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A Coder Who Became a Crime Boss
- iamben 8y agoLonger version of this story here (2016): https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind -- fascinating story and these articles captivated me. Have had them bookmarked for ages :-)
- LeonM 8y agoI came here to post just that. The atavist article is fascinating. I recently re-read it, it's so good.
- ekianjo 8y agoNot just longer, "better" version for sure.
- moomin 8y agoYeah, the Wired article is a promo for a book that is an extended version of the atavist piece. Read the atavist piece.
- NKosmatos 8y agoThat would make a great movie!!!
- ablation 8y agoYep, this is a fantastic read. Came here to post it too!
- jamisteven 8y agoIncredible read indeed, someone needs to make a movie about this.
- acdanger 8y agoapparently, there is one in the works https://deadline.com/2018/04/paul-le-roux-michael-mann-book-film-deal-elaine-shannon-criminal-mastermind-1202362318/ https://deadline.com/2018/04/paul-le-roux-michael-mann-book-...
- chmod775 8y agoSo the inevitable factual errors in that movie will become mainstream opinion until the truth falls into obscurity? Happens every time Hollywood makes a movie about any topic that would be better served by a documentary. It's never not infuriating.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago> Happens every time Hollywood makes a movie about any topic that would be better served by a documentary. It's never not infuriating. As if documentaries were accurate. I wish there was a genre of movies that take it as core principle to not abuse artistic license in service of making the plot flow.
- dang 8y agoQuite a few HN threads on that article series when it came out: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=atavist.com%20points%3E30%20mastermind&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=atavist.com%20points%3E30%20ma...
- madmax108 8y agoLiterally came here to post this link. Such a good set of articles that was. Would highly recommend people read the longform story!
- jordinl 8y agoI'm reading through these. And I'm wondering, the two assassins that killed the real estate agents in the Philippines, how come they were judged in US and not in the Philippines?
- tannhauser23 8y agoIt's a U.S. federal crime to conspire to kill a person in a foreign country. I guess they could have been extradited but since they were facing life (and in the federal system there's no parole), the Philippines didn't insist on trying the hitmen themselves. Indictment: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/file/632661/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/file/632661/download Relevant statute: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/956 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/956
- wikipost 8y agoPaul Le Roux, 46 (1972), born in Zimbabwe and raised in South Africa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux
- candiodari 8y agoI hate that they put that list like that: "Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable encryption. African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping." One of the things in this list is not like the other.
- Illniyar 8y agoYou mean private jets full of gold that are actually legal (though probably evading taxes) as opposed to the illegality of all the rest?
- the_jpg 8y agoUnbreakable encryption it's quite legal where i live
- magduf 8y agoActually, a private jet full of gold would be definitely illegal to attempt to fly: it would weigh more than the allowable take-off weight. Furthermore, there is no way a private jet full of gold would actually fly. It would be too heavy to succeed in taking off. Gold is extremely dense, almost as dense as lead. You could put gold in a private jet, but it wouldn't be "full of" gold; there'd have to be a substantial amount of unused space for the thing to fly.
- iamben 8y agoTrue. But I don't think it's a like for like comparison. It's more "these are the kinds of things that sound like they'd be part of an exciting spy story". I mean, if you were to add "beautiful tuxedos" or "high stakes card games" it could be the dust jacket for a James Bond novel.
- sacheendra 8y agoUnbreakable encryption For all practical purposes, it is true.
- gambiting 8y ago
- lobster45 8y agoInteresting, the authors of TrueCrypt was always a mystery
- Cenk 8y agoEvan Ratliff (the article’s author) has a book on this subject coming out in February: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JVBNCS7/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JVBNCS7/
- runjake 8y agoRight. This article is an excerpt from that book. Or that's what it says at the top of the article, anyway.
- clanrebornwow 8y agoMost coders are very anxious and scared type of character. I never met a coder who is macho and mafia type.
- presscast 8y agoHaha I was sure this was going to be about PLR. Alright, story time. Around 2007, when I was in undergrad, I started getting really interested in cryptography. At the time TrueCrypt was a very popular project in crypto circles, and I spent a lot of time hanging out on the TC forums, soaking up as much information as I could. As a journalism major, the extreme secrecy of crypto-geeks naturally piqued my curiosity. I started digging into who ran TrueCrypt and its forums. After a bit of googling and whois, I hit a brick wall in the form of LLCs in the Cayman Islands. I therefore did what anybody in my position would do: I just asked people on the TC forums what was going on. Within minutes, a very popular poster whose handle was `plr` reached out to me, essentially saying "yeah... that is weird! What do you know?". I told him everything, which wasn't much, but he still seemed super interested. We exchanged messages for a few weeks and followed up on a few leads. After a while, plr stopped replying to me. I figured he got bored. Years later (= 2016, I think), this came out: https://magazine.atavist.com/he-always-had-a-dark-side https://magazine.atavist.com/he-always-had-a-dark-side tl;dr: I was internet friends with Paul Le Roux.
- trhow1111 8y agoI read a book called [Acid Alex][1] with a very similar story. Also born in Zimbabwe, also moved to SA. Became a drug dealer.... - great book btw. [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Acid-Alex-Al-Lovejoy/dp/1439249407 https://www.amazon.com/Acid-Alex-Al-Lovejoy/dp/1439249407
- sealthedeal 8y agoPlease make a NARCOS out of this!!!!!!!!!!!
- m0skit0 8y agoDefinitely a true believer on free market!
- gumby 8y ago> ...this series of events ... each seemed like a kind of message from an adjacent reality that few of us experience directly. This nailed it for me. By the description this was a combination of sophistication and ad-hoc, all conducted in what is indeed a parallel world (e.g. the confusion and corruption helps them where it would get in my way). In a movie or novel everything lines up to make the storytelling crisper. Which ultimately makes it implausible. This was quite gripping.
- cryogenic_soul 8y agoFor those who are interested in TrueCrypt history, here (it is in Russian) https://news.softodrom.ru/ap/b19702.shtml https://news.softodrom.ru/ap/b19702.shtml (https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.softodrom.ru%2Fap%2Fb19702.shtml https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...) author did a small research and came to conclusion that TrueCrypt most likely was created by a Czech guy named David Tesařík. Update: IMHO this research is the most comprehensive one which I saw regarding TrueCrypt authorship
- TomMarius 8y agoInteresting, so many Czechs pop out regarding things like this.
- rurban 8y agoHis Wikipedia page explains that connection to David Tesarik: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux In short, Le Roux was the original author (under the name E4M) was later hired by Hafner to write a commercial disc encryption system together with Hollingworth who authored ScramDisc. Later Le Roux released E4M under its new name TrueCrypt, and the commercial team (with Tesarik as its maintainer) sued him.
- cryogenic_soul 8y agoThanks, I was not aware that Wikipedia mentions David Tesařík. From what I can see in Wikipedia article, there is nothing about David Tesařík's legal dispute with Le Roux, actually it says that Le Roux had a dispute with SecurStar (a company which wanted to develop commercial disc encryption system). Team member David Tesařík stated that Le Roux informed the team that there was a legal dispute between himself and SecurStar, and that he had received legal advice not to comment on the case. Because of this, he was unable to confirm or deny the legitimacy of TrueCrypt, keeping its development in limbo.[13][14] A new version was released in June,[15] but with a different digital signature and the developers now being referred to as "the TrueCrypt Foundation". The project received funding, the source of which is equally unclear. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux Altogether, it is still unclear how much Le Roux participated in TrueCrypt development (except E4M legacy), but it is clear that David Tesařík was one of the main developers of TrueCrypt
- world32 8y agoAm I the only one who found this to be very poorly written? Its like the author keeps telling me how cool and mysterious this story is, why doesn't he just tell me the story and I'll decide if its mysterious or not? "Like a handful of random jigsaw-puzzle pieces, each one was incomprehensible without an understanding of the larger picture." He keeps going on about how unrelated these events are, and how mysterious it is they are happening all over the world - well if you don't know whats going on of course you will not know that two things are related?!
- bobbyadamson 8y ago> well if you don't know whats going on of course you will not know that two things are related?! This made me laugh so hard. You're completely right, it's like someone setting up a joke by saying "THIS IS HILARIOUS YOU'RE GONNA LOVE IT" why don't you just get on with it then
- sudomakeup 8y agoGreat point! This reminds of of the film concept of "show, dont tell" but applied to prose instead of a visual medium
- superhuzza 8y agoThe expression actually comes from prose originally, but applies very well to writing, theatre, movies etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,_don%27t_tell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show,_don%27t_tell
- canada_dry 8y ago> this to be very poorly written? Yah, sadly most of the stuff coming out of Wired the last couple years has been pretty low quality... this is typical. It was painful to read.
- oarabbus_ 8y agoHmm, really? I subscribe to the print magazine and I'd say every article has at least one worthwhile story.
- jordinl 8y agoI was expecting an article about Ross Ulbricht. Although this other story is even more fascinating!
- moomin 8y agoPretty sure Paul La Roux regarded Ulbricht as a small-time, attention-grabbing, useful idiot.
- beautifulfreak 8y agoWhy did he do it? It must have been like a video game for him. He rarely interacted with people directly. Most of his dealings were through employees. The pharmacy business gave him a lot of money within its first 4 years (before the FDA caught wind) so he had a lot of game fuel to play with. And his criminal dealings seemed to occupy him every waking hour, just like a game addiction. Maybe that's why he surrendered so easily, it's just another part of the game, and it interests him.
- GenerationRous 8y agoYou're describing a cartoon character, not the psychology of a human being.
- beautifulfreak 8y agoIf you read the full story, you'll see that many investigators were perplexed by his motivations and the sheer scale of his enterprises. His underlings described their duties as being like something from a James Bond movie. It was all so much larger than life, and erratic. So why did he do it? Not for money, which he didn't seem to care about. If you think about it as playing for rewards as in a video game, it makes a lot more sense. https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind
- magduf 8y ago>Why did he do it? It must have been like a video game for him. He rarely interacted with people directly. Seems obvious to me. He got sick of the open-plan office environment he had to suffer with at regular jobs as a coder, but as a crime boss he got his own private office. Plus, he probably didn't have to attend any more boring meetings.
- foobar_ 8y agoReminds me of Ross Ulbricht.
- gdfasfklshg4 8y ago> Pure methamphetamine manufactured in North Korea. Yachts built to outrun coast guards. Police protection and judges’ favor. Crates of military-grade weapons. Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable encryption. African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping. Torture. Murder. What is unbreakable encryption doing in that list?