Scamtown - Born to Break In | 5

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Police respond to a burglary call at an Iowa state courthouse on a brisk September night in 2019 and are alarmed by what they discover. What should have been a normal call turns into a shocking scandal.Scamtown is an Apple Original podcast, produced by FunMeter. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.http://apple.co/Scamtown

In today's world, we're always advised to be on guard, protecting our data. Everything from your bank info to your social security number to even your browser history. No matter how embarrassing. No judgment. But data bandits are out there looking for any vulnerability and a chance to break in. From visiting a compromised website to clicking on a fishy link. At this point, who hasn't gotten their data stolen? Turns out, our protections are beyond flimsy, especially for a skilled hacker. Experts at breaking in both virtually and physically to gain access to our most important assets.

This episode is different from some of the others. There isn't a scam, but it's a story still shrouded in mystery. Two hackers have agreed to bring us into their world. While they're not scammers or even criminals, despite what some have claimed, according to them, we should all be terrified at what they can do. Welcome to Scam Town. terrified at what they can do. some of our favorites to life. We love a surprising heist, an intricate scam, or just pulling back the curtain on something you think you know. Entering a world that's stranger than fiction and riding that line between comedy and tragedy. This is Scam Town, a place for our favorite stories that do just that.

Today's episode, Born to Break In. It's a brisk fall evening in 2019. Two figures stand in shadow outside an Iowa courthouse in the heart of Des Moines. They slink around the outside, eager to make their way in, to see if they can get their hands on the crucial documents inside. Think names of potential jurors, sensitive case files, and personal info. We've broken into some of the most famous museums

in the world. We've done high-rise banks, stole a million dollars, titles to Teslas and boats and vans and trucks and scooters. That's done high-rise banks, stole a million dollars, titles to Teslas and boats and vans and trucks and scooters. That's Gary DeMacurio, a charming ex-Marine who dabbles in not only martial arts,

but breaking and entering. Opening a locked door that you're not supposed to be in feels pretty covert, sneaky, and cool. And that's Justin Wynn, a lock aficionado with an impish grin. Before they arrived, Gary and Justin spent months studying the various courthouses and government buildings across the state, memorizing not only their layouts, but also their weaknesses.

There's a whole art of almost like phrenology, like reading somebody's personality based off their face. You can do the same with a building. You can understand where the stairwells are, where the juicy assets are from the outside of the building and what's changed with the construction layout thereof. They begin casing the building, circling the perimeter, looking for possible points of entry. We walk around and see if any windows are open, which I think they were. They continue assessing the building when they spot something juicy. We found two doors that were really susceptible to entry right on the street, and we're like, well, let's see if we can find something else.

And the reason that we did that is because we didn't want to hit the easy button and just get in and win. Connoisseurs of challenge. They spy the next best spot to enter, a basement door. We slip a phone, there's a big enough gap underneath the threshold of the door that you can slip the phone through and then use your reverse camera and then take a video and then see what appliances are on the inside of the door so you can see what the latching

or locking mechanism is, what alarm hardware is in place, and then how to defeat and how to, you know, defeat the alarm system and defeat the door locking system. They pause and listen in the darkness, checking over their shoulders to make sure that they are still alone. They pull out the perfect tool for the job, a modified cutting board. The nice thing about it is it's usually super, super slick, and it's really tough because it's made out of that mylar plastic.

So you'll cut a hole in the edge of the cutting board and that allows you to manipulate that latch from either side the little cutout will fall over the latch and then you'll pull it and then it'll open the latch from the back side that's it gary makes it seem easy but for most of us if you make a hole in a cutting board you will still be locked out. But now you just won't be able to cut your vegetables. They're in. Lurking in the shadows, the duo spend hours going room to room. They hack into computers, their fingers hitting the keys, as they're able to gain access to the internal network, which has sensitive and confidential information.

The type of materials you don't want in the wrong hands. They get into the cabinets and sift through trash bins, looking for important documents. With more than enough gathered, they slip out, without anyone stopping them. But they're not done yet. This is one of several courthouses and government buildings that they intend to hit. The following night, they slip into darkness yet again, this time targeting a different building, roughly 30 minutes from Des Moines, in a town called Adel. They employ their same techniques, case the perimeter, and look for vulnerabilities and possible entry points. They opt for the front door. Gary slips in his favorite tool, the notched cutting board,

slowly opens the door, and enters the building. A piercing sound permeates through the courthouse halls and projects out to the town square. They continue, seemingly unbothered by the blaring alarm. Everything was going according to plan. I remember asking Justin, what do you want to do? And he said, well, we set the alarm off. Let's see if anybody comes and what kind of response we get. They make their way deeper into the building, up a flight of stairs to the third

floor. I was trying to bypass one door. Justin bypassed another door. He got his door open before I got my door open. So we both walked into that courtroom and I, shoot, we couldn't have been in there more than like a minute. What you're hearing is actual body cam footage and dispatch audio to the front door of the courthouse on the lawn. I'm unseen, but I don't know how I'm going to get in. Copy, sir. Just still standing inside one of the courtrooms. So we kind of ducked down. We didn't want to get seen by the police officers.

And that's what we kind of waited for for the first three or four minutes, was to see if the police officer actually even came inside. I think there's a bunch of walking around. I think at once if you should be able to get in with your key card. The officers stand outside the building, scratching their heads. How the hell did they get in? I don't know. That's what I'm trying to figure out. Justin and Gary share a look and nod.

It's time to move on to the next phase. They raise their hands and slowly make their way down the stairs towards the officers. We finally said, we're coming downstairs. If you want us to do something different, let us know. And we talked all the way down the stairs until we got to, I think it was the south entrance. They cautiously head out, knowing they're surrounded. And we had our hands in front of us, and he was kind of looking at us. 2511, they're outside now at 23 and 15 on South Dork. For most would-be cat burglars,

this would be it. But our guys have one more play up their sleeve. Even with all the officers there, Gary is cool, calm, and collected. He reaches into his backpack and hands the cops a literal get-out-of-jail-free card. You don't have to rewind 15 seconds.

You heard that right. A bona fide get-out-of-jail-free card. Now, what caper wouldn't want something like that in writing? That's because Gary and Justin are not actual criminals,

but they can break in as well as any professional burglar. We tell them that we're there with a company where we show them the get out of jail free card. But it's not what you think. It's no orange Monopoly card with Milburn Pennybags, the mustache Monopoly mascot, in his jailhouse, black and white whites being booted out of prison. Nope. It's basically some paperwork with a list of contacts that law enforcement can call to prove that these guys are authorized to be there. You see, Justin and Gary are contracted by companies and government agencies to test and assess potential vulnerabilities. Anything from the security of a building,

to combating cyber espionage, to countless digital horrors we don't even know about. Getting caught is actually part of their job. But this assignment was about to take a turn that would change their lives. So, at this point you might be wondering, how can I become a hacker? Oh, yeah, 100%. I would guess that step number one is being able to get into places that are already locked.

I really like breaking into stuff. So I looked and said, I wonder if that's a real job. And yes, it was. I just had to learn how to be a hacker, which sounded rad to me. Back in the early and mid-2010s, Gary and Justin became part of a rare group of individuals who assist governments, banks, and major companies that need help protecting their most prized assets, data. I got my start breaking into what's called a SIPR vault, which is where we have our secret network of secrets in the military. I broke in overnight and I left like a note,

like the type of beer I wanted, like Sam Adams, Oktoberfest or something. Justin got to start through something he likes to call urban exploration. Sounds kind of like parkour to me. Going into abandoned sites and buildings and just exploring nighttime photography, that kind of stuff. You know, pretty much every hacker has the defining traits of anti-authority and, I don't know, just being independent and subversion of rules, things like that. Their specialty is often called ethical hacking. Also known as white hat hackers. The term white hat comes from old westerns.

The hero usually wore a light colored hat and the villain wore the darker color hat. Therefore, if you're doing ethical hacking, you're a white hat hacker. But for some reason, the bad guys always get the cooler hat. Actual hackers that I talk to don't really put it in terms like that. A hacker is a very intelligent person who's circumventing the way things are meant to be and using it for other means, whether that's good or bad. The two met as co-workers at CoalFire, a cybersecurity firm trusted by some of the world's biggest companies. We're CoalFire. We work at the cutting edge of technology to help solve the world's toughest cybersecurity problems. We continue to be at the forefront of the industry

and we have a fierce desire to remain there. When the two of us come together, it's, I don't want to say an unstoppable force, but we've got a good track record going behind us at this point. Everything that I lack, Gary provides. Justin is the raddest fucking dude alive, as far as I'm concerned. I've watched Justin break into a building using a leaf from a plant that was right next to the door. Justin is a details guy. Gary's more big picture, someone who doesn't freak under pressure, which was a crucial trait during his times in the Marines. After turning engines off on a helicopter and, you know, falling 8,000 feet under the sky and then turning the engines on at like 10 feet,

breaking into a building isn't that big of a deal anymore as far as getting the adrenaline pumping. A cybersecurity team, all equipped with super specialized training and capabilities, reminds me of the 1992 movie, Sneakers. Man, this movie was a huge hit when it came out. Or at least that's what my child brain remembers from the time.

You had an amazing cast. I mean, Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix. You even had Sidney Poitier in it. They break and enter, but they're not thieves. We're getting too old for this. They know your secrets, but they're not spies. So protecting clients from malware attacks and data breaches are sort of the bread and butter of what an ethical hacker might do. But Gary and Justin's claim to fame is less virtual and more hands-on, entering buildings to perform real-time security assessments.

Known as penetration tests, or pen tests for short. So a lot of times we can go through and demonstrate this is what would happen if somebody with a paperclip came on site of your organization. They could cause $10 million worth of damage in 10 minutes. It's sexy, right? The spy thing breaking into a building, sneaking around, dropping some malware on a computer and getting out before anybody knows that you're there. Speaking of protections, Justin says the work they do is one of the last best hopes of retaining any semblance of digital privacy. Hackers are furthering and defending our rights for privacy, advocating that everyone needed encryption on their phones, that there shouldn't be backdoors, that the government can read all your messages. So their role is like one part cunning spy and one part sophisticated burglar in the service of keeping our data safe.

We have to be covert interest specialists. We have to be social engineers. And that's the magic of our job. I think we don't really see too many people in the industry overall that are capable of that. So naturally, the question is, how did Justin and Gary get their assignments? We get a box in the mail, and then a recorder comes out and says, this is your mission if you choose to accept it.

And then it explodes when it's done giving us the mission. Now, Gary might be kidding, but their job is pretty mission impossible. So in 2019, their employer, Coal Fire, let them know of the gig at the government buildings in Iowa. Their job, if they choose to accept, break into a handful of judicial buildings across the state, including courthouses, administrative buildings, and a correctional office, all by the cover of darkness. Hackers, you have five days to complete your mission. This message will self-destruct in five, four, three, two, one. A new challenge. They'd broken into high-profile targets before, but never a courthouse. Break into these courthouses, do everything an adversary

would do, show us how they would do it so we can better defend our assets, right? They're telling us all the information here is after hours. This is what guards you can expect. This is like the armed forces that are going to be on site. So at this particular job at the courthouse, where the alarm went off and we just left Justin and Gary with a whole bunch of confused officers, they continue explaining their reason for being there. He was super professional. Said, what's going on guys? It was all

normal proceedings. We've talked to law enforcement before and it usually goes about that way. They ask us what the heck we're doing. They've never heard of this before. So how'd you guys get in? We were able to see one of the latches on the far side. On the north side of the building? The opposite side, yeah.

We tell them that we're there with a company where we show them the get out of jail free card. Nowhere else in life do you have that kind of privilege where you can go on site and talk to the cops and be like, Alright, hey, jigs up man, here's my card, we're good, and we're out of here. This is the only paperwork you guys have? Business cards and stuff like that, but as far as authorization from my accords, that my card we're good and we're out of here this is the only paperwork you guys have business cards and stuff like that but as far as authorization from my accords that's all we're gonna do that's our get out of jail for this paper just is just signed by basically your CIO your director no that's that's the I am court CIO and director and it should have their point of contact on there give them call something like that but read away if you

want to see a our service order and everything like that, I have it on my laptop in my bag. He said, guys, this all checks out. You're free to go. And then at that point, you know, all right, great, cool. We're free and clear and no problem hanging around and educating law enforcement. The officers on site seem actually amused,

and they start chatting it up with Gary and Justin. I can show you. Well, maybe that'll be good that way in case I need to come in, because obviously my damn card doesn't work to get my hat thick. How does one get a job like that? It's coveted positions. We are just more than happy, elated that, one, they're curious, they're interested, they're asking the right questions. So we're hanging around and happy to do it, to spend more time with them, to try to help secure the courthouse. This is all pretty much on par with how these type of situations go.

Justin and Gary have spent their careers breaking into buildings. Sometimes they get caught, and it's always not a big deal. In fact, Gary and Justin were stopped by a security officer the day before, and he wished them good luck. But when the sheriff rolls up, he has the opposite reaction. And that's when everything changed. Sheriff Chad Leonard was not happy.

This ought to be good. Chad Leonard was not happy. This ought to be good. Maybe I better shut my videotape off. Now, you got to wonder, why? The sheriff walks up, and Gary and Justin show him the same get-out-of-jail paperwork that says they have a contract with the state. And then, everything in their playbook is immediately thrown out the window. And he says, well, state don't own this. We do. State don't own this. The sheriff did not like that these guys seem to be breaking into his

county's buildings without his knowledge or consent. Sheriff Chad Leonard tries some of the numbers on the get out of jail free card. Now, we're not sure at what point or what order he calls them or if he even called all of them. But according to a Wired article, a person answers and claims to not know who Justin and Gary are. Now, was it a wrong number? It could have been because there wasn't in fact a wrong number on that get out of jail free card. But one of the other numbers was called. And according to court documents, the sheriff gets an official who confirms that Justin and Gary were hired by the state of Iowa and then questions the sheriff's authority to arrest them. This further enrages the sheriff. He says, this just pisses me off.

This just pisses me right off. They can't do this. They can't send professional burglars into our courthouse. And then he turns around and he says something to the effect of, well, I don't care. Whatever. We'll put the burden of proof is on them, is what he said to us. The burden of proof is on them. They can figure it out.

I don't care. I'll arrest them. And then they can prove themselves innocent, more or less. And whether or not he was talking about the state or he was talking about us. In a shocking turn of events, Gary and Justin are arrested, cuffed, and hauled off to jail. Asshole. That's what was going through my mind. If you really want to get into the letter of the law, we were contracted state employees,

and state employees have the right and the ability to go into that courthouse. But somehow, in his mind, because he was angry, because our job was different than what they're used to in that courthouse, that somehow was okay to arrest us. But is that grounds for arrest? That's for the judge to decide. In the early hours of September 11th, 2019, Justin and Gary are fingerprinted and booked. It's hard to believe that they'll be spending the night in jail for a job they were hired to do.

Though Justin remained hopeful. If there's anybody you want to go to jail with, it's Gary. I was stoked. Like, oh, dude, we got like a 250-pound fighting Marine who's been trained in exotic Muay Thai and foreign fighting forms. Like, we are going to be running jail. Like, sign us up. And then they immediately split us.

I'm like, fuck, because I'm like pretty scrawny at the time. While we were in jail, I tried to call everybody under the sun and nobody answered. All phone calls are recorded. Save your message for... You need to answer the phone and then you need to tell them that Justin and I are in jail because our customer is a douchebag. Okay? Thank you. I did speak to one of the representatives from Iowa that hired us. This is Gary Dinkler from Coal Fire?

Yes. Yeah, we're in jail. Yeah, I know. I got a call from Andrew, and he told me about that. Okay. He's doing anything. I can't get a hold of anybody from my company, and this is the first time I've been able to talk to any of you guys. He was supposed to call the sheriff back and talk to him, but he had a conversation with the sheriff,

and the sheriff said that they weren't budging because it was a county building. So there's not much I can do right now until in the morning when I can get somebody to talk with the sheriff to have them try and understand what's going on. You would think working for a major security firm would mean that you wouldn't be sitting in a small jail cell in Iowa. Yeah, so it's pretty weird to get hired for an on-site gig like this, and all of a sudden, they're just like, you're out of luck. Game over. Gary gives the rep on the phone a couple of numbers to try and pleads with him again to help bail them out.

Okay, I'll see what I can do. Okay, thank you. You bet. Bye. He returns to his cell and waits for his arraignment the next day. The two incarcerated hackers? Well, they're arraigned in the very building they broke into. At this point, hours have passed since they were arrested.

And while much of Iowa was just starting their day, going to work or school, Gary and Justin were being led into a courtroom with their hands and feet chained. They stand before a judge who appears less than pleased that they broke into her courtroom. Gary goes first, right, because he's like very well-spoken, like quick on his feet. He explains they're professionals hired by the state to perform security tests on a handful of different municipal buildings. And she thinks it's bullshit. There is no way that this is it. You broke into my courthouse. This job doesn't exist. Nobody's ever done this before. And if they didn't exist and you were going to do this, they would have called me. Once I saw that, I'm like, oh, that's that's not good for us. This isn't swinging in our favor.

Now it's Justin's turn, but she still doesn't budge. They scan the courtroom looking for anyone who might help them clear up this mess. There's nobody. The DA steps forward and tells the judge the pair could be a flight risk. She increases their bail to around $50,000 each. Each of us were facing seven years of prison time for possession of burglary tools and for burglary. And they're sent back to jail. The fact that we weren't released after that, I got concerned as the day went on. Of course, you have no clock in jail.

So when we got dinner that next evening, I was pissed. I'm like, all right, now I'm going to be in here overnight again, sleeping on a concrete block. Gary hits the phones again, desperate to find a way out. I was able to talk to my boss. The first phone call I had was, why are we still in jail? Like, get us out of here. And he says, we're working on it. We're working on bail right now. This is around noon. And then about two o'clock in the afternoon, he calls the jail and I'm talking to him. He goes, I got some bad news for you. Our client lawyered up. Yeah. I don't want to talk too much about it here

so but it's weird. What's that? I said we're fucked then. To translate Gary says we're fucked and it appeared

to be true. While Gary and Justin are in jail the Iowa Judicial Branch releases a statement saying that they did not intend or anticipate the use of forced entry to get into the building. Which pretty much means like kicking a door down or breaking a window. But their contract did include physical testing like lock picking.

These guys act on their own volition. And so I heard that and I was like, you have got to be kidding me. The statement goes on to apologize to the Dallas County Board of Supervisors and law enforcement. It also states that they will fully cooperate with any investigation. And according to court documents, the state official who spoke to Sheriff Leonard the night of the arrest and questioned his authority got disciplined for how he spoke to the sheriff. Local media coverage also portrayed Gary and Justin in less than a flattering light. Like this KCII TV interview from a Polk County police spokesman. I don't know of any time where you can grant somebody permission to conduct an illegal activity such as burglary.

And a building that's locked and not open to the public at midnight, you break in and enter, that's a burglary. Of course, Justin and Gary's employer, Coal Fire, still had the paperwork and contract, but it wasn't doing them any good. That was just beyond the limit for me to see portions of the justice system come after you for trying to improve things and make a difference. That's probably the more maddening, infuriating part of all this. Nobody wanted to deal with the reality of it. They didn't want to actually say, okay, well, this is county versus state. Let's do this. It was, no, we're going to make a big stink about it. And we're going to take these guys down with us because of, you know,

I don't even know. I don't even know what the reason was. After countless hours of staring at a concrete wall, a guard enters. Coal fire posted bail. After roughly 20 hours in jail, arrested for a job they were hired to do, Gary and Justin are finally set free. Well, sort of. They still had to spend one more night in Iowa, trading a jail cell for a hotel room. And our CEO was just like, I don't care what it takes, fly first class, whatever you need to do, you guys deserve it, just get the hell out of that state as soon as you can. Well, the sun comes up and they eventually hightail it out of Iowa. Gary returns to Washington State and Justin to Florida. But their problems didn't end there. The arrest bloomed into a full-on state scandal.

Someone tell me an inherent, intelligent, makes sense way. That's audio from a hearing Iowa state senators called for after the arrests. What's playing out is state versus county, local versus lawmakers, sheriffs versus administrators. Yeah, that kind of stuff. One mutual cooperation

on this specific matter would not be a good idea. To repeat, the question asked in the meeting was, someone tell me a coherent, intelligent, make-sense way why mutual cooperation on this specific matter would not be a good idea. Good question. Now, Justin and Gary didn't attend that hearing, but were later subpoenaed to give depositions on the terms of their contracts.

The questions made it seem like blame was being shifted to the state. Then, three months after the arrest, Gary and Justin are offered a plea deal. It would downgrade their charges to misdemeanor trespassing if they plead guilty. I'm not admitting guilt to something that I didn't do anything wrong. And he said, this is literally going to be like a $50 fine. And we said, it's not the fine, it's the point of the matter. If we do this and we agree to this, then we're admitting that we had some sort of fault and we didn't. We did nothing wrong whatsoever.

And then, poof. All charges are officially dropped. Their records are expunged at the state level. Does that mean that the guys have finally cleared their names? Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. That arrest is on your record permanently, forever, no matter what you do. So any kind of federal background check or whatever would always show that we were arrested for felony burglary and possession of burglary tools forever.

Because of this and the permanent stain on their record, Gary and Justin haven't been able to enjoy things like TSA pre-check or global entry, and they're forbidden from purchasing firearms. But even worse, they lost out on jobs. My record is pristine, like Gary's was, until this incident. But this is going to carry with us for the rest of our lives. As of early 2024, Justin and Gary were still fighting to clear their reputations. There was pending litigation in state court against now former Sheriff Chad Leonard in Dallas County for false

arrest and defamation. Now, we reached out to Leonard and Polk County officials, but they all declined to respond to our request for comment. But since the incident, Dallas County has argued that the agreement between Coal Fire and the Iowa Judicial Branch was made, quote, without any input or knowledge of Dallas County, its sheriff, or any of its agents. In fact, the agreement specified local law enforcement or security personnel were not to be notified in advance of the testing to be performed. The county has also argued that the state court administrator had no authority to grant permission to enter a county-owned courthouse. And because of that, there is no set of facts showing unlawfulness in the arrest of Justin and Gary. And since this whole ordeal, the state of Iowa outlawed any kind of security tests that involve physical break-ins.

Which might be the wrong takeaway. Remember, these hackers found open courthouse windows when they did their pen tests. So what's the moral of the story? I'm going to be extremely long-winded and I apologize because I've got lots of thoughts on this. Think about it at the level of what Justin and I are able to do. We have taken and stolen so many things that would legally be ours because of the way that we were able to do it. But then we give it back and we say, here you go. We've gotten into everything that we've ever tried to get into.

It's part of our job to get caught. If we didn't want to get caught, we wouldn't have gotten caught. We could have walked out with evidence. We had access to judge emails. We had access to every record in that court system available. And what we're able to do should scare people. It should scare the life out of them. And the response to that was, let's not do any more testing. The response to that was, let's throw these guys under the bus and see if we can throw them into jail. These are your tax dollars at work.

People should be outraged. Is that good enough? That's good, man. Where'd you come out of the fourth quarter with that fucking diatribe? My God. All right. You just needed five seconds to stew on that. Yeah, I got no further comment. That's pretty good. While this story isn't a scam,

the work that Gary and Justin do helps prevent scams. We need people like them. Digital knights fighting the good fight to try and keep our data safe, which is important because it seems like there's no such thing as privacy anymore. But don't make it easy for them. Do better than 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and your pet's name. How about a password that's just password? Or, actually, that's a joke from Spaceballs. So the combination is one, two, three, four, five. That's the stupidest combination I ever heard in my life. That's the kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage. Maybe there is no moral to this story,

but is it possible to keep us safe from our own ignorance? Whew, that's deep. On the next episode, a piece from the famous surrealist painter Salvador Dali goes missing. It's an art heist in the most unlikely of places. So that case ranks up there as probably the most memorable and certainly the wildest case of them all.

That's next week on Scam Town. Scam Town is an Apple original podcast produced by Fun Meter. New episodes come out each Monday. If you want to check out a few extras from our show, you can find us at Fun Meter Official on Instagram. The show is hosted and executive produced by us. I'm Brian Lizarte. And I'm James Lee Hernandez. Maggie Robinson-Katz produced this episode. Our co-executive producers are Shannon Pence, Nicole Laufer, and Matt Kay. The show was edited and sound designed by Jude Brewer. Final mixing by Ben Freer from Fiddle Leaf Sound. Music for the

podcast was composed by James Newberry. Additional music by Five Alarm. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.