Transcription performed by LeahTranscribes[START OF RECORDING]
JACK: I just heard about this thing called K&R insurance. I didn’t even know this was possible. K&R stands for ‘kidnapping and ransom’. If you think you’re a likely target for kidnapping and people are gonna hold you until you pay a ransom, then this might be worth buying. Why do I know this? I just ran across an article that said a guy was kidnapped in Toronto and held for ransom. They wanted him to pay a million dollars, and then they’ll let him go. I think he paid it, and then they dumped him off in a park and they sped off. Why did they kidnap him? Because they knew he had cryptocurrency, a lot of it. He was the founder of a crypto-based startup, and if he didn’t have the money, surely his company did. Well, at least that’s what the thieves thought, and they were right. Scary stuff.
(INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories from the dark side of the internet. I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
JACK: Let’s see, what are you using for a mic here?
CONOR: SteelSeries headset. Is it bad?
JACK: It sounds good.
CONOR: Yeah? Perfect.
JACK: So, are you ready to tell us about the worst time of your life?
CONOR: Yeah. I’m ready.
JACK: It always seems so weird to me to be digging into stories like this because it is — it’s probably a hard thing to talk about, isn’t it?
CONOR: Yeah, it is, especially when it just happened. But I mean, it’s been four or five years now, so, I’ve kind of overcome it at this point.
JACK: How old are you now?
CONOR: Twenty-five.
JACK: Okay. So, I bet all this started in a video game somewhere, didn’t it?
CONOR: Yeah, yeah, it did.
JACK: What game was that?
CONOR: Completely right. [Crosstalk] Minecraft.
JACK: Oh, okay, I was gonna guess Minecraft or Roblox.
CONOR: Yeah. There’s actually — they’re both involved at certain points throughout the story, so, that was a fantastic guess. [Music] Yeah, so, it was really Minecraft where I got into everything. Ever since I was younger, I’ve always had an obsession with computers and technology, and I was always kinda reserved when I was a kid. So, a lot of the time I spent online and on computers and on video games. In my younger years, that was Minecraft specifically. So, yeah, I used to play Minecraft multiplayer servers. One day I just got bored and I decided to just join a server and start messing with people, which I cruelly took enjoyment in at the time.
JACK: So, messing with — is that like griefing?
CONOR: Just — yeah, griefing, that’s the term. Exactly.
JACK: Yeah. So, is that using in-game mechanics to just screw with them or were you doing more than that?
CONOR: In-game mechanics, yeah, just to mess with them, or just trolling them in the chat like a little kid. But yeah, I was doing that for a while. I had eventually joined one server, and I had seen this other player on the server teleport into blocks. So, Minecraft’s obviously made of blocks. This guy teleported a couple of blocks downwards, and I was impressed. I didn’t know what he was doing. So, I think he kinda knew that I was messing around with the server. He was doing the same thing. So, I had messaged him, private-messaged him, in the server and we ended up talking on Skype. That was the beginning of everything, really. This is back when I was probably eleven or twelve years old.
JACK: So, this is where you start learning glitches and hacks of some kind.
CONOR: Yeah. So, this guy was a programmer. He was a Java programmer, but he had his own custom code, a client, on Minecraft that he used to carry out various exploits or little glitches. We had eventually — I had eventually befriended him, and we would go on these servers together and mess with people just for fun because we enjoyed it. But alongside programming and Java, he was also partaking in social engineering. At that time I had no idea what it was until he introduced me to it. So, we would join servers, we’d mess with the admin of the servers, so, the owner, and there was one — at one point — the first time it happened, we had joined this server. He was talking to the admin kind of in a friendly way, and then eventually a couple hours later, he logged into the admin’s account on Minecraft on the server and took it over and deleted everything. I had no idea what was going on at this time.
JACK: Let me give you a little bit more context. Minecraft is a game where players can create their own servers with unique content and stuff, and sometimes you even need to pay to play on some of these player-made servers. Somehow, this guy was able to find the person who’s the administrator to this Minecraft server, access their account, and delete the whole server. What?
CONOR: I eventually had figured out he socially-engineered the admin of this server into giving him the two answers to his secret questions on his Minecraft account, reset his password, logged in, and destroyed the server.
JACK: Oof, the admin got pwned. No more Minecraft server. Now, at the time, to take control of someone’s Minecraft account, you had to log into Mojang’s website, the creator of Minecraft, and what you needed to do is have the username and password. But if you didn’t have the password, you could reset the password if you knew the answers to the two secret questions. Like, what was your first car and who was your sixth-grade teacher? Since he watched his friend do this, he wanted to learn how to do it, too.
CONOR: [Music] So, for example, let’s say the admin’s secret question was ‘What’s your first pet’s name?’ Second question was ‘What’s your hometown?’ or ‘What school did you go to?’ The second one’s no problem. You can easily find that out; a simple Google search. The first question is the tough one. So, what we used to do is — say we’d join a server, we’d find the admin, we’d target him, and we’d know his first question was ‘What was your first pet’s name?’ So, we’d say — or I would say in the chat, oh, my little kitten died today, Buttons. Have you ever had any pets before? We’d try and get talking to the admin. I’d try and get him to divulge the answer to that question. So, I’d say, what was your first pet’s name? Unbeknownst to him, here I am typing it out, putting it into his Mojang account, getting ready to reset it. That was the first experience of socially engineering someone.
JACK: This is Conor Freeman, by the way. I should have probably introduced you to him earlier, but I forgot. He liked the sense of power that these little hacks gave him. When you get control of a server like that, you become unstoppable. You have full control of the server now, and you can delete it all if you wanted. There’s something alluring about that, that sense of power. [Music] But to me, it’s quite a funny power dynamic. A TV show I really like — I think it’s hilarious — is called Trailer Park Boys, and it’s about life in a trailer park. But the thing that intrigues me about the show is the immense power struggle that’s going on in this trailer park. There’s a huge clash between the park supervisor and a couple guys who are always scheming to make money off of other people in the park.
Then there are some drug dealers that live at home with their mom. I mean, there’s a power struggle right there. Then there’s a guy who doesn’t even live in the trailer park who comes by to try to assert his dominance over the park. It’s this incredible battle for power. All for what, though? To get the respect of the people in the trailer park? It just seems so meaningless on the grand scheme of things, but they take this tiny trailer park so seriously, as if it’s their whole world. I like it maybe because I grew up in different trailers myself, so I can relate. But it just makes me think that there’s this huge battle going on over a Minecraft server that a few hundred people play, and it’s all taken so seriously, too. Anyway, after a while, Minecraft hacking got old to Conor, and he was wondering what else is out there to mess around with, and he found some hacking forums which explained all kinds of new stuff he could do.
CONOR: Yeah, a lot of socially — social engineering things. Like, back in the day, people used to do refund scams. So, say you’d order something on Amazon. You’d get onto Amazon after it’s said ‘delivered’ on Amazon and say it hasn’t arrived. Someone might have stolen it off my porch or something like that. You’d get a refund and get your money back. That was a huge thing back then. It still is now, but it’s a lot less prevalent because Amazon have kinda caught on. There was other kind of scams and schemes. People would do return programs, did scam-return programs. So, SteelSeries was targeted a lot back then. You could basically create a support ticket to say that you’ve bought a pair of SteelSeries headphones. They’re not working; can I get a return? They would send you out a free headset and they wouldn’t ask for anything in return. The only thing you had to do was send them a picture of the headset or a serial number, which you could source from eBay or some kind of online marketplace where people are reselling them.
JACK: Hold on, Conor. You’re using a SteelSeries headset right now.
CONOR: Yeah, no, I paid for this one.
JACK: Okay.
CONOR: Yeah, it’s not from back then. This is a long time ago.
JACK: [Music] So, refund scams were becoming a thing back in 2018 or so. There were instructions on how to do it, but some people did not feel comfortable calling up somewhere and lying to someone to try to convince them that you want a refund. So, there were actually people you could hire to do it for you.
CONOR: Exactly. So, that was the makeup of it. Essentially you’d order — that was — Apple products were huge. So, essentially you’d order something, you’d have — you’d order something, you’d go to — a ‘refunder’ they were called on the forums, and you would say, hey, I ordered a Macbook for $1,200. Can you refund it for me and I’ll give you twenty percent? So, the refunder would log into your account or they’d call Amazon and pretend to be you, and they’d execute this kind of scam on Amazon. They’d socially-engineer the rep into believing that the item was never delivered. They’d get a refund for their customer, and then they get twenty percent of the total order value. That was a huge thing on that forum. There were so many people doing it.
JACK: So, you would pay a scammer $200, $400, and then that’s how you’d get your Macbook.
CONOR: Yeah, exactly.
JACK: Instead of paying full price for it.
CONOR: Mm-hm.
JACK: Okay, what other ways to make money? How were kids doing it?
CONOR: There was a lot of cracking services which are still around now, but again, cyber hygiene has gotten better, and — as well as that service’s security has gotten better, thankfully. But back then you could crack most online accounts like — what’s an example? Hilton hotel was a massive one. People that had Hilton accounts, that stayed a lot in Hilton hotels, you’d build up these points and you could spend the points on free rooms in Hilton branches worldwide. So, what people would do is crack these accounts. They’d load up a massive list of usernames and passwords and try them against the Hilton log-in page, try and land a few accounts that had points on them, and they’d then resell them on these forums to people looking to use…
JACK: This one always surprised me, because if I go on there and I buy a Hilton account with a ton of points and I actually go to the hotel and I stay there with these stolen points, I’m in the room now.
CONOR: Yeah.
JACK: If they want to say, hold on, this is some stolen points…
CONOR: Yeah, looking back on it now, it’s insane. But I, myself, would never do that because — just the stupidity of it. If that person who owned that account was to call up Hilton and say, look, I didn’t book this room, you’re one phone call away from somebody knocking on the door and saying, hey, this isn’t your account and you’ve stolen this room. But people got pretty brave. People didn’t care. Pizza Hut was another big one. So, you’d order pizzas and you’d build up points, and people would then try and crack your Pizza Hut account, and you could use these points to get pizzas on other people’s accounts. You’d just walk into the store, use their points, and walk out with a free pizza.
JACK: It reminds me of pizza plugs as well.
CONOR: Yeah. But pizza plugs is slightly different. They’re mostly carders, so, they’re credit card fraudsters. So, they’d use stolen cards and order the pizza for collection or delivery.
JACK: A pizza plug is where you find someone who will give you really cheap pizzas. Like, for five bucks, they’ll send you three large pizzas or something. What they’re doing is they’re using a stolen credit card to order the pizzas to be sent to you, and then you just pay them like, five bucks for it.
CONOR: But again, that’s insane because you’re associating stolen card details with your own address. If you — say you get it delivered with a stolen card — not the brightest.
JACK: Cook groups, is this a thing?
CONOR: Cook groups in terms of clothes online?
JACK: Yeah.
CONOR: Yeah.
JACK: Funny; it was about clothes, but it’s called cooking groups.
CONOR: Cook groups. Yeah, it’s funny you mention that because I used to be hugely into fashion. I still am now, but not as much a back then. So, cook groups essentially would be groups that — they would employ bots. So, someone would create a macro. So, I don’t know if you’re aware of what Supreme— I’m sure you are; Supreme or, say, Palace, they’re world-widely popular streetwear brands. They have weekly releases or bi-weekly or whatever way they do it. So, they release a very limited amount of stock on a certain day at a certain time, so it’s very hard to guess, especially items — certain items like Box Logo hoodies or something like that. So, people would create these macros or scripts that would automatically log them into the Supreme website. They’d buy these clothes instantly before anyone else could, and then resell them. That’s a part of the cook groups. Or they would — people would put their names on an item and someone would — bought it for them and resell it to them at a marked-up price.
JACK: Yeah, it’s kinda like scalping concert tickets.
CONOR: Yeah, exactly.
JACK: So, is this — is there anything illegal about cook groups?
CONOR: No, not from what I’m aware of. I’m sure it’s against the terms of service, but…
JACK: Yeah, I didn’t notice that, either.
CONOR: …in terms of legality, no.
JACK: But it is kind of an underground culture there, right? You gotta find a group, and sometimes it’s the wrong group you’re in, and those guys are just there to rip you off. So, you gotta find a trustworthy group that actually has these orders or whatever you’re looking for.
CONOR: Yeah, and that’s the hard thing, ‘cause a lot of these people aren’t trustworthy because what they’re doing isn’t trustworthy in itself. So, it’s hard to find someone that’s actually gonna pull through.
JACK: Yeah, it’s amazing to me how big the hidden parts of the internet are and all these things going on at once, and we never see it as just a common internet user. You’ll never see any of this. How are you discovering all these different places on the internet?
CONOR: Through this forum. The forum was massive. I don’t really want to say the name of it, but it was probably one of — so, Hack Forums was one of the forums that was around a long time. I think it’s been going for fifteen years, maybe a little less than that. That would be the oldest kind of clearnet hacker forum that I’m aware of. This forum that I was a member of kind of branched off of Hack Forums because the admin of Hack Forums was — he was kind of a well-known fed. People didn’t really like him and he was really stringent on the rules on that website. So, this forum that I was on kinda branched off of Hack Forums and allowed for more black-hat or gray-hat or unethical methods. So, all of the scumbags that weren’t allowed to advertise their services on Hack Forums kind of moved over to this forum that I was a part of. So, I mean, it was a huge range of services offered ‘cause there were so many people on it.
JACK: But you call them scumbags. You were one of the users.
CONOR: I was one of them, yeah.
JACK: What do you get dabbling in? What’s kind of the first money you’re making in this kind of world?
CONOR: [Music] Thinking back — so, Xbox ran a promo a long time ago, or Microsoft ran it. They ran a promo; I think it was a collab with Skittles or something like that. So, they still do it now with Mountain Dew and Doritos. Like, you buy a bag of Doritos and they’ll have a code on the back of it. You get double XP or something for Call of Duty. But way back when, there was a promo that was ran with — I think it was Skittles, where you’d buy a pack of Skittles, input the code on the back of the pack of Skittles, and you’d get a free seven-day membership or fourteen-day membership on Microsoft Live. But there was people that had scripts or macros that were brute-forcing this code. So, you’d just set up the script and brute-force the code, throw hundreds of thousands of it against it, and you would eventually just keep racking up free membership codes, ‘cause there was no rate limit or anything on the website. So, you could just get fifty to a hundred to even more, thousands of these fourteen-day Xbox codes. But I eventually got my hands on that script. So, that was probably the first money I made, when I had that script. I had it running and then I was reselling these membership codes for like, probably $5 or $10 apiece to people on the forum and eBay and online marketplaces.
JACK: When I was young, I discovered a way to get free Audible books.
CONOR: [Laughs]
JACK: So, so far I’m with you, right? I was hanging out in shady chatrooms, griefing people in video games, too, and getting free stuff. But I think this is where our paths are about to diverge. Alright, so, this was making a few bucks for you, but not very much because you were just learning. What were you, like fourteen years old then?
CONOR: Probably thirteen or fourteen, yeah, which is insane looking back. After a while of being on this forum, I kinda got bored of it. I kinda — I had a relationship with the admin. We talked back and forth, and I think he kinda annoyed me one day. So, I just quit that forum, and luckily for me, or unluckily, looking back, there was a new forum that opened up called OGUsers, which was an online marketplace where people would buy and sell OG, original usernames. So, say, @Jack on Instagram or @Jack on Twitter. They’d buy and sell these different usernames for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that was my next venture then, getting into acquiring these usernames.
JACK: So, Jack on Twitter is Jack Dorsey, the original owner of Twitter. Good luck getting that one. But the thing about OGUsers that I think is worth pointing out is half of them were fine and legit reselling, and then half of them were social-engineered, stolen accounts. Would you consider that to be true?
CONOR: I’d say it’s a lot more skewed. I’d say it was probably ninety-five, five — ninety-five percent stolen, five percent, if even that, genuine.
JACK: So, if you’re not aware, OGUsers is a place where people are selling usernames. That is Twitter accounts, Instagram accounts, Snapchat accounts. Why? Because we all hate it when we go to register at one of these places and someone has already taken our name. So, some people would pay extra for an account with a cool name. The problem is, the stuff for sale in this site is often stolen accounts, where people would hack into that account, get control of it, and then sell it on this site, OGUsers.
CONOR: Yeah. So, I had a bit of crypto. I discovered Bitcoin back when I dabbled in the other things on the other forum, but I had an understanding of what crypto was. So, I had a bit of Bitcoin. I had bought a username one day on Twitter. I can’t remember the exact handle, but I bought it to resell it. I held it for a couple of weeks, put it back up for sale, and made a couple of hundred on that. So, that was my first venture into buying and selling the usernames. I didn’t last long, though, buying them. [Music] That’s when it turned into me then stealing them or being introduced to people that were stealing them, and kind of falling into that.
JACK: What was your method for stealing usernames?
CONOR: Breached databases were a huge thing back then. I know they’re even bigger now. But a lot of people didn’t know how to use them, utilize them, or how to find them. So, there were services where — there still is now, I’m sure, but there were services where you could search someone’s username or e-mail, and they’ll pull their data from a breached database, like their password, username, full name. So, what I was doing was doxing these account holders. I would find their e-mail, I’d search the e-mail through the breached databases and then find their password, and I’d try my luck at logging into the account with that password. Because not many people were doing this at that point, I had quite some success with that.
JACK: Probably most of these were just crappy usernames, though, and you just didn’t even care and you just logged back out?
CONOR: Yeah, a lot of them were — yeah, it was more the thrill of being able to find the password and log in. Or, sometimes you’d get a password that’s incorrect or you might add a exclamation mark or an @ or something at the end, and that would be the correct one, and you’d get a bit of a thrill out of that. But yeah, most of them weren’t anything amazing.
JACK: Yeah, I imagine that’s a big thrill, to be like, yeah, no, wrong password. Then you’re like, what if I add an exclamation point? Then, bing, you’re in. Oh my gosh, I’m brilliant, I’m a genius, I’m the best hacker in the world. Look at me.
CONOR: Yeah, you feel like a genius.
JACK: This allowed you to acquire some — Twitter and Instagram were your main things?
CONOR: Twitter and Instagram, yeah. They’re still the main ones now. They’re the most popular social media. So, that’s what people would go for the most.
JACK: Conor was making some scratch from all this, all in Bitcoin, of course, looking through database breaches, finding passwords that would work on Twitter, then stealing those usernames and selling them. Okay, so, roughly how profitable was this for you selling OGUsers?
CONOR: I don’t know. I couldn’t quantify a figure. Probably $20,000 or $30,000? No, probably a lot less. I didn’t really get into it that deep.
JACK: He built up a reputation for having quite a bit of usernames for sale on OGUsers. It was going well, but then something else caught his attention, something so much bigger that eventually made him lose interest in OGUsers altogether. [Music] The thing he saw some people doing was SIM swapping.
CONOR: Yeah, so, it would start with a target. You’ve doxed a user. You’d use various different methods of getting all their information. So, their full name, address, phone number, their SSN. There’s a certain website that you can buy credits on and input someone’s first and last name and get their SSN. So, you’d have all that information, and then you’d — back in the day, it was a lot simpler than it was now. So, say if you were on T-Mobile, I would call up and say, hey, my name’s Jack Rhysider. My last four of my SSN is 1234. I’ve just lost my phone and my SIM card is inside it. I have a replacement SIM card here. If I give you the ISE ID, can you swap my SIM over to this card? The agent would happily do it. Once that’s done, your phone number is now mine.
JACK: Your phone number is now mine. I just think about how scary that sounds. If someone can take your phone number from you, they can pretty much become you. So much of our identity is tied to our phone number. Yes, they can text the people you know as you. They might be able to call your bank and pretend to be you. But perhaps the scariest is that they can often recover some of your accounts. Like, if you have a Google account and you go there and say, oh, I forgot my password, they might have an option to text you a code to confirm it’s you. They text you thinking nobody in the world is gonna have access to your phone except you, right? Which you can use to reset a Google account, and now you have access to their e-mail, drives, photos, and maybe even their YouTube channel and more. Once they have control of your main e-mail account, they can just go through and reset your other accounts. Say you lost your Twitter password. It’ll say, okay, no problem. Let’s e-mail you a new one. So, now they can get into your Twitter, too. This whole thing hinges on whether or not you can convince the T-Mobile customer service rep that you really did lose your phone and to get them to switch SIM cards for you. So, were some carriers easier for you than others?
CONOR: Yeah, T-Mobile by far was the easiest. It was insane. You’d get — sometimes you’d have to brute-force these calls. So, you’d have to call ten or fifteen times until you’d get an agent who just doesn’t care enough, and he’ll just swap it. T-Mobile was insane. You’d just make one call and they’d do it willy-nilly, happily just swap the SIM. AT&T was definitely the hardest, and then Verizon I’d say was in the middle. Sprint as well, although not many people used it. Sprint was another one, and then I think Cricket is what it’s called. Cricket and Sprint were pretty easy, too. But as it got harder, people started to look into exploits on the actual websites of these carriers. So, there’s a couple of well-known exploits in AT&T and T-Mobile that people would use to either retrieve the pin off someone’s account or remotely swap the SIM themselves or pull their information or whatever else.
JACK: It’s crazy to me how in-depth of knowledge you have of this, right? You understand wireless carriers of the world and SIM cards and usernames and passwords and computer skills. You’re just going higher and higher. Yet, you have to go to, I don’t know, history class and learn about the war and stuff in the afternoon, and then go back to this crazy technical stuff. Did it feel like you were living two different worlds?
CONOR: Yeah, definitely. Nobody knew about it in my personal life. So, it — that was the thing; you kinda have this detached personality where in person you’re a completely different guy, and then when you’re online, it’s like your brain is in a different place. [Music] So, you completely dissociate from your real life. So, it’s like two separate personas that you have. It was like that the whole time.
JACK: Yeah, it’s also interesting to look at maybe some of the other kids in school who are trying to build up their social media, right? You see these people are on Instagram, and you’re like, alright, so, you’ve got 300 followers. I can get you an account by this afternoon with a million followers. What’s the deal here? There’s no game. How did you be like…? Did you ever look at that like that?
CONOR: Yeah…it was actually exactly that. When you’re young and impressionable like I was, I thought I was on top of the world and way smarter than everybody else. So, I would kind of look at them and be like, oh, you’re an idiot. How do you not know what I know or how are you so impressed, or whatever else.
JACK: Well, you had to know that what you were doing is not exactly the straightforward way to do things. It’s the back way, wrong way, and it-works way, but it’s not exactly the way you’re supposed to.
CONOR: Yeah, yeah, of course.
JACK: I mean, it’s hard to know that, though, right? The ethical compass is quite — isn’t quite as aligned as it should be, because when you go online, this is all you see, right? It’s kind of like, if you really want to get married and you go online and all you see is other people getting married and other people’s engagement photos and their marriage and all this stuff, and it’s like, ah, I want to get married so bad. It’s all you see, right? So, it’s like, everyone’s getting married but me. So, when you go online, you’re just like, dang, everyone’s getting paid but me. I gotta get paid, too.
CONOR: Yeah.
JACK: Because this is all you see, your mind is kind of tuned into it.
CONOR: Yeah, exactly.
JACK: So, it’s hard to know exactly what is right and wrong in this world when everyone’s — around you is doing this stuff. It’s like, okay, I’m not even gonna ask if this is legal or not, but if you guys are getting away with it, I guess it’s not so bad.
CONOR: Yeah, there is no — there’s no forethought of legality, or at least back then, because it was — like I said, it was completely separate in the real world from a computer screen. So, you wouldn’t even be thinking of legality because it wouldn’t be an idea or a thought in your head, because you’re in this other world, essentially.
JACK: Quite often, people come to me in a panic telling me that someone just took over their Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook account, and they can’t log in anymore. They ask me, what should I do? Unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer. I mean, you can open a ticket with that site and ask for help, but because the site is so overwhelmed with help tickets, it’s likely that your ticket gets ignored. It’s as if their support team doesn’t exist. But really, that’s the only option I have, go through support to get it back.
CONOR: I would tell them to go on LinkedIn, sort by company, employer, and look through all the people that work at Twitter and Instagram and just message them all on LinkedIn and hope someone sees your message and helps you out. That’s probably the only way it’s happening.
JACK: Yeah, but it does sound like the other way is to go and hire a hacker to get it back as well.
CONOR: Yeah, getting it back, yeah.
JACK: I’m never gonna recommend that, but that — gosh, that sounds like the more likely way to get it back.
CONOR: I’m sure it’s just off for a lot of people, yeah.
JACK: So, up until now, the reason why Conor would do a SIM swap was to steal someone’s Twitter or Instagram account so he could sell it on OGUsers. There was this direct connection between SIM swapping and making money selling users. Granted, it’s criminal, but he didn’t care. But then he started learning about cryptocurrency. By the time you start doing your first SIM swap for crypto, how old are you?
CONOR: Must have been seventeen, sixteen or seventeen.
JACK: So, were you out of school by then?
CONOR: No, I would have still been in school.
JACK: Okay, so you’re in school…
CONOR: It was my last couple of years at school.
JACK: Yeah, you’re doing that sort of thing. Do you have extra-curricular activities at school that you’re doing stuff to?
CONOR: No, nothing.
JACK: As soon as school’s out, you’re like, I’m going straight home.
CONOR: Yeah, exactly. [Crosstalk] That’s when I went…
JACK: That’s where all my friends are. My friends are home. Why would I go somewhere else?
CONOR: Exactly.
JACK: So, you go home, you log into the chat app, whatever it is, like you just said, and you’re just are like, what’s the crack? What’s everyone up to?
CONOR: Yeah, or going to forums and troll around and see what’s going on that day. But yeah, we’d just…
JACK: What would some — be the stuff you’d see?
CONOR: Just the marketplaces, really, and what people are up to and what’s happening in that kind of community that I was in on these forums.
JACK: Was it addicting to the point where you’re like, I have — I want to check to see what’s going on, I want to see what’s going on, I want to see what’s going on, or was it like, no, I’m going home to play video games and I’ll check on it maybe Sunday night?
CONOR: Yeah, well, see, I would game and look at it intermittently. So, I would game a lot. I would sometimes game with these people and then I would check back on the forums or check in with the other people and see what’s going on.
JACK: Counter-Strike. You moved on.
CONOR: CS:GO, yeah. exactly.
JACK: I knew it.
CONOR: Yeah.
JACK: Alright, and you’re griefing on Counter-Strike, I bet, too.
CONOR: Yeah.
JACK: Trolling teammates.
CONOR: Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
JACK: Oh, I hate you.
CONOR: [Laughs]
JACK: [Music] The thing about crypto is you have to secure your own. With traditional money, a bank will secure your money for you, and if they get robbed, they’re insured, so they still have your money. But that’s not the case with cryptocurrecy. People have to stand up their own security, and some people are worse than others at this. Conor’s friends were starting to go after people for their cryptocurrency instead of their usernames, because stealing their cryptocurrency is way more valuable than stealing their usernames.
CONOR: Someone had messaged me; I think they had sent me a Blockchain Explorer link of their wallet, and it had maybe ten or fifteen Bitcoin in it. I messaged them back like, how did you do this? How did you get this money? Then they kinda introduced me into SIM swapping for crypto then, and that’s where it all started.
JACK: Oh yeah, we’re thirty minutes in and now we’re gonna get started. But we’re gonna take a quick break first before we do. Stay with us. Conor was adept at SIM swapping and Bitcoin, and now was ready to combine the two.
CONOR: I kinda joined calls with these guys, and I’d be witnessing them carrying out these heists while I was in the call, and then I kinda ended up getting involved. The first one I can’t remember. I’m sure it was someone on Twitter that was parading about having crypto, and they were chosen as a target.
JACK: Yeah, step one of robbing someone is to figure out who to rob. He’s got the skills to get into someone’s account if he knows their phone number and stuff, so now he just needs to figure out who are the people with a lot of crypto out there, and then try to target them.
CONOR: [Music] So, my main role throughout the whole thing, really, was seeking out people with crypto, doxing them, and then sharing this information. Then my other group members would carry out the SIM-swap process, and sometimes I would help with that. Sometimes I wouldn’t. So, my role was really the pre-attack OSINT, I would say.
JACK: Since he was in Ireland, it was harder for him to navigate the whole SIM-swap aspect since a lot of targets had American numbers and stuff. So, his job was to find the people who had crypto, and really, it wasn’t that hard.
CONOR: A big thing was Twitter, obviously. A lot of people in the crypto community are active on Twitter. So, sometimes people would post stupidly — or, not stupid, really; really, they should be allowed to post their wallet balance. But people would post their wallet balance on these social media sites, Twitter, for example, stating that they had a hundred Bitcoins or something like that, and then they’d instantly become a target for us or for other people doing the same thing. Another thing was altcoins. So, people who create their own crypto we would target. They’d typically be teams of ten or fifteen people that would always have a CEO and a CFO. So, they were the two roles that we would target, the CFOs, obviously, the chief financial officers. So, they’re normally in charge of the assets, and then the CEO would have a big stake in the actual altcoin. So, we would normally target people either on Twitter or target these team members of up-and-coming altcoins.
JACK: If you have crypto, the first step in securing it is to not let anyone know you have it, because if it’s not Conor and his lads coming after you, it’ll be North Korea coming after you, or maybe even your own government if they don’t like you having crypto. On top of that, don’t use your real name online. It just makes it easier for everyone to find your address and where you work and everything. What some Twitter users were doing — they were using their real name and posting their wallet balance. This would immediately make Conor zoom in on them, and he would start a new document and just start going through his methods to find information about them.
CONOR: [Music] There’s a couple of different ones. One good one is — say you knew their full name and you knew their approximate location. So, let’s say you’re Jack and you’re living in Tampa, Florida, or somewhere like that. If you had maybe posted on Twitter about ordering your favorite Asian food and you had maybe a bag that had the restaurant’s name on it, we could call that restaurant and then you could say, my name’s Jack. I want to place an order. Do you have me on file? I just want to make sure you have the right address. The person working in the Chinese restaurant that you’ve ordered food from before would then reiterate your address to who they think is Jack, and then you’d have their address there in front of you. Going back to the exploits as well, AT&T and T-Mobile had exploits at some point. AT&T, you could put in a mobile number and then you could pull back their SSN or the last four of their SSN from the AT&T account, unauthorized. That was a big one that we used and many other people have used if you couldn’t find their SSN on the other sources.
JACK: He wants as much information as he can get about them, because the more he knows, the easier it’ll be to hack into their digital life.
CONOR: Yeah, so, you’d namely need the full name, the address, the last four of the SSN, you might need the last four of a debit or credit card number, in some cases, a date of birth. You might need a mother’s maiden name, previous addresses, maybe, all these different types of things. But they were obviously easily sought out online. So, we would essentially profile them before we executed the attack. So, we would have a full dox; all their family, their previous addresses, a huge list of information about them. So, when it came to that time, we weren’t lacking any information. It was just, we were ready to go.
JACK: Ready to go as in, he’d hand this information to the other guys in the group and say, okay, I found a guy with a hundred Bitcoin. Here’s his info. I think he’s a good target. Should we? Because the thing about stealing crypto is that there’s no way to reverse the transfer. There’s no central authority. There’s no support ticket to open. If you snatch it, you can keep it. Unless, of course, someone catches you. Now, as he said, he’s not operating alone here. Once the other guys decide that this is a good target that he found and he has info on, then other people join in to do the SIM swap process, and the heist begins.
CONOR: Typically I’d be waiting at the reset password screen. So, we’d all be in a call together on Discord, and someone would be doing the SIM-swap process. I would be ready then to reset the password and input the 2FA code. So, they’d let me know when it was go time, really. I would send the code, they’d read it out to me and reset the password, and then start looking through.
JACK: The code he’s waiting for is to get into their Gmail. [Music] He knows their Gmail address and he started the log-in process, but said, I forgot my password. It asks him, okay, do you want us to text you a code to let you in? So, his finger is on that button, waiting until the SIM swap happens before he says yes. So, as soon as they get the SIM swapped, he says, yes, go ahead and send me that code. Then the person reads off that code over the phone, and he can log in. It’s all very coordinated and done extremely quickly. What are all the roles going on here, right? So, you’ve got you as the OSINT doxxer, targeting person, and then there’s someone who does the SIM swap, and they’re the holder of the…
CONOR: The holder, exactly, yeah.
JACK: Is there a holder that’s a different person than the one calling?
CONOR: Yeah. It depends on the circumstances. So, no, you’d always really have a holder, at least back then, anyway. So, you’d have someone that would find the target, you’d have someone that would engage with someone to SIM swap the target; either do it themselves or they’d engage an employee of a carrier, and then you’d have someone who’s the holder. So, that’s the person who’s physically holding the phone and replacing the SIM card in the phone with the blank SIM that the number’s been swapped to.
JACK: So, you’re on a call with the holder and the SIM swapper. So, the SIM swapper is like, okay, hold on, let me call them, try to get it. No, it’s not working; let me call again. Oh, it’s not working. Let me call again. Okay, it worked. I got them to port the number. Do you see it, holder? The holder’s like, yeah, it’s active. Okay. Then you’re like, okay, great. I’m gonna initiate a password reset. Tell me the number. Then the holder’s like, I don’t see it yet. I don’t see — okay, here it is.
CONOR: Exactly.
JACK: Is that kinda how those calls went?
CONOR: Yeah, that’s exactly how they went. It was like clockwork, the process. So, each role would execute their action, and then you’d go then directly after that. So, the holder would say, the SIM’s active. As soon as the SIM’s active, then you send the reset code, and you get going. Then it’s the e-mail.
JACK: Conor’s second task is now to find the crypto. They got access to this person’s phone and Gmail, and they’re assuming somewhere in this digital life of theirs must be the keys to their crypto wallet. All they need is a seed phrase or private key, and these are very important to keep safe and have backups of. So, a lot of people store them somewhere in their online world. So, as soon as Conor gets in, he immediately starts sniffing for blood.
CONOR: [Music] So, the first thing, which is crazy the way that it was and still is — so, if you go onto — if you have a Gmail account and you go onto Chrome, if you’re signed into your Chrome account with your Gmail address, if you type in passwords.google.com, it’ll pop up — you’ll be prompted to put in your password. Once that’s done, you’ll be prompted with a page that has every single website you’ve used and the password if you’ve saved that password for that website. But this would sync across devices. So, say I took your Gmail account and you had saved your Twitter password or your Gemini or whatever, your Binance password onto your Gmail account, I could log into your e-mail and view all these saved passwords, which would then allow me to just use them and log straight in. In the event that I needed 2FA, we had your phone, so we could get that code.
JACK: Okay, hold it. Just stop right there. I just tried this and I’m so upset right now. I’ve been using Gmail since like, 2007 or so, and in the last few years, I’ve taken drastic measures to de-Google my life. However, I just logged into my Gmail and then went to passwords.google.com, just like he said, and what do you know? Some of my most sensitive passwords are sitting right there, easily organized and in clear text. I must have told Google at some point, yeah, you can remember the logins of this site, and it did. But I have my own password manager. I don’t ever remember using Google’s password manager, yet I’m looking at my logins here, and I’m miffed about it. Dang, there’s even an option to export all these passwords, too, and it shows me all the sites I’ve declined to save passwords for. This just lays out my whole digital life, and I had no idea Google was saving any of this.
I’m a guy who’s super-focused on computers and security and tech and privacy. I can’t imagine how a non-techie navigates this. I deleted all my passwords from here and the sites that I said I want to opt out of saving passwords for, because I never want Google to be storing my passwords. I’ve just been finding more privacy-focused apps to use instead of Google. Most of their products are not end-to-end encrypted, and I feel that my stuff is just too important to be subject for an eventual data breach or being subpoenaed or something. My sensitive data is either stored locally and never sees the internet at all or is stored on some end-to-end encrypted service somewhere. So, even if it shows up in a breach, it can’t be seen by someone. Taking your personal privacy seriously is the only way to make sure that your stuff is safe.
CONOR: [Music] The next thing then would be Evernote, which was the Cloud note-taking app, and a lot of crypto investors seem to use that for whatever reason. So, we’d reset the Evernote account, look through the notes, see if we could find a pneumonic somewhere or a seed phrase. We’d go through Google Docs, Google Drive, any linked Cloud accounts, like anything that was there.
JACK: Did you have a regular expression that you were able to search for for seed phrases?
CONOR: Yeah, pneumonic or seed phrase or Bitcoin or crypto or — you’d just try a plethora or different things, and you’d find that eventually — or you’d look in their sent e-mail; sometimes people would send their pneumonic to themselves or a different e-mail. So, it’d be in the sent e-mails. But you’re right, it is kind of an — you’d need to know what to look for, or else you’ll find nothing.
JACK: Is it just you in this account or are other people looking as well?
CONOR: No, it would be — most of us would be logged in, looking simultaneously. But if you had too many people on at the one time, it would lock everyone out. So, it would be probably two or three people. But just to go back to the OSINT stage, the pre-SIM-swapping stage, I’ll say, I missed this step. So, what you could do is — say your e-mail is jack@darknetdiaries.com or whatever. I could go into coinbase.com, go into Reset Password, and input your e-mail. If your e-mail existed in their database, it would send out a password-reset form. If it didn’t exist, it would pop up and say, this user does not exist or this e-mail does not exist. So, what we would do is try their e-mail against these different services, and we’d compile a list of services that we knew they used. So, once we were in the e-mail account, we just — we would go to them directly, straight away. So, say I would try all the different crypto exchanges with their e-mail and see which ones they’re registered to, and then as soon as we have access to the account, we can try them instantly. So, there’s no time wasting.
JACK: Yeah, so, they’ve fixed that. If you try to reset an e-mail password there, it’ll say, well, if we had an account here, we’ll send you the password right now, and they don’t give any sort of clue. So, the way to get — the way to do it nowadays — I believe it still works — is just to go register at Coinbase with that e-mail address. It’ll say, oh, this account already exists. Thank you. That’s all I wanted to know.
CONOR: Yeah, not a great patch they’ve put in.
JACK: [Music] I don’t mention this enough, but I do think that you should have a different username on every site you log in for. You already know to use a different password for every site. Take it a step up and use unique e-mail addresses or usernames for every site. What some people do is they’ll get a domain. Like, I have darknetdiaries.com, and I have a catch-all-e-mail rule so that anything going to darknetdiaries.com I will get in my inbox. So, I can make something like coinbase@darknetdiaries.com or evernote@darknetdiaries.com, as ever many e-mail addresses as I want. I don’t even have to create them. I can just use them because there’s a catch-all e-mail and it gets them all. This way I can have unlimited e-mail addresses and each one is unique for every single site I use. Because you don’t want people to be able to profile you by just taking your e-mail that you use everywhere to register accounts for, and then they can cross-reference that or Google that or search databases to see what are all the accounts that this e-mail address is valid for. When you’re protecting your digital life, the goal is to make it as hard as you can for people like Conor.
You can’t have perfect security, but I’m a big fan of making it as painful as possible for someone to hack you, because eventually they’ll run out of time or energy to hack you and move on to the easier targets. I’ve said it before; being secure online is like running from a bear in the woods. You don’t need to be faster than the bear. You just need to be faster than your friend in order to survive the bear. So, that should be your personal goal, to be more private and more secure than your friends. I recently met someone whose privacy was way better than mine, and we became friends, and it really made me step up my game. Defense in depth is important, too. Hiding all your most personal data behind a single login or account is a bit scary. But if you assume someone does get into your Gmail, why not also limit them to what they can see and do from there? Make them run into dead ends again and again. So, delete your e-mails when you don’t need them anymore.
I don’t know about you, but every time I get a new Windows or Mac computer, I create a fresh Microsoft or Apple account just for that machine which is not tied to any other profile that I use, and that severely limits the damage that can be caused if someone gets into that account without my consent or gets breached or something. Oh, and I should also mention it’s a good idea to use two-factor authentication that isn’t SMS text messages, because he had access to the person’s phone, right? If the 2FA code can be sent by text, he can get it. But if you’re using something like Google Authenticator for 2FA codes, that’s harder for him to access. However, as you know, I’m skeptical about what Google is collecting about me. They want it all. So, I personally use Aegis to store my 2FA codes. That’s spelled A-E-G-I-S. It’s an open-source app that works great for this, and in my opinion, it’s way more private than Google Authenticator is or Authy. God, I gotta stop ranting about privacy. Sorry. Alright, let’s get back on track. Alright, so, let’s say you find a private key. What do you do?
CONOR: So, if you found a private key, you’d load up the wallet. Say I found an Exodus key. I’d have an Exodus client downloaded and ready, or I’d have a couple of different clients. Say I found a Bitcoin private key. I could go into Exodus or a blockchain and import that seed phrase and have access to the wallet.
JACK: Now, just because they found the private key or seed phrase doesn’t always mean there’s crypto in that wallet. So, there’s a moment of truth; does this wallet have money in it?
CONOR: You’re right. Nine out of ten times, you wouldn’t know what’s in that wallet. So, you could put it in; you could hit nothing, it could say zero, or you could put it in and it would say 1,000,000, 500,000, 600,000. So, you’d be on this call and you’d input this wallet and you’d see X amount of money and you’d be freaking out, and then everyone would collaboratively freak out, them all together on the call. It would sound like moneys in a zoo. Once we had access, then we would send the funds to a newly-created wallet, and then from there we would disperse the funds evenly from that fresh wallet.
JACK: [Music] Just like that, the heist is a success. Each of the people involved would get their cut and go on their merry way. Some would convert their Bitcoin to Monero to make it harder to trace. Others would convert it to cash in some sort of street deal type thing. Others would just try to buy crazy things with crypto. Of course, once they were able to steal money and get away with it, they wanted to do it again and again. So, it became a regular thing for these guys, and Conor went along on a number of crypto heists.
CONOR: There were ones that were smaller sums of money, in maybe the tens of thousands, and then there were some that were low to high six figures. The biggest one was two million.
JACK: $2 million in one wallet.
CONOR: In one wallet, yeah. Or, I think it might be — might have been spread across a couple of different ones, but it was one victim that was two million. That was kind of a freak-out moment when that happened.
JACK: That sounds like quite a high.
CONOR: Yeah, it was. That’s the thing; it wasn’t really about the money for me. Like, I didn’t spend — if you look at all the other people, there was a kid arrested recently. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but he stole hundreds of millions of crypto through SIM swapping, but he was spending his money on luxury cars and bottles and clubs. I wasn’t that type of person. I think I spent $100,000 max out of $2 million that I had. So, it was more the high that I chased and the sense of achievement that you’d get when you found the wallet. Looking back now, it’s pathetic getting the achievement from that, but back then it was like a high and it just became addicting then.
JACK: Again, it’s still one of these crazy moments of like, whatever your — what is your family life like? You got homework and stuff to do and your family’s like, make sure you do your chores, Conor. You gotta make sure to get this done. You’re like, okay, okay. Then they’re like, giving you a few dollars for doing your chores or whatever. I don’t know what’s going on there.
CONOR: Yeah, so…
JACK: It’s kinda like, oh, that’s great, but I got — and then I just imagine, like, mom, don’t interrupt me. It’s Friday night and I got a big thing going on tonight. Just please do not come in my room. Like, wasn’t it just in the bedroom of your parents’ house?
CONOR: In the bedroom of my parents’ house, yeah, but it’s — I live with my mom, or I lived with my mom back then, and — see, because I was making money or smaller amounts of money back in the heyday and the older days before any of this started, I always kinda used to have a small bit of money just from different online ventures. But when this happened, I had kinda told her and the rest of my family that I was investing in crypto, because this was at the point of the crypto boom where Bitcoin first exploded. So, it was kinda believeable that I had invested early with the funds that I made when I was twelve or thirteen into Bitcoin, and it’s now exploded and multiplied my wallet, when in reality, it was stolen.
JACK: Mm-hm. So, that was the — I mean, what were the excuses of just like, hey, I’m busy tonight, please don’t…? A special dinner for — like, just bring dinner in the room. I’m not gonna come out because I’m on a really intense call — investment thing. What are you saying to her?
CONOR: Yeah, so, I was kind of a hermit already, so it wasn’t unusual for me not to leave the room for extended periods of time. So, it’s — I don’t know, she didn’t really suspect much because she was so used to it from years and years of me being the…
JACK: Yeah. I’ve watched these old Western movies where they — the bandits rob the train or whatever, or the gold mine, and they kill people on the way to do it, right? But then there’s three or four bandits involved in this and they’re camping out there in the desert or whatever, and they’re looking at each other like, I could kill these other two guys, and then I don’t have to split my cut. Was that kind of experience happening? ‘Cause like you said, you see someone post on Twitter, hey, I’ve got $100,000 in crypto. You’re like, there’s my target. Well, if somebody sees your chat, like, oh, these kids just stole $100,000 — there’s our new target. Let’s target these kids.
CONOR: What, like other people targeting us?
JACK: Yeah.
CONOR: No, not for me because of where I am, but I know it happened to a lot of other people in the states. There was a lot of swatting and doxing and various things going on between the community. People would get pissed off, targets would be stolen, and people would start doxing people, SIM swapping them, swatting them, crazy things. I know there’s a bigger community now of violence as a service, which people are now using to hire people to commit violent acts against other community members, like throwing bricks through windows and things like that. That wasn’t a big thing back then, but I know it’s increasing in popularity now.
JACK: Alright, did we reach the height of this? Is this where things start going wrong?
CONOR: Yeah, so, after the $2 million one, that was really where I called it quits. I mean, I wanted to for a long time, but that — the big one — someone kinda reached out to me and I said I’d join in. Then we did that, and I got my split, and that was it. I was done. That went on for a good while. I think that was in 2018.
JACK: Yeah, so, altogether, you said you’ve made about $2 million from all this.
CONOR: Yeah, roughly around there.
JACK: Like you said, you stopped at around $2 million. Was that a goal, to hit $2 million and then say, I think I’ve got enough for a while? Or what was your future plans?
CONOR: No — [laughs] I’ll get into the future plans in a minute. But, no, there was no monetary value. I think at that point, just before that hack happened, I think I was kinda — my moral compass was starting to develop and my conscience was starting to develop as well. [Music] So, I kinda started realizing that was wrong, and then that happened, and then I kinda knew, I can’t do this anymore. This is — what I’m doing isn’t right, stealing money from people. That’s when I kinda stepped away from it. In terms of the exit plan, I had looked at a couple of different things. There’s a couple of islands — one that I was looking at was St. Kitts and Nevis. So, you could purchase a citizenship through ownership of property. So, say, you could buy a three-bedroom house for $300,000, and they would give you a passport. St. Kitts and Nevis or these islands, I think they’re the Virgin Islands or something like that, they have no income tax. So, I was kinda thinking of buying a house there and moving over there and somehow laundering my money. It was a pipe dream now that I think of it now, but back then, that was my plan of action.
JACK: That’s a funny plan because that sounds like, I don’t know, a gangster or drug-dealer plan. Like, okay, we’re just gonna rob one more bank and then we’re gonna disappear into the Virgin Islands. It’s not a plan for an eighteen-year-old to be like, I’m retired at the age of eighteen and I’m just gonna live on the island forever now.
CONOR: It’s a weird feeling.
JACK: I was hope — I don’t know what I’m hoping, but it’s like, okay, now I have this money, I’m gonna start a big business and I’m gonna start the start-up and…
CONOR: Well, yeah…
JACK: …do this great stuff.
CONOR: Afterward, I had kind of — or before it ended, I kinda started thinking about how to legitimize my skills. So, I was thinking of maybe opening up a cyber-security consulting business because of what I was doing, which was ironic. But I was thinking of using my funds to create a business to protect people online or help them protect their organizations or themselves. So, that was also part of the exit plan, to create my own consulting company in that space, but that never panned out.
JACK: You had these plans. You’re like, okay, that’s the end, last one. That was a big, nice one. Do you just leave the group entirely or…?
CONOR: Yeah, kind of, yeah. It got to a point where I had stopped and then I was so paranoid that every day I would be searching ‘SIM swap arrest’ and things like that. One day I had woken up and checked my phone, and I had searched this term, and I had seen one of the people I was associated with was arrested over in America, in the states, and that’s when I kinda knew my time was coming, once I’d seen this article, and then it was really just a countdown then after that.
JACK: Yeah, so, what’d you do after that?
CONOR: Nothing. I just waited.
JACK: You gotta go to the Virgin Islands.
CONOR: No.
JACK: Now’s the time! Go, go, go!
CONOR: ‘Cause like I said, my conscience was growing more and more guilty. I was developing as a person. I was a young adult, so, I was growing older. My brain was kind of developing out of being a stupid little kid stealing money. So, I mean, my guilty conscience just told me to just wait and get arrested, and that’s what happened.
JACK: [Music] One of the holders in this group, the person who had the physical phone during the SIM swap, was just fifteen years old, and his parents heard him calling T-Mobile trying to act like someone else, lying on the phone. His parents caught him in the act, and they called the police on their own kid, or so the story goes. That fifteen-year-old was very cooperative with the police, which Conor thinks is how the police learned who he was. Well, that, and Conor simply went by Conor in the group that he was with, so, his opsec wasn’t really that good.
CONOR: I was woken up by a knock on the door while I was in bed, really. My mother let them in. I’d say twelve to fifteen police officers came into my room.
JACK: Your mother probably had no idea…
CONOR: No clue at all.
JACK: …that you had done anything illegal.
CONOR: Yeah.
JACK: Okay, so, twelve officers come in your room?
CONOR: There was a huge amount, yeah, because they obviously needed a search team and they didn’t know whether I was gonna kick off or try and hurt them.
JACK: That’s gotta be quite the shock to be sitting there playing CS:GO or whatever, and turn around and see twelve officers in your room. Like, whoa, hold on, fellas.
CONOR: Yeah, so, I was actually asleep in bed. So, I had woken up. I’d sat up and opened my eyes, and in a semi-circle surrounding the end of my bed was this mass amount of police officers. I thought I was dreaming, so I went to grab my phone next to me, and they kinda shouted at me, put the phone down! I went to go and check the time, so, that’s when it hit me then that this situation is happening now, and there’s police in my home.
JACK: Do the police in Ireland have guns?
CONOR: No, not normal officers, no.
JACK: Okay, so you had no guns pointed at you.
CONOR: Not from what I can recall. There might have been a couple of armed officers, but I highly doubt it. I mean, they knew what they were getting into when they raided me. They knew this fat, little eighteen-year-old wasn’t gonna pull out an AK-47 and start shooting them, so…
JACK: They had no idea; that’s why they brought twelve of them with them. It’s not just some fat, little eighteen-year-old. We gotta really muscle this guy if he does something. Okay, so, I mean, that’s quite a shock. So, I imagine they start talking with you. They take all your devices?
CONOR: They took all my devices, yeah. I had asked to see the search warrant, then they produced it. It states first, it’s Conor Freeman or whatever, extradition request, search warrant, and then it all started becoming real. They started searching everything and they brought me down to the station and booked me into the system then, and I was…
JACK: Did you tell them you did it or did you talk or what?
CONOR: No, I kinda acted ignorant, but the evidence was substantial that they had. So, they weren’t relying on me saying I did anything. I was kinda screwed either way. So, I didn’t really have to tell them anything. I was just arrested. I was brought down to the police station and they carried out a search and seized all my devices.
JACK: Okay, so, the United States wanted you. They didn’t want you. This was not an Irish investigation.
CONOR: That’s correct, yeah.
JACK: Well, that’s scarier, I think…
CONOR: Yeah.
JACK: …because the United States is more harsh on criminals than the Irish.
CONOR: Well, I wouldn’t say that. I mean, maybe in terms of headline sentencing, but for white-collar crime, I think they’re pretty similar.
JACK: Oh, okay.
CONOR: But it was an extradition request. So, there’s an extradition treaty between the USA and Ireland that they can — I don’t know exactly how it works, but the USA can conscript Irish police forces to carry out and arrest on their behalf to be extradited back to the states. So, that’s what happened.
JACK: So, you went to the United States?
CONOR: No, didn’t go to the US, no. So, I was arrested on this extradition warrant and I was booked into an Irish jail, but they had sought my extradition. So, it’s obviously a long legal process before that actually happens. So, I was booked into an Irish jail and I was there for a couple of weeks. Then, yeah, I was kinda released. So, when I — when my property was searched, I had all my crypto on a Trezor hardware wallet that was never found when I — my house was being searched. So, while I was on bail, I had made an agreement with my lawyer to hand over my crypto wallet to the Irish police to then hand over to the US. So, I’d given up all of my assets voluntarily.
JACK: [Music] Hm, that’s a decision I’ve heard that other criminals in your situation have to think hard about, because the two options are hold onto it until after all this is over, maybe ten years from now, and I come back and there’s all this crypto that I could just live off of, or give it all up in order to reduce my sentencing, and hopefully that’s a nice gesture that they notice and think positive of me for giving it.
CONOR: Yeah, it was a mix of both. To me, really, it was dirty money, so whether I had it or not, I didn’t care. I didn’t really want to be in possession of it anyway anymore, because it was — I just didn’t feel right having that money. So, we made an agreement; I’ll give it back to them, and that obviously went in my favor in the end. But, yeah, I was in jail for about a month and then I was released on bail, and the legal process went on for quite a while until I was eventually sentenced.
JACK: I thought there was an article where I saw that you were gonna get 108 years.
CONOR: Yeah, so, the headline sentence in the USA was 108 years. That’s the maximum penalty for each of the charges added up consecutively.
JACK: Well, I mean, did you freak out if you heard — did you hear that that was a possibility, you’re gonna go to prison for a hundred years?
CONOR: Oh yeah, definitely it freaked me out, yeah.
JACK: What did they sentence you to?
CONOR: So, I got three years in prison, and then because I spent a month in jail, I was given one month off. So, it was two years and eleven months. In Ireland, you typically — every prisoner gets a quarter of their sentence off, but if you’re sentenced to under three years, you get a third of your sentence off. So, I served eleven or twelve months in total out of the two years, eleven months.
JACK: So, what was prison like?
CONOR: It was fine. It helped me a lot in some ways.
JACK: [Laughs] It was fine.
CONOR: Well, I mean, prison is prison. It was as fine as it can be. A lot of people asked me, how did it feel when I got arrested and I spent my first time in — the first night in jail? They’re weirded out when I say it felt great. But that was the best sleep I had had in years, because my conscience had grown so guilty and I had felt so bad, I was sleeping horribly for a long time. So, when I finally got arrested, it was kind of like an ‘ahh’ kind of moment. Like, I could sleep peacefully knowing that this was the end of things.
JACK: How’d you pass the time in prison?
CONOR: Exercising and reading, really. I read a lot and I exercised a lot.
JACK: What kind of books did you like reading?
CONOR: A lot of self-help books, yeah.
JACK: Okay, so, how long have you been out of prison?
CONOR: I’ve been out since 2020, I think.
JACK: What’s going on now?
CONOR: I literally just finished a Master’s degree in cyber security last month. So, I was doing that for two years. After I got out of prison — I think I had been out for about a year, and I had seen a college here was offering a course in — a Master’s in cyber security, and I applied for that, and luckily I was accepted and undertook that for the last two years. So, I’ve just finished that last month.
JACK: Hm, similar to what you wanted to do, right, which was to help people get secure.
CONOR: Yeah, it’s kind of — it’s turned around a lot, the opposite of what I used to be.
Outro: [Outro music] A big thank-you to Conor Freeman for coming on the show and telling us this wild internet adventure he went on. Stay out of trouble, kids. This episode was created by me, the pocket pirate, Jack Rhysider. Our editor is the busy tone bandit, Tristan Ledger, mixing by Proximity Sound, and our intro music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. I wanted to make my phone SIM-swap-proof, so I opened up the little SIM card tray and I filled it with glitter and hot glue. Now if someone tries to get in there, they’re gonna get a dazzling surprise. This is Darknet Diaries.
[END OF RECORDING]