.

[Bret Johnson]

Well, it was. It was. They deserved it in that, hey, law enforcement isn't going to care if I victimize those people. I got you. So why not?

[Beau Friedlander]

All right, Smart.

[Bret Johnson]

And then it was very easy data to use. So that was the first database. Later on, we got access to, like, the Texas driver's license database. And we could use that database to create, you know, IDs with different pictures on it, but real data.

[Beau Friedlander]

Finally, they didn't know you were in there. They didn't know you had access.

[Bret Johnson]

Yeah, no, they did not. So then the final database we had, and this. This database is public today, but back then, it was the California State Death Index, Right? And it lists these socials, dates of birth, mother's maiden, of people who have died in California. And back then, I was interested in People who had died prior to 1998. And the reason being. So I had access to this. And, and you start as a criminal, you start wondering what you can do with this information. Certainly you can use that data, those, those identities to create fake driver's licenses or open up, try to open up accounts, things like that. And that would work to a degree, but you're looking for other ways to make more money. And the way my first thought was, well, can I file for Social Security benefits on these people? And if so, how does the federal government know someone is dead or not know that or not think that, or think that they're alive? Right.

[Beau Friedlander]

Yep, yep.

[Bret Johnson]

So the way that happens, after you do a lot of research, you realize that, hey, prior to 1998, the only way the federal government knew that someone died was if the family filed a Social Security death benefit for that family member that had passed away, took the family to do that. Now that, that benefit only paid about $200. The result was most people never filed that death benefit. All right, so you grab the social. You'd run it through the master index of the Social Security Administration. If it came back without a hit, the Social Security Administration, the federal government didn't know that individual was dead. The state might. Feds wouldn't. The state's database did not communicate with the federal database because there were errors across the board. So they, that didn't happen. So that was the first idea. Can I get Social Security benefits? Well, you can't because the number has been dormant for so long. They want you to come in for a sit down interview. I wasn't going to do that. I was like 32, 34 at the time. Couldn't, couldn't pass the interview. The next idea I had was, well, I wonder if you can file tax returns on these dead people. And it turns out you can because the IRS will pay that refund before they're able to confirm with the employer that that person actually worked at that company. All right, that's the way tax returns still work today. Now, certainly, certainly that fraud had been committed in the physical world before. All right, at least, you know, stealing identities and stuff like that. But I added a few different components to it. I made it online. I made it instead of depositing to a bank account, I started using prepaid debit cards. Back then they were called payroll cards, that type of fraud. I'm the guy who, the first one that did that. And because of the way it scales, how easy it is to commit and the numbers of people who then started to do that as news of that got out. That fraud is what, what delays people's tax returns to this day. And that's called tax return identity theft.

[Beau Friedlander]

And they do return because they're confirming now.

[Bret Johnson]

Right.

[Beau Friedlander]

Well, thank you. Thank you, Brett Johnson. I know.

[Bret Johnson]

I bet.

[Beau Friedlander]

Delaying everybody's refund. Cool. Good. Well, you know, but that isn't what got you thrown in prison. Welcome to our ugly home.

[Bret Johnson]

Reddit is back for a historically hideous season. It's our 100th ugly house. This place is mayhem. That is impressive. And if these walls could talk.

[Beau Friedlander]

Do you cry a lot?

[Bret Johnson]

I do. They'd have a lot to say. What in God's name is this pit? Don't get too close. You see the show. I'm scared of that. Ugliest house in America. Season premiere Wednesday at 8 on HGTV.

[Greenlight Sponsor]

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[Bret Johnson]

So what got me arrested was running counterfeit cashiers checks. Shadow crew makes the front cover of I think Forbes in August of oh four. Headline who's stealing your stealing your identity. October 26, 2004, United States Secret Service. They arrested 33 people, six countries, six hours. I get away from that. They picked me up February 8th of 2005. And why they picked me up? I had been committing tax fraud. No one knew that you could only do tax fraud 10 months out of the year. Shadow Crew gets popped in October, the year, the, the month that that fraud ends. For the. For the next two months, three months. I had met Elizabeth. Elizabeth had. She was a stripper. I'm that idiot that falls in love with his first stripper that he sees. My first wife had left is what had happened. And I had, I had become severely depressed. I started drinking. I doing all the classic stuff. And I was naive. I had never been to a strip club before in my life. And I'm the guy that one night I got lonely and horny, walk into one and immediately fall in love with this one. And the truth of the matter is, is that we were both very, very broken people. And that's. I think that's the only real commonality that we had. She was addicted to cocaine. I found out that later I found out she was prostituting herself to support her habit. I was absolutely convinced that I loved her and that I could fix her. And I go through all of my stateside savings trying to do that. I had it in my head that I would give her whatever she wanted, and that would keep her mind off of drugs and her problems. And I had a lot of money to go through, so I did that. As I'm going through the stateside funds that I had, Shadow crew gets popped, I run out of money. There's no longer a. An online platform that you can trust, because you have to be able to trust where you're buying from, what you're buying, what you're using, how you use it, the platform itself. There was nothing that we. That I could rely on because the Secret Service had really kind of decimated everything. So I started running counterfeit cashiers, checks, running paper, something that I had taught people not to do for years. And I got picked up doing that. If you're going to run paper, you really need to take a road trip to do that. And I wasn't able to do that. Elizabeth, she had stopped using coke. She had. When she stopped doing that, she became very codependent. She didn't want me away from her. So I couldn't take that road trip to successfully run that paper. I lasted, I don't know, four months running paper, and Secret Service or FBI, they had a controlled delivery. I was picking up a couple of diamond rings from the ebay sale I was paying for with a counterfeit cashier's check, and they picked me up doing that. Secret Service comes in, like I said, About 45 minutes later, they take over the investigation and then run me as an informant. And they pay me, like 350 a week to do that is what they do. But I ran as an informant. And also they would bring in people. Like they bring in ICE or whatever ICE was called back then. They bring in. I brought in, like, bank of America, and I would talk to them about how the mindset of criminals, how we attack, what we look for, stuff like that as well.

[Beau Friedlander]

Okay, so you were making 350 a week from this job when you were in custody, how much were you pulling in on the side, doing scams on the side?

[Bret Johnson]

Six to ten thousand a week.

[Beau Friedlander]

Wow. And what was it when you were at your prime?

[Bret Johnson]

Oh, geez. When I was in Charleston, before I got called, it was 160,000 a week. I got to where I could manually file a tax return Once every six minutes. I would do that Sunday through Wednesday. Thursday I'd take a road trip, plot out A map of ATMs. Friday and Saturday, I'd take those prepaid debit cards that have been loaded with stock, stolen tax returns, and cash them out at ATMs. Come back home, I had a, I had a spare bedroom in Charleston and $150,000 in 20s. That's, oddly enough, that's seven and a half keys of cash. Because you, you figure stuff out like that when you're, when you're a crook. Each bill weighs a gram.

[Beau Friedlander]

Yeah.

[Bret Johnson]

So 150,000 in 20s will fit in basically that college backpack you see on kids shoulders. And I put 150,000 and 20s in there, Chuck it into a bedroom, and then one day you wake up and you open that spare bedroom. You're like, I got to do something with those backpacks. That's when you find out how to launder money. And yeah, that was the, that was the life I led there, man. Lied to everyone. I, I, I thought I had friends. And those people I thought that were my friends, they weren't my friends because I was a liar. I told them that. They asked what I did for a living. I told them I was a fraud consultant. I just didn't tell them on which side of the fraud equation.

[Beau Friedlander]

Now you see a problem set like the amount of data that's out there today in 2025. Now, you haven't been a criminal in a while, but I'm now working at Delete Me, where we remove people's personal information from online. Is it perfect? No, but it's really good. And, and the like, how much lead gen, if you were to guess right now, is coming from information like that, from people search versus what we know to be the case, like sextortion on Instagram. We know, we know that you don't need anybody's PII to do that. You just need to see that they've got an Instagram account that they're active on. Ditto TikTok. So, like, what do you, what do you think of, like I ask because the California Death Registry, to me, you're just a genius. A lazy genius is what you were. You know, you saw a business opportunity that required a lot less work than an MBA does. And you, and you, and you scaled it. So what do you think about personal information as a lead generator for crime?

[Bret Johnson]

I think it's huge. And that's not just because you work at Delete Me. All right? I walk through this in my Presentations, what I say, I start by saying everyone's information is available. And it is like last year. I think it was last year we had 2,500 reported breaches, 57 billion records compromised. That's just last year. So I can go on the dark web, I can buy someone's complete identity from 30 bucks up to $100, $50 depending on credit score, gender, location of victim, children, number one. Victims of identity theft, 25% will be victims. I rattle that stuff off and then I go into if you can't buy it ready made, you can make it yourself. And the way you do that is you go over to the dark web, maybe you'll buy a stolen credit card, details or some banking information. Then you go to someplace, depending on the access the criminal has, someone like me has, maybe you get tlo, maybe you get delftpoint or you go to Ben Verified Spokeo, Intelius people, whatever. You go to that place and you get the background check and maybe you get the background check of all the associates and the family members of that victim that you're trying to compromise just to try to get all the data you possibly can on that individual. From there you go over to credit karma or annual credit report and you typically, depending on what's going on, I think annual credit reports, trying to fix that. But you pull the credit report of that individual because you've got enough KBA knowledge based authentication questions or answers to answer any type of security questions that pop up. Typically, all right, you can get these social, you can get the date of birth from someplace like RoboCheck CM, which is a criminal database, you can get Batman. But using the public services, background check services, using tlo, dellpoint, what have you, that typically is enough information to be able to open up new accounts, take over existing accounts, really whatever type of identity fraud you want to commit. So you know, the idea that the dark web is the only platform where people's identities are available, that's not really true. Someone like me, I'm absolutely going to rely on the public databases for a lot of that information. All right, so you know, I like you guys and I'm not, I'm not bullshitting with you, that's just simply the way crime happens. Now you mentioned sextortion and those types of opportunistic crimes, that matters and that's big. But I think that that traditional form of identity theft that uses public databases is really where a lot of this.

[Beau Friedlander]

Crime takes place now. I think you're right. Now the other thing that I'm Hearing from you and I hear banging around in my own head because I, I think about cybercrime all the time.

[Bret Johnson]

Right.

[Beau Friedlander]

Is the, the fact that all of these things are tools that criminals use. So the dark web is going to provide you with certain things, social media is going to provide you with other information that is useful, and people search is going to give you more information. And is one of them alone going to do the trick? Maybe, maybe not. But I'm, I'm, I'm. If I'm a criminal, I'm in the, the business of making money as certainly as I can. Right. So I'm going to use all the tools that I can to do that.

[Bret Johnson]

The idea from my side, the attack side, that I'm just gathering tools, all right? Those identities, that's a tool. The stolen credit card data, That's a tool. SOX5 proxies, RDPs, the background check information from Venn Verified or where have you, that's simply a tool. That's what I need to then launch the crime and then finally cash that out. That's what I call or refer to as the three necessities of cybercrime. You gather the tools, gather the data and the tools, you then commit the crime, and then you finally, you cash that crime out to a criminal, like I am. We don't consider the gathering of tools and information as a crime. No, that's just what we need to commit the crime. And then you cash it out. Not. Certainly it's illegal, but we don't think of it like that. We think of it as gathering what we need to then do what we need to do.

[Beau Friedlander]

It's the ammunition for the gun that you may or may not need to use.

[Bret Johnson]

Exactly.

[Beau Friedlander]

And no, I get that. And. But you know, obviously it's also not a victimless crime ever. And you know, you talked about empathy earlier and you said something really interesting now. You said it, you said I should do something, and then you immediately corrected yourself and said should is a thought error.

[Bret Johnson]

It is.

[Beau Friedlander]

And I heard a central belief when you said that. And I want to hear about it.

[Bret Johnson]

Sure.

[Beau Friedlander]

Because it seems like it goes to the. Because it goes to like back to, should you commit a crime, should you get a job, should you help the Secret Service, should you stay with a relationship that's not working? And then, you know, then we can get into the country songs of It's a crime to stay in a relationship that shouldn't be. But so, so, like, tell me about the thought error of should.

[Bret Johnson]

Yeah, so. So if I look at someone So I, I can either accept someone as they are or I can look at them and say, no, they should be this person. When you do that, you are dismissing that individual. You're dismissing the actions of that individual. And the thing is, is that I chose to be a criminal. I chose to get a divorce. I chose to turn my life around. Certainly there were people along the way that said, hey, you should be doing all this other stuff. Should, doesn't matter. What matters is what you are actually doing. What matters is the person who is actually in front of you. That's what matters. When you start saying should, you start to dismiss that person, you start to forgive that person. You start to rationalize what that person is doing, whether they're an addict, a criminal, a good guy, a bad guy, whatever that means. You start to dismiss, rationalize, justify, and you don't see that individual as the person that they actually are.

[Beau Friedlander]

It's an act of disrespect. You're, you're inflicting, you're inflicting a. Something on them that, that isn't the case and that creates attention and the, the should of, you know, being, you know, you shouldn't be a criminal. I don't know if that works, but, but like telling someone that they should be, I don't know, more fun or telling someone they should, you know, cook, you know, cook more or they should cook less or they should go, you know, want to go dancing or they should stop wanting to go dancing so much or whatever the hell it is in a relationship that the should is it. Is it. It. It's fundamentally disrespectful of what is right. And, and if the, and if you're what is and their what is doesn't match, then. And you have, and here's the key, and you have empathy and you have some kind of moral fiber, that dissonance is going to become unbearable.

[Bret Johnson]

Yeah.

[Beau Friedlander]

This is the product of you no longer being a criminal, actually. Now, what about when you were a criminal? I mean, and here's the thing. When you're a criminal, criminal should was. Was not only a thought error, it was an operational error because you were not. You didn't make money off a should, you made money off a could.

[Bret Johnson]

Right. And will. Yeah, you know, that's the thing. It's not. You're absolutely right. Success does not happen because of a should, either on the good side or the bad side. You know, you should have good security at your company. Management should put a lot of their budget toward that. They should understand that the foundation of a good company is that security. If you're online.

[Beau Friedlander]

Yeah. And you're a personal person, you should use, you know, some sort of malware protection. You should use a password manager. You should, you know, get your information offline and whatever you can. You should not post when you're going on vacation if you don't want to get robbed. Yeah.

[Bret Johnson]

There's a lot of shoulds, and none of those shoulds equate to any success whatsoever. Whatsoever.

[Beau Friedlander]

Right.

[Bret Johnson]

Yeah, so. So you're absolutely right on that. You know, from criminal side, it's not, you know, I should hit this company. No, I will hit this company. I have hit this company. And because I've done that, I'm either successful or not.

[Beau Friedlander]

Yes. And I'm going to use what I learned to hit another company.

[Bret Johnson]

Right. And that's exactly how that works. If you commit a crime against one company, if they're in that same vertical, oftentimes the same attack method will absolutely work with other companies in that vertical as well. Yeah.

[Beau Friedlander]

And I think it works even with. If they're the same size and have the same vibe. You know that if you fumble a coffee cup in a box of donuts at the back door, someone's going to let you in. Absolutely. You know that the, that the physical penetration isn't that different from digital once you understand that they're essentially the same thing.

[Bret Johnson]

Right.

[Beau Friedlander]

You've been really clear about owning your choices. You know, you. You chose to leave the life of crime and. And now you're choosing what comes next in your own personal life. Now, when you were on the other side, how often were your victims making choices they didn't even realize they were making? God, I hate that question.

[Bret Johnson]

Why do you hate that question?

[Beau Friedlander]

Everything in life is a choice. I chose to go get some firewood from the wood pile earlier and not have my daughter do it, and it worked out fine. But maybe I slip and trip and fall and have a big problem when I do that next time. And that choice has a repercussion. And life, everything's a choice. I choose to not make my dog's food just yet. I can do it later or I do it now or whatever and there's a repercussion. My dog poops all over the place. He's sick. Now, crimes happen around those kind of choices. Criminals are bobbling the donut box outside of the door to get into the building. They are using different forms of confidence to achieve their goals.

[Bret Johnson]

Right.

[Beau Friedlander]

They are exploiting trust to accomplish something that is not in the interest of the person.

[Bret Johnson]

Right.

[Beau Friedlander]

While the person is just making normal. Yes. No choices, red light, green light, choices of life.

[Bret Johnson]

I'm manipulating that individual into a choice that they don't know they're being manipulated into.

[Beau Friedlander]

That's what I'm saying is I'm doing like red light, green light. Like I'm going to go this way, I'm going to go that way. But I don't understand that. I'm an ant and you're moving paper around to move me where you want to put me.

[Bret Johnson]

Right?

[Beau Friedlander]

Talk to me about that. So it's an illusion of choice I've got when I'm being dealt with by a criminal who knows what he's doing.

[Bret Johnson]

It is if, if you want to believe something, if you want to believe that I have that beanie baby that's worth fifteen hundred dollars or I have, you know, that PlayStation 5, when no one else on the planet can get it. If you want to believe that, it only takes me the slightest reason that I can give you to allow you to believe that. Because that emotion's there because you want that to be true. I can allow you to believe that it's true. The perception of truth is more important than the truth itself. Facts don't matter. What matters is what I can convince you of. And if you want to believe it, it's very easy to do that.

[Beau Friedlander]

All right.

[Bret Johnson]

I actually wrote a post about that today. I had a friend, yeah, I. I'm going through this divorce, so I got, I got a little puppy because I'm lonely, man. I got this little guy, he's like nine weeks old right now, all right? I was filming a documentary last week in Birmingham. Friend of mine, she saw the pup, she decides she wants to get a pup for her family. So she gets online, thinks she finds a maltipoo in Atlanta. Now I'm in Birmingham, it's a two hour drive, okay? So she's on the way and I warn her about puppy scams. And I had researched Atlanta, there's a few that's running out of Atlanta and stuff like that. So she wanted to believe that that cell was real. Wanted to believe it. I'm warning her that, watch your ass, okay? And I tell her everything that's going on, tell her what to look for. She actually loads up, starts driving to Atlanta to pick up this puppy, has her two kids in the car with her. As she's driving, I call her and I'm like, hey, what's the phone number that you've been communicating with? So I can run it. I want to see if it's a Google voice, voiceover ip, what have you. I want to make sure it's real.

[Beau Friedlander]

Right?

[Bret Johnson]

She refuses to give me the number. Why? She doesn't trust me. She thinks I'm going to destroy something. Now, the why is what's interesting. The why is because if someone wants to believe something, they tend to shut out anyone who disagrees or who might disrupt that belief. All right? I want to believe that that person on that dating site loves me. My son, my daughter, who have you, is trying to convince me that it's a scam. I'm going to shut them out. I don't want to hear that because I want to believe it's real so much. That's what this friend of mine did today. She refused to give me the phone number, scared that I might find something she didn't want to think that it wasn't real. So she continues on. Now, I'm Brett Johnson. I don't give up. I don't give up on. So I get on Craigslist. I find it. I contact the seller. At the same time, I notice that, hey, there's a few ads that are very similar to this. So I find out that the seller is a scammer, that they're saying they're from different locations, but that they're offering to sell it to me as she's 90 minutes away from picking up the damn thing. So I call her back, I'm like, hey, this is a scam. I've got information. This is. This is how I know it's a scam. This lady sent me the same video that she sent you. She's charging me $1500. She charging you $800. You're an idiot if you go on and collect this thing. We argued over this until finally I sent her the videos. I sent her the. The different email addresses showed her that, hey, it's the same person on different email addresses from different locations. They're there to rip you off. At the very best, at the very best, you're going to lose money. At the very worst, it's something that you and your children don't want to encounter. Turn your ass around. And at that point, she, she, she, she turns around, all right? But she wanted to believe that that was real so much that she shuts out everything that. That opposes that belief.

[Beau Friedlander]

What I've come to believe over the years is that criminals, especially online cyber criminals, are extremely good at the game of make believe. Yes, they can make people believe things and they do it in a very specific way. And that's where, you know, it makes perfect sense that delete me bot. What the heck? Because, you know, personal information is used if I want to make you believe that I'm related to you through your uncle who. How do I know he's your uncle? Actually, I almost certainly only know that through people search and social media.

[Bret Johnson]

Right, right, absolutely.

[Beau Friedlander]

And I can kind of confirm that and kind of figure it out and see like, oh, cross correlate and be like, okay, but until I want to say something like, was that. Oh, was that when we were over on Pond Road? And you go, oh, Pond Road, Uncle Bob. Right, Cool. Hey, by the way, I do want to buy that thing you're selling, but I can't do it right now. Could you just send it to me? Because I actually need it for next weekend. It's like this weird, smooth, like, everything's cool, send it to me vibe, which I bet works for romance scams, works for cat, you know, it works for pig butchers, and it works for, you know, the kind of stuff you were doing on ebay, I'm guessing, too, right?

[Bret Johnson]

Across the board. Across the board.

[Beau Friedlander]

Anything we left out, Brett?

[Bret Johnson]

Yeah, and I talk all the time about freezing credit, monitoring accounts, placing alerts, password managers. I talk about that. By all means, pay attention to that. What I'm on right now is I'm not really big on security awareness training. And the reason being we teach people at a very rational level security awareness or fraud prevention training. At a rational level, as an attacker, I'm not looking to do that. I'm attacking you at a very emotional level so you can understand something very rationally. That doesn't mean you understand it at all. At the emotional level. What I would tell people is understand that. Understand that as an attacker, I'm getting you to set aside reason, logic, rationale, and to react emotionally. If you understand that, and if you understand at the same time that whatever platform that you're on, there are predators in that environment, if you start to understand that, you'll develop that online situational awareness that you need to then start to enact proper security for yourself. That's what I fully believe. But you have to understand that being educated at that rational level really is kind of useless. If you start to understand that, then you develop that situational awareness that you need later on.

[Beau Friedlander]

Brett, thank you so much. I can't wait to have you on the show again. And now it's time for the Tinfoil Swan, our paranoid takeaway to keep you safe on and offline. Cybercriminals hack humanity. Not just code. They mainly hack humanity. They weaponize transition states, loneliness, divorce or stress. Because that's the easiest way to bypass logic, right? You're not thinking by using facts scraped from people search sites. They are going to script, sort of they're going to make you believe it's not a make believe story. They're going to make you believe a story and then they're really going to manipulate you into having this illusion of choice, which is what they want you to do. Here's a step in the right direction. You need to develop situational awareness. Brett was just talking about it. It's your biggest vulnerability out there. What, not paying attention? No, it's your emotional state, right? So you, you gotta kill the should error. Stop focusing on how things should be. Right? They are what they are. See the link or the person in front of you as they actually are. They are a thing. You don't know for certain that that thing is safe. See the link or the person in front of you exactly as it is. Right? Something you can't be sure about. And now starve the script. Maybe scammers are using AI to create scripts and they need ammunition. So set your social media to private and take your personal information off the Internet. Have it removed if you don't want to do it yourself. By Delete me that breaks their ability to prove they know you and make themselves feel familiar. You need to audit the default trust. Life changes require digital changes, right? Passwords need to change, shared locations. That needs to stop. Passwords, accounts, all that stuff needs to change when a relationship changes. Now, finally, finally, I guess your job is to kind of be the person who breaks the spell, right? Make the noise when the magician is trying to make you look at one hand, not the other. Staying aware even when you know you can't. Which is when you need to double down, go slow. Once you see the manipulation, they lose their leverage. So you have to see it. And that is situational awareness. And that means like when the going gets bad, you need to go slower. You need to be a little more careful because that is exactly when something is going to go wrong. Okay? Be open to what's right in front of you. Be ready for it and stay safe. See you next week. What the heck Is produced by Beau Friedlander. That's me and Andrew Steven, who also edits the show. What the hack is brought to you by Deleteme. Deleteme makes it quick and easy and safe to remove your personal data online and was recently named the number one pick by a New York Times wirecutter for personal information removal. You can learn more about Deleteme if you go to joindeleteme.com wth that's joindeleteme.com WTH. And if you sign up there on on that landing page, you will get a 20% discount. I kid you not, a 20% discount. So yes, color me fishing. But it's worth it.

[Jack Wilson]

Hello, this is Jack Wilson, the host of the History of Literature podcast. For the past 10 years, I've been talking to novelists, biographers, and scholars about the greatest books in the history of the world and the men and women who wrote them. Like our recent episodes on Dante in Love, a starter pack of 10 Indian classics, the pop culture that influenced Sylvia Plath, and a talk with scientist and novelist Alan Lightman about the wonders of nature. Join us at the History of Literature podcast wherever you get your podcasts.