The Jordan Harbinger Show - 852: Ryan Montgomery | The Hacker Who Hunts Child Predators Part Two

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

Ryan Montgomery (@0dayCTF) is a professional cyber security specialist, the founder of Pentester (JORDAN15), and an ethical hacker known for exposing online predators. [This is part two of a ...two-part episode. Be sure to catch up with part one here!] What We Discuss with Ryan Montgomery: How vulnerable are your "smart" appliances to savvy hackers? What did Ryan discover when he hacked a pedophile website? How did the authorities respond when Ryan tipped them off about what he found on this website and who was involved? How Ryan and his MMA friend directly confront predators who think they're meeting minors in the real world. What should you do (and not do) when you encounter would-be predators online? And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/852  This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: jordanharbinger.com/deals  Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:00:54 Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you do. get your podcasts. Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show. I don't have the answer to pedophilia. I don't have the answer to pedophiles or human trafficking, but I do know that I can offer some of my abilities and some of my network to do something about it on a large scale. That doesn't mean it's going to end it, but even if I make a small dent, or like I say, you know, if I can help one kid, it's worth it. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people, and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life
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Starting point is 00:03:04 I send. Now, part two with Ryan. If you haven't heard part one with Ryan Montgomery yet, it's about hacking, social engineering, and unfortunately, a lot of the dark web child abuse pedophilia crap that's on the internet. So go back and listen to part one. Don't do it with kids, at least not with little kids in the car. I think it's important for younger kids, teenagers especially to hear, but, you know,
Starting point is 00:03:24 maybe not like your five-year-old or your eight-year-old in the car for this one. So go back, check out part one, and here we go with part two with Ryan Montgomery. I've got friends who work in really big companies that I can't name, and they work in the security departments of whatever operating systems their devices use. Okay. And I said, who's your biggest, what's your biggest sort of attacker right now? And they're like, well, I can't tell you. And I'm like, does it rhyme with Iran and China?
Starting point is 00:03:54 And I'm like, okay, fine. You know, it doesn't take a rocket science just to figure that out. And one of the things that they're worried about or that this particular guy is worried about is they're seeing a lot of attacks from things that are not people's computers. They're getting attacked from thermostats, vacuum cleaners, you know, like I-Robot typing. Think basically IoT Internet of Things devices that have been compromised in some way, usually made in China, maybe they're in use in Eastern Europe or something. Like usually they're lower-grade versions, not the brand names that we maybe have.
Starting point is 00:04:25 That's surprise. I mean, I don't mean to cut you off. Just so I don't forget, I have this tinnico mop and vacuum that, you know, it's a combination of two. And it is, I believe, one of the best brands. It's sold in Best Buy. It's actually behind me right now. It connects to your home network. It communicates with a Chinese cloud server for not only just the, I don't know. And I proxied the traffic from it, which means just, you know, intercepted the traffic between that device's app and my computer so I could see where, you know, what was going on. Sure. You know, you would think something just simple as changing the volume on that device would be on the device.
Starting point is 00:04:59 Well, it actually sends it to this Chinese cloud server and then that sends it to the vacuum. So right now, everything is fine. There's no problem, but it's just everything is being sent back and forth to this cloud server. If I was to connect it back to the internet, at any moment, if somebody changes that, now somebody has a direct pivot point on my home network. It can be your vacuum mop, you know, that you have no clue. It just says, hey, connect me to your network and let me update myself or connect me to your network to activate your warranty or do whatever it may be. You put this device in your corner and you may not ever think about it, but it might just be a thermostat.
Starting point is 00:05:35 It could be a smart outlet. It could be anything at all. And those devices could be a point for an attacker or even a nation state actor in a different country or even our own country, who knows, to pivot throughout your home network and see what you're doing. My vacuum being one of them. Yeah, of course. I've got a buddy who's like a, I guess you'd call him a high value target for certain people. And he has cybersecurity experts that he hires because of that. And they found that I don't even know what this thing was. Something that goes on your garden hose, it's for gardening. It's literally like a water, like a smart faucet. That was compromised. Okay. That's enough, you know. Yeah. And what was funny is she's like, yeah, I mean, I don't have too much faith in these guys. I mean, they only hacked my garden faucet. And I had to sort of. to stop him, was like, hey, man, I'm pretty sure that that's just like the jumping off point for the rest of your network in your house.
Starting point is 00:06:26 Yeah. They probably had physical access to that thing somehow by walking. I don't know, maybe they trespassed and even got near it, whatever. Or maybe it was exposing something to the internet. Yeah. Who knows what it was. Or maybe, yeah, like you said, physical access, maybe they factory reset it, connected to it. Right.
Starting point is 00:06:41 Well, I guess maybe if they did that, then they wouldn't have. Right. But who knows how they got access to it? It's all fun in games until your cameras inside your house are broadcasting to you. your smart faucet and then sending that to a cloud server in China. Then you're not laughing at lunch. Right. And that can happen at any moment.
Starting point is 00:06:57 So I'm not trying to instill fear in anyone, but it's true. So it's hard to, you know, I'm telling you the truth. And it's one of those things where like when I saw the traffic being proxy, I was like, okay, this is kind of cool. I could start the smart cleaning from my phone. I could do all that. But why not just keep it on my local network? Why does it need to be on some cloud server?
Starting point is 00:07:17 I don't need to be able to see the stats for my mop from the office. There's just no reason for it. So maybe they're a great company. Maybe they have no bad intentions at all. Let's say they have all great intentions and then somebody compromises them. And now every single person that has this specific brand, Tinoco, now every single person is a target and their home networks are easily pivotable if they, for some reason, could get what they call a shell on that device.
Starting point is 00:07:43 And they could scan my other network, look for other device, the rest of my network and look for other devices on it and try to pivot from the mop to another device, the same way from the garden hose to a computer or the garden hose to a smart outlet and then from a smart outlet to a computer. Who knows what, you know, path that person takes. It's doable. It's even been done at casinos. There was a, I believe it was a thermostat and a fish tank, right? Did you hear about that? Oh, yeah. I think I did hear about that. I don't know the story, though, do you? I don't know the full story, but I know that it got hacked and they used it for some way nefariously. Wow. A thermostat and a fish tank. Right. And a fish tank.
Starting point is 00:08:19 Incredible. I think that the IoT stuff is so interesting. The internet, like the nest thermostats and the smart robots and the, because everything is going in that direction. And security is expensive. Nobody's trying to secure those devices because it's expensive. Why spend the extra money to have the guy write secure code? It's like an afterthought, especially, and look, even if U.S. companies or Western companies start doing that, do you think that the company, that knocks this thing off, that ends up being the cheaper one that sells 2 million on Amazon? Are they going to give a crap about that? No. Yeah, I don't know. I doubt it.
Starting point is 00:08:53 I mean, without going into a million details about it, owning a cybersecurity company and seeing this stuff every day, I get to see all these gaping vulnerabilities. You know, sometimes it's low-hanging through. Sometimes it's, you know, massively exploited flaw in a lot of systems. Sometimes it's something like that. And sometimes it's very complex attacks. But seeing it at my company, sometimes it's as easy as, for example, example, like we have a tool called Darkwatch, where you can put in your personal email address
Starting point is 00:09:19 or your employees if you wanted to look and see which passwords are out there on the quote-unquote dark web from public databases. But they're, you know, a collection of 140 billion different records. So, you know, you put your Gmail in there, you put your business email, whatever you choose, it's going to come back with your passwords, some sensitive info. Sometimes it's your address. It could be your social. It could be your credit card. There's nothing that, as a company that we can do to get rid of that data. At least you know, you could change that password, you know, try to protect your identity the best way that you know how.
Starting point is 00:09:51 And what we offer, which we, you know, is something we do privately is if you want your information removed publicly, we can help you with that. But when it comes to these collections of databases, we can't remove them. They're not ours. You know, we just have a collection of them that you can search yourself. And same goes for your face. So we have another thing, which is important because this is going to go into the next topic. Sure.
Starting point is 00:10:13 We have a tool called Identity. to the IQ where you could upload a picture of your face. And like, you know, I could take a screenshot or take a picture of your face right now. It's never been on the internet before. It'll measure 120 plus points of your face. And it'll use that against a large database of, you know, other faces and find, you know, find you all over the internet with links to where you're at. And sometimes that data is valuable for, for a business owner or for an individual because
Starting point is 00:10:39 they want to know where they're being posted. And like one example that I've used before is you could be in. a background at a sporting event, not knowing that a picture was taken of you, and now you know that you are, you know, letting people know that you live in this town because you're supporting this little league baseball team, and you're in the back and you're this little speck in the corner. But it's important to just scan and see what's out there because otherwise you won't know. You know, that's pentester.com.
Starting point is 00:11:06 There are just some widgets that I'll save all the hassle and of talking about the vulnerability scanning and keeping your company safe. The two widgets themselves, I believe, are valuable for any person. You know, we have a discount if you reach out to us, but it's 50 bucks to sign up. Yeah, let's put a link in the show notes with the little discount. Can we do that? Can we arrange? Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Starting point is 00:11:26 I can give you a code for sure. And, you know, we'd be happy because we do individuals and businesses. And just like I said, Darkwatch looking up your email and identity IQ looking up your face. Those two things alone are worth you checking out what's out there. Yeah. And that's not just me because I want to promote the business. It's because I genuinely believe you. You should.
Starting point is 00:11:43 It would be scary if my face wasn't all over the internet for obvious reasons. But I think if you told that to, like, my dad or my wife, she's not going to be thrilled. For me, I'm like, great. I hope it's in 100,000 different places. Of course. Right? Because I've got all kinds of stills. I mean, I have Google alerts set up for my name just to make sure that the stuff out there is true or not, whatever.
Starting point is 00:12:05 Understood. But I think for a normal person who's in a normal line of work, it's probably quite unnerving to see you pop up all over. And sometimes it's probably terrifying. I mean, if you popped up on some kind of weird forum and it's used sunbathing and it's taken from a drone or something,
Starting point is 00:12:21 now you're like really freaking out. That stuff is definitely possible. And then there's people that use photos of you on other websites to sell products and you may have no clue. You could be on some Russian website that's selling dishwasher fluid. And you have no clue, you know?
Starting point is 00:12:38 Yeah, that's funny. That happened to a friend of mine. She went to Brazil and she was getting some ice cream. It's Vanessa Van Edwards. She's been on the show. She's on YouTube and a podcast author. She went to go buy ice cream,
Starting point is 00:12:49 and she's like, wait a minute. And she took a photo, and it's her on the ice cream freezer. Oh, my God. But it's from her book. They just cut it out, and they put it on there, like, ooh, ice cream instead of, you know,
Starting point is 00:12:59 like body language. Yeah, that's exactly my point. And there's so many examples of that, but it's just important to check it out. Well, all right. It's a good time to pivot then to, you hacked a pedophile website. Tell me about this.
Starting point is 00:13:13 I got a bunch of data from a pedophile website that I was alerted about from a friend of mine's wife. He texted me and said, you know, she sent me some horrible screenshots of some forum posts. One of them was including, you know, a father that had his child in the bathtub. You couldn't see, you know, the child naked,
Starting point is 00:13:32 but you could tell that they were. Like their back was, I guess, looking forward. It said in the title, they have no idea what's going to happen to them tonight. And underneath of it was other people saying what they were going to do to this person's child. And there was more screenshots than that, which I get into them if you want me to read them. But, you know, I left where I was at and I went home. And I didn't know exactly what I was going to do.
Starting point is 00:13:55 Obviously, I just knew that I needed to do something, whether if you report this website, start a petition, you know, on change or it would change. It's just a place where you can, you know, sign petitions for things that you care about. I didn't know what I was going to do. Yeah, so after she sent those messages, I went home and did everything that I possibly could to find a way, you know, to take this thing down. And, you know, I'll leave the ways that I did it out. Yeah, yeah. You know, I didn't know about the site prior. You know, I had, I've never seen anything like this in my life. But when I did see the forum post there, there was no, it was, this was on the clear web, by the way. So like, anyone could visit the site. You didn't need an account to access any of the data. I believe you needed an account to. access any of the private messages, you know, like any other website, but everything was publicly facing. And you could see this very large group of pedophiles. And, you know, after I did some digging and I found my way into their server, I installed a few back doors. And my first thought was,
Starting point is 00:14:56 okay, well, I don't want to download this whole site. I don't want to download images because I don't want to be in possession of CSAM or child pornography. I want to download all of the users out of the database, but that is, as far as I'm going to go, I'm going to take the identifying details, which includes their emails and usernames and more. And I'm going to reach out to the government and they're going to come. In my brain, this is what I'm thinking at the time, the government's going to come. They're going to take these back doors that I have because they have no idea they were compromised at this point, at least that I was aware of. And they're going to take over these back doors and they're going to grab all this information themselves, but I'm going to notate everything
Starting point is 00:15:34 with timestamps and this and that. And if I get in trouble for this, then it is what it is. I was doing it to protect the children. And I'll get into the details of the site. But I wasn't really scared of getting in trouble at that time. It was more of like, this needs to go. This website is so bad and it needs to go.
Starting point is 00:15:51 I'm going through the users that I dumped. And the first user, user ID1, which is the administrator of the site, used his personal Gmail address. Wow. Yeah. And his name was Nathan Larson, who was a politician.
Starting point is 00:16:06 And I found that by Googling him. And he ran for Congress twice. And I believe, you know, you could fact check this, but I believe at one point he got 2% of the vote in Virginia, which I know 2% is not a big number, but it's a big enough number for this guy. He was publicly a pedophile, publicly pro-incest, publicly against women, publicly a white supremacist.
Starting point is 00:16:28 You name it, this guy was it. Wow, he's like a collector of terrible titles. Yeah, and not only that, but I think at one point he sent a letter or email or saying, saying he was going to kill the president. He did time for that. Wow. Like, this guy just overall was a horrible person. So when I seen him in the database of running the site, I reported that immediately.
Starting point is 00:16:47 I got my tip line number. You can see that on Project Veritas. They have a screenshot of my original tip to cybertip.org, which I believe is Nick, like National Missing Exploited Children. I reported it there. And I really, in my brain, I'm believing they're going to knock on my door and gather this data and they're going to be just as antsy as I am to get this thing taken down because not only was there pedophiles on here there were children or at least people claiming
Starting point is 00:17:12 to be children in my brain I'm thinking okay there's kids on here trying to sell their bodies to these people this needs to go you saw kids on there basically prostituting themselves or yeah yeah yeah which you know like I said I can read you the some of this stuff like I have one here it says hello guys I'm a 16 year old boy from Iceland who wants to sell picks or videos and me doing anything you want me to do. Send me a DM if you're interested. And the title of the forum post was 16 year old boys selling pics or vids. Who knows that this was really a 16 year old or not at that time, but I'm reading stuff like that and many more. This is just one I just picked to have some open in preparation to the show. But that stuff made me very sick to my stomach,
Starting point is 00:17:49 knowing the kids are being exploited and victimized, whether they know it or not. But like, you know, going back into what I'm saying here, I was really under the impression that the government it was going to just show up or call me or do something to take this thing down. And nothing happens. So I was like, okay, well, then I'm going to go to the media. I'm going to make this public and I'm going to force their hand, basically, is what I felt at that time. You know, I talked to countless, you know, media people and all of them seemed very interested in running the story. I didn't have a single one that actually answered. I probably spoke to 12, 13 different news agencies. And if you want me to tell you the specifics, I will. But I talked to a lot of them and all of them were interested.
Starting point is 00:18:28 in running the story and all of them had the exact same response and it was that they couldn't run the story because their legal team was not okay with it. Wow. And I was like, okay, well, if you can't run the story with what you guys are considering the illegal, the illegally obtained material like the usernames and the emails, then just let parents know that this site exist. If you see your kids on this website, get them off of the site and they still wouldn't run the story.
Starting point is 00:18:53 I was so pissed off. You know, at this point, I was incredibly angry that no. Nobody wanted to do anything. I called my lawyer. My lawyer reported it to the task force. I called a lawyer in Virginia. That's where the owner of the site, Nathan Larson, lived. I tried to figure out what their recommendation was. She didn't have anything that she could offer to me. I just, I ran out of options eventually where there was just like, I can't do anything. And all I can do is sit here and wait and hope that somebody's going to show up. Well, I waited six months and I see on the news, Nathan Larson's arrested. And I'm thinking, oh, great. I did some. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:26 Right. So I look at these articles, and they don't bring up the website. They don't bring up anything about that. They just bring up the fact that he kidnapped a 12-year-old girl and allegedly raped her. That's the one that he got caught with, you know. Six months prior, I don't know how long he was, he's been a pedophile or was a pedophile. But that's the one he was caught raping or caught kidnapping. Wow. I'm sure I can say with confidence that this guy has done worse, you don't just get caught on your first time doing anything. Right. Whatever the case was, I believe that could have been stopped if I would have just been heard. And I understand the government a lot more than I did at that time now. It's just slow process. And the tip lines are just blasted with tips all day long. And maybe they did see it. Maybe they were investigating. I don't think I'll ever know. But at that time, I really was upset with the government. So I took it in my own hands. And I started to look for groups out there that were helping expose these people. I can talk about that right now. I can continue reading about. about the site. I'm still, I'm curious a little bit about the site because there's the one offending image, but I assume when you went in there, you came across, and I know you didn't export this or peruse the materials much, you mostly went for the users. And we'll link to the Project Veritas video in the show notes where they track down one of the users and he admits everything on camera, which is crazy. Oh yeah, that's one of many, but yeah, it's just part one.
Starting point is 00:20:50 It's one of thousands of guys on there, right? Well, one of many that have been confronted already, yeah. I see. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, I mean, this guy, he is sort of a pathetic soul. He just, like, had a non-functional life, porn addiction, but like OCD to the point of, I think there was a quote from the video where he said he can't even brush his teeth. Yeah, yeah, he's so obsessed with watching porn that he can't even brush his teeth literally, like not even, not even figuratively. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:16 Literally, it's that addicted to porn. But either way, it's no excuse to be looking at and soliciting children for, you know, for photos. No, of course, no. What else did you find on the site? I mean, how did you know that wasn't like, oh, this is 4chan, someone's trolling LOL, the end? You know, I got a picture I'm looking at it right now. And the title is, do you want me to be graphic here? Yeah, so pause now if you have kids in the car, even though I warned everybody at the top of these shows that not to have kids in the car. And if you're listening in public, pause this now because people are going to give you side eye once they hear this. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, definitely, definitely pause it or wait until later to listen to the rest of this. This title was in the category of J.B. Pill, which I learned recently means jailbate pill.
Starting point is 00:22:02 And jailbate means kids. The title of the post is, who wants to anally gangbang these little sluts? And the content of it says, I've got first dibs on the little whore in the middle. And then it says, at Joseph Fritzel, who was Nathan Larson, that was the name, one of the two names he went by on the site. He said, pick a whore for yourselves. and it's a picture of three little girls and bathing suits holding hands. Oh, man. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger Show
Starting point is 00:22:33 with our guest, Ryan Montgomery. We'll be right back. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers, and creators every single week, it's because of my network, and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course.
Starting point is 00:22:47 This course is about improving your relationship skills and you're inspiring other people to want to develop a relationship with you. It's not cringy, it's down to earth, It's not awkward, it's not cheesy. Just a lot of practical stuff that's going to make you a better connector, a better colleague, a better friend, a better peer. Six minutes a day is really all it takes.
Starting point is 00:23:03 Five, really, but five minute networking was taken. And many of the guests on the show, subscribe and contribute to the course. So, hey, come join us. You'll be in smart company. You can find the course at jordanharbinger.com slash course. Now, back to Ryan Montgomery. By the way, do you know who Joseph Fritzel is? I don't.
Starting point is 00:23:22 So you probably heard about this. There was a guy in Austria, and they found that he had dug out his basement. He put his daughter in there, and she had given birth to, like, five kids, and they'd never been out of the basement. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And so they caught him, and he had, like, this elaborate underground network. And I guess his wife or somebody else was like, I just never knew it was there because he had the always secret work down in this basement. And he had, like, multiple fake door.
Starting point is 00:23:49 I'm just horrifying. Yeah, that is horrific. He picked that name for some reason. Maybe he admired this guy, given his own proclivities. The guy is absolutely disgusting, and I'll read you another post here. It was horrible. How to coax daughter without it being weird or her telling mommy. The guy says, my daughter, 13 years old, is into anime and all of that.
Starting point is 00:24:14 And I have her on weekends. I know she is interested in sex, but how do I coax her into us playing together? without it making our relationship weird, or her running back to her mother and telling her or anyone else for that matter. And someone replies and says, what anime does she like? Oh, man. And he says, not really sure. She writes her own stories.
Starting point is 00:24:35 And that was the end of that screenshot, but I'm sure that went on. This was all, like I said, publicly accessible for anybody to read on the clear web for anybody, whether it be kids, adults, pedophiles, anybody could have seen this content. It's so gross. and you know it exists because you hear about it, but you don't really, we don't hear these kinds of details. And I've seen a very small amount of child abuse material.
Starting point is 00:24:59 It's horrible. I have nightmares about it. To clarify, this wasn't something I was looking for. It wasn't like on a website I was looking at. This is something I saw under very specific circumstances that I can't get into, but suffice to say, I would love to unsee it, to unsee it if I could.
Starting point is 00:25:15 And that was, I saw one image that was displayed to me for a moment by accident. words, I had to ask the investigators because that was the circumstance. I was like, hey, I saw that out of like the corner of my eye briefly and you look at this stuff all day. You know, are you, are you okay? And they're not okay. These guys are not okay. No, I can understand why they wouldn't be okay. And I'm not even looking at what they're looking at. I'm just reading about what these people talk about. I'll read you one more because it's upsetting me to even talk about. The title of this is a five-year-old undressed before my eyes.
Starting point is 00:25:47 and the guy says, it happened earlier in this year. No one else was around, and it could have been the perfect opportunity, but the situation was so unexpected and absurd, and my inhibition so strong that I couldn't bring myself to act. I have masturbated furiously to this memory ever since for many months and hit myself for not having the strength of mind. I have developed myself greatly since and positive that I could do something now if another opportunity came.
Starting point is 00:26:15 Then Joseph Ritzell replied, you know, Nathan Larson, and says, your only hope is to redeem yourself by creating another such opportunity and acting upon it this time. Otherwise, this memory will torment you forever. Oh, my God.
Starting point is 00:26:29 Just to clarify to some of you guys, I'm reading you stuff about Nathan Larson, but there's roughly, you know, a little over 7,000 people on this website that are not Nathan Larson that are as bad as him. I'm just reading you the stuff that's a lot more public. and it's not just him that's bad. There's a lot of bad people here.
Starting point is 00:26:50 And to also to address another thing just before I forget it, a lot of people are commenting on my pages and commenting on these videos, and I'm sure they'd be commenting on yours if I don't say this. People are saying, well, release the database, release it. Like, we want it. Well, you know, I made a good decision, I believe, a couple years ago, to not release this publicly because my original reason was because there was this website called Ashley Madison
Starting point is 00:27:13 and where there were, you know, husbands and wives could cheat on each other. And not that I'm in support of that by any means, because I'm not married. I've never been married. That website got hacked, got breached. And a lot of data got out there. And it broke up a lot of marriages. But more importantly, people killed themselves because they were on that website. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:27:30 And I had a friend who was on that site, just curious, an internet marketer guy, who was curious to see how their site was going. Exactly. And he wasn't even married at the time. And his email is still in the database. his work email is in the database. And his wife knows that he wasn't even married to her at that time. It made no sense.
Starting point is 00:27:50 But, you know, there was people that died because that list was released. And they killed themselves. So I didn't release it for that reason back then. And now going through this database with Project Veritas and finding out that there's a strong, I'm sorry, a large number of people in this list that were actually children. Like there were really kids, not just portraying kids or role playing. children. Some of them are 18 now, and the data was from 2020. Oh, I see. They're victims. Yeah. And you might dox them and then they look like pedophiles and their lives are ruined and they were
Starting point is 00:28:23 obviously hurting when they were on this website in the first place. 100%. And I have an entire telegram export. They had this public telegram that if you were, if you were on the site, you could find a link to it where you could see all them talking to each other, referring to child porn as cheese pizza and pizza and they would refer people that take photos of child porn as cooks or chefs and all these stupid terms that I'm learning more about because we're investigating it.
Starting point is 00:28:50 But I joined that telegram without them knowing, you know, with an anonymous account. I didn't ever interact in there in the public chat. But I exported all of their chats that just, you know, has evidence if the government needed it. And I saw that
Starting point is 00:29:05 there was a person on there named Cherry, a username named Cherry, that was a moderator that if you sent them pornography, that they would invite you to another telegram group. Or like child abuse material to be pretty clear, right? I also have conflated those terms, but not just any, the gross stuff, not the basic stuff. Any type of CSAM, yeah. Right. To prove that you're not an officer to prove, you know, whatever their rules were, you had to send C-SAM child abuse material to a username Cherry, who is one of the, I believe, two moderators, if I'm not mistaken. And Kerry would then
Starting point is 00:29:39 let you into another telegram group, which I presume had some really bad stuff in it. I just didn't get there because, number one, I didn't have C-SAM. And number two, even if I had, this doesn't sit right with me to even look at that stuff. Well, yeah. I just, I couldn't do it. I just, of course. You know, I think I had enough with what I did. And I find out now a couple of years, almost three years later, that Cherry was a child. Oh, wow. So Barry was a victim herself. and she was the gatekeeper to this horrible community that I presume existed. I just can't even imagine. I would not have imagined that underage, that actual children were also running
Starting point is 00:30:16 child sexual abuse material websites. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I don't know how it's going to go with the whole cherry situation. We do know what a real name is now. I don't know exactly how we're going to go about it. I definitely am not going to expose her, you know, whether she was doing something horrible to somebody or not. She was a kid and kids can't make decisions for themselves.
Starting point is 00:30:38 That's why there is an age of consent. And that's why they're kids. They're not adults. If anything, I would reach out to her or have, you know, somebody that's trustworthy, reach out to her for information rather than expose. I have no interest in trying to ruin a kid's life. Yeah. You know, maybe they're a predator still.
Starting point is 00:30:59 Maybe they're a pedophile. So who knows what they are. But they'll be found eventually. And I'm not, I don't want to be a part of destroying a job. child's life in any regard. So where's Nathan Larson now? People are probably wondering. Nathan Larson is dead, thankfully. When he got arrested with that 12-year-old, he went to federal prison. And according to the news, he died from self-starvation, which I find very hard to believe personally. Be hard to do that. Yeah, very hard to kill yourself, you know, by not eating.
Starting point is 00:31:27 Being starving by itself has got to be very difficult. So let's just say you're locked in a cell. I would assume with his charges he was in protective custody of some sort. And in protective custody, you're fed by inmates, to my knowledge, which they'd be considered trustees in certain prisons. They may have starved him to death. And I believe if the prison knew that this quote unquote politician, you know, was being starved to death or was refusing to eat one or the other, they would have put him in a padded room and get a tube down his throat and forced him to eat so they didn't get sued over it.
Starting point is 00:31:59 They can say suicide. I'm not going to believe that personally. It's up to you to decide. Either way, the man's dead, and I'm not losing sleep over it. That was his justice, but there's a lot more justice to be served. And luckily, you know, I can't talk about it specifically, but, you know, law enforcement is involved now and things are being taken care of. Yeah, I think it's really shocking that it took so long.
Starting point is 00:32:22 And like you said, I get it, the tip lines are full. They don't know about the credibility. There's chain of custody evidence stuff. But when I told my buddy who was a former federal prosecutor about what you had when we first talked, he's like, yeah, I would investigate that immediately. So he was mystified as to why no other DA took that up or AUSA took that up. Nobody did. And then it took, I guess, going viral a couple times for people to take me seriously.
Starting point is 00:32:49 But it is what it is. I mean, like I said, God's got a plan for me. If this is his plan, then that's it. You know, I'm not going to stop until I make as much impact as possible. I'm going to try to help as many kids. and people that are being victimized in trafficking, not just children, but I have a skill set that I could use for good. And like I said, I've been doing for a few years now, just completely under the radar, you know, not breaking any laws or anything, but assisting other organizations to help find these guys because I had no luck in my own endeavors in the beginning. But, you know, it ended up working out.
Starting point is 00:33:24 I started a little organization locally a couple months ago, maybe six, almost six months ago now. and we caught a ton of people that were thinking they were meeting a child in real life and police would arrest them. And that was called 5-6-6-1-PC. This is interesting. So this is something I saw when we first got acquainted. I was looking you up on Instagram and followed this. And some people have seen this on YouTube, right?
Starting point is 00:33:48 So you and your MMA buddy who looks like kind of a, just the dude you wouldn't want to get punched in the face by, generally speaking. He's undefeated. I think he's got seven knockouts, eight wins. He actually doesn't look that scary, but you just know that he is because he's an undefeated. Absolute animal. Yeah. But he looks like just kind of a normal athletic dude in the photos.
Starting point is 00:34:08 I go to church with him twice a week. He's a great dude. He must be. But at the end of the day, if you are at a Walmart to meet who you think is an 11-year-old girl, and you and that guy come up and say, are you looking for Ashley? You know you done screwed up at that point. Yeah, yeah. And the way that we did it was, you know, every single time I'd be holding the camera
Starting point is 00:34:27 and he would be reading the chat logs that would be collected by an adult. An adult would decoy as a child. We never used real children, obviously. They would decoy as a child and then the decoy would act like a child and nothing more. Not talk sexual, not reach out to a guy first. These guys reach out on their own and it is scarily fast, how quick this all goes down. Sometimes the guys that are really bad will be a little more careful and they'll want pictures with, they'll say, like, put three fingers up in front of a,
Starting point is 00:34:56 a TV to prove that you are, you know, you're real. Those guys are the ones that seem like they're probably, they probably done this before or they do this often. We've caught a few of those and, you know, a lot of them got arrested on the scene. You could find that on YouTube. But yeah, so we would meet them and instead of it being a child, it would be us with a camera and we'd start reading the chat logs off to them and they'd either, you know, walk away or they'd admit it, but we've only had two people walk away from us. And the reason for that is because I do my, it's called open source intelligence or for short, Ocent, you know, I know who they are. It doesn't matter if they're using a username or just whatever.
Starting point is 00:35:31 You know, you send me a picture of your face, which goes back to what my company does. I have your phone number, whether it be fake or real, or, you know, there's many ways for me to figure out who you are with just, even just a logo of where you worked on your T-shirt, you know, you'd be surprised at some of the stuff that can be put together with the t-iest detail. Well, you caught that one dude who basically just gumpily strolls out of Walmart. and gets into his Prius and almost runs you guys over. Yeah. And you're like, Brent, we know where you work. We know you work at whatever.
Starting point is 00:36:00 And he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. It's like so he just has this panic reaction and you just realize. I said to myself when I saw that video, this was the last time this guy's going to do that. And then you're like, actually they caught Brent, 1,200 miles away. 10 days later. In another state. 10 days later, yeah. So he left and I got the chat logs from another organization.
Starting point is 00:36:19 And Brent, since he never, he didn't say a word to us when he sprinted out of the Walmart. he thought he was being chased by police, even though we make it very clear. Dustin and I, we say, you know, we're not police officers. You're free to go. You're not being held against your will. We make it very clear that we're not, you know, holding them
Starting point is 00:36:35 because it's, we don't want to get in trouble for trying to do the right thing. For sure. Yeah, Brent, I knew he was a teacher beforehand. I knew that he had a bachelor's degree in some type of teaching. I knew he worked at two different schools. I knew all of this going into it.
Starting point is 00:36:48 I knew that, you know, who his family was. I knew where he currently worked. I knew all of his, social medias. I knew everything about him. So when he was walking away, I was trying to say some of the details that most guys would say, oh, crap, he knows a lot about me. Let's let me stop and talk. Maybe I can talk my way out of this, which in reality, no matter what they say, the police are on their way. So Brent just takes off full speed and I chase him to his car. And since we never got a word in about whether we were police or not, he just assumed that we were. And, you know, Scrappy and I
Starting point is 00:37:19 get a text message and we find out that the guy was caught again. 1200 miles away by another predator catcher. And in the chat logs, he said, I was chased out of Walmart by two police officers. So it was just like, the guy didn't even know, but just imagine about him driving. He probably ran out of Florida thinking he was wanted,
Starting point is 00:37:36 if I had to guess. Imagine the times, like I said earlier, imagine the times he was not caught. If he's caught twice in 10 days, 1,200 miles apart, what about the times he wasn't caught? Yeah. The guy is still walking the street right now. He's not arrested.
Starting point is 00:37:50 This guy is still, you know, he may be, he may listen to this. Yeah, I'd like to think the demographics of this show don't include a lot of pedophiles, but statistically speaking, there's got to be at least one, right? I mean, this is a... Somebody's going to listen to this, and they're going to be in this... Do you want me to name the website? Yeah, why not?
Starting point is 00:38:05 Yeah, so the website was rapy.t.to. .0.S.0.c.c.com and dot S.U. There was four different versions of the same domain name. Wow. But they all were exactly the same thing. If you were a member of one of those sites, I guess you have every reason in the world to be scared. Yeah. Wow. And also really gross name, rapy.TO, like right on the nose, not trying to hide it at all.
Starting point is 00:38:27 I mean, I know that sounds kind of funny, but I don't even mean it to be, it's just really gross. They're not even trying to sugarcoat it. It's just like open rape of kids. Of course. And the stuff that I'm reading to you, anyone could see. Remember, so all this stuff was publicly accessible for anyone to read. Did you get to the point in the video that you watched where you saw who was hosting this website? Yeah, I saw that it was hosted by somebody who hosted the Pirate Bay, which for people who don't know is basically like a BitTorrent kind of software movies website, everybody who's 40 or so and went to college with fast internet and has done BitTorrent even once in their life was probably on the Pirate Bay grabbing music and
Starting point is 00:39:06 movies, not gross stuff or illegal, so literally like Pirates of the Caribbean DVD rips. Yeah, exactly. So the Pirate Bay was just a completely different thing. And he was one of the three creators, founders of the Pirate Bay. And I have some communications between him and the administrator of the site where he, you know, says that he manually reviewed the site, which if you're hosting a website, you have more access to it than what the public does. So my point in saying that the stuff I'm reading you was publicly accessible for anyone to read, he had access to read the private messages, he could look on the server, he could have grabbed any images, and he said that he reviewed the site,
Starting point is 00:39:43 and all he saw was troll comments and holiday photos of children. And he said that he didn't see anything offensive there. I'm not going to say that if Frederick is a pedophile, because I don't know if he is or not, but I know that he was okay with hosting a website that was trading, soliciting, and showing child pornography, and he was accepting money to not only host it, but set it up. Like, he actually configured the server based on the logs I have. And the thing is, web hosting is not that expensive, I would imagine. So it's not like he was getting paid millions of dollars to host this, and he just looked
Starting point is 00:40:18 to the other way. That's what makes me think he's a pedophile. Yeah, well, he may be. He lives in Thailand. So that's also a red flag in my eyes. But, you know, no, there's no way to actually prove it. Well, to be fair, a lot of people live in Thailand. Yeah, well, a lot of criminals move to Thailand, though. That's what I know. I'm just kidding. I'm giving you shit because it's like, well, he lives in Thailand. It's like, all right. No, not everyone in Thailand is bad. I'll make that very clear. Lovely place. Yeah. Lovely place.
Starting point is 00:40:43 I have no problem with people in Thailand. But I do have a problem if you're hosting a pedophile ring and you live in Thailand. I think all 71.6 million ties can also agree that running a child porn website from Thailand is not, not okay. Thailand, don't hate me. I didn't, I didn't mean a defense. No, no, I'm just giving you. I'm giving you, I'm trying to keep it a little bit lighter because this is such a heavy show, right? I'm trying to, I'm grasping at the humor straws where I can get them. I appreciate that because I've been talking about it for a couple weeks straight now. Yeah. You know, it's not, it's getting to me. It genuinely is getting to me.
Starting point is 00:41:19 This is the Jordan Harbinger show. With our guest, Ryan Montgomery. We'll be right but back. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors,
Starting point is 00:41:32 all of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show. Those are all on one page, jordanharbinger.com slash deals, and you can always search for a sponsor using the AI chatbot on the website as well, Jordanharbinger.com slash AI. It's not always right.
Starting point is 00:41:46 It did tell a few people, myself included, that my mom was racist, but otherwise it's quite useful. Jordan Harbinger.com slash AI is where you can find it and check it out. Thank you for supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Ryan Montgomery. You showed me a demo of going into a chat room
Starting point is 00:42:04 and seeing the Predators basically pop up. It's a Google like teen chat room Florida. And you click on the first freaking link, go in there, and you're starting to get DMs or private messages right away. And I've told this story on the show before, so I'll keep it super, super short. but, and I think I told you as well offline, that when I was young, I was working at a security company and the guys were asking me how I meet women because they were talking about real dating
Starting point is 00:42:30 and I said online on AOL and they're like, what? How does that work? And we just got to talking that I was DMing women on or instant messaging women on America online. And one of the guys is brilliant. He said, hey, if you want to learn how to stand out from the other guys, because I was like, they're like, what do you say? I'm like, hi. And they're like, oh, it's lame, right? You know, you need you to pick up lines. They said, if you want to do you want to be, to stand out from the other guys, make a profile as a girl and see what comes your way. And that was how I discovered exactly what you demonstrated in that chat room. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:42:58 So for those who haven't seen what I demonstrated in the chat room, it was within 10 seconds, a 47-year-old man was interested in talking sexually with a 13-year-old girl. And, you know, that's reproducible at any moment at any time because I've shown so many people just to show an example of it. And a lot of people might think, well, there are some weird chat rooms on the internet. That's where the predators are hanging out. Well, this is not just the teen chats. This is Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Xbox, Roblox, Minecraft.
Starting point is 00:43:28 I can go on for hours with all the different platforms. These guys are, you know, especially if you're a little girl, but little boys too. It doesn't matter what your gender is, any gender, for that matter. You know, it's very prevalent anywhere. And, you know, if you have the stomach to deal with it, try it for yourself. You know, set up an account. There's nothing illegal about making an account. saying you're a child and just wait for somebody to message you you'll be blown away at how
Starting point is 00:43:53 quick it happens so it's important for your kids to know that you know it's okay to come to you about this stuff that you're not going to get mad at them because you're going to protect them at the end of the day and then secondly and also want to make it very clear that I don't believe personally that you'd be a helicopter parent is the term for it if you are going through your kids devices or asking who their friends are and not just taking their word for it you know figure out who their friends are and When I was a kid, my mom was very, very lenient and not very strict whatsoever. But if I was staying at someone's house or if I was hanging out with somebody, like when I was very young, she would call the parents and make sure that I was where I said that I was. And, you know, there was no such thing as an iPad babysitter back when I was a kid.
Starting point is 00:44:35 Don't judge me. I feel attacked. You know, that's what most people are doing nowadays. You know, they just hand the iPad over. And the problem is the iPad's connected to the Internet most of the time. and, you know, kids are a lot more advanced than they were when I was a kid. And when you were a kid, I'm sure. Darn right.
Starting point is 00:44:51 It's just important to make sure you know what your kids are doing and not just taking their word for it. Because remember when you were a kid, I mean, how often were you honest with your parents? Sure. And now they can hide a chat app in a fake calculator or something, fake calculator app on their phone. Yeah, absolutely. I've seen this. It works. It functions.
Starting point is 00:45:09 The calculator app will actually function unless you put the right pin in. Right. And then you put the pin in, you hit the right button, and then, the other app opens. It really is amazing. I know about this because one of my buddies is kind of like a, he's an older guy, he got divorced and he's like,
Starting point is 00:45:24 look at these young lassies that I'm dating. And I'm like, okay, and he busts out a calculator app. And I'm like, what are you going to? Oh, got it.
Starting point is 00:45:32 I don't need to know all these details, man. Yeah. It was like, they weren't young girls that he was dating. I mean, he was just dating regular women, but he kept like the photos hidden in an app, which actually,
Starting point is 00:45:42 I guess maybe is for when the girl that he's dating that day looks in his, phone when he's in the bathroom and finds all the 83 other girls he's talking to online or women, I should say, because he's like 50. It's his hidden stash. Yeah, it's his stash. Yeah. And if a 50-year-old man, or he's probably pushing 60, can do that, then a teenage kid who is
Starting point is 00:46:02 born natively into, with a friggin' iPhone in their hand, is going to figure out how to chat with somebody in a gaming app that you don't even know exists. Exactly. And for parents that don't understand, you can start a game. and immediately as you start a game, you're matched up with complete strangers. And these strangers could be nine-year-old kids. They could be 50-year-old men or women or whatever gender. They could be anybody.
Starting point is 00:46:30 So there is no matchmaking. I'm sure there is in some games. Most of the time, there's no matchmaking that's matching kids up with kids. And a lot of times kids, they want to see the adult stuff. They want to see the mature games. So they're going to lie about their ages, you know? Sure. Maybe they might have a squeaky voice or whatever,
Starting point is 00:46:47 but they might lie about their age and their profile, get into certain things that may be a matchmaking software they otherwise would have put them with other kids, puts them with adults. Not every game is that way. I'm just guessing there, but, you know, it's just be careful, as all I'm saying. Just make sure you know what your kid's doing.
Starting point is 00:47:03 For sure. Megan Phelps Roper, who escaped the Westboro Baptist Church cult, do you know about this cult? Oh, I know all about it, yeah. Yeah, so she was on the show, episode 302. one of the ways she got out, and I'm going off memory here, is I think she was playing words with friends. Okay.
Starting point is 00:47:19 And it matched her with a guy who was just really nice and chatty and talk to her and, like, added her on the app and they used to play all the time. And he slowly started asking her questions. And then I think it was like a rabbi or something. Those questions made her think. And then she was like, wait a minute. This is insane. I'm in a cult.
Starting point is 00:47:36 And she escaped. Yeah, well, thank God she got out because they're horrible people, in my opinion. She's in a cult. She's in a high control. situation, imagine your normal parent with your kid, you're not controlling everything they do. You don't know about words with friends or whatever the equivalent is. She was in a high control situation where they were looking at her text and phone calls. They just didn't see the chats inside words with friends. Right. And that's why it's super important for, not like I said,
Starting point is 00:48:00 not only to go through your kids' devices to make sure you know what they're doing, but let them know that it's okay to be honest with you about that stuff specifically. Because this stuff, You know, for these predators, it's a couple minutes, if, you know, if that, of their time, but it's going to cause trauma for that child for the rest of their life. You know, it's not your fault if it happens, you know, it's the pedophiles fault or the predator's fault. But, you know, if you can prevent that, just prevent it. What was interesting is during that demo that you did with the chat rooms, whenever I have
Starting point is 00:48:32 done a similar demo years ago, it's been years, but whenever I did a similar demo years ago, because I had to show my parents, I showed the FBI these chat rooms, We ended up entrapping somebody. So that's what we have in common is we entrapped this guy. I shouldn't say entrapped because it was his own thing. It wasn't entrapment. Yeah, well, you're not law enforcement, so you can entrap. Right.
Starting point is 00:48:50 Let me back up because this wasn't the demo. This was when I started getting the instant messages as a girl on AOL. And I was like, oh, look at these. I printed off transcripts, or I should say, I went to work. And I told the guys what losers were DMing me. I was 38 and talking to a 14-year-old. My boss was like, whoa. I know you think this is a laugh.
Starting point is 00:49:06 This is not funny. These guys are predators. Print the transcript of the chat, if you can. And I was like, yeah, I can. It's all saved. It's AOL. It's just like a thing I can print right from when I'm doing it. And so I started saving them in text files and printing them off.
Starting point is 00:49:20 And we had to fax them to the FBI. The Detroit office was like, we don't handle cybercrime here. Can you imagine? That's a bygone era. We've handled computer stuff at the Detroit office. Very gone. So they sent it to D.C. And I remember that Agent Forrester at the FBI was like,
Starting point is 00:49:37 hey man, this is bad. How many of these do you have? And I'm like, every time I log in, there's email, messages waiting, and I'm going to a chat room, and I get 20 of these. Yep, trust me, I know. And I haven't been a decoy myself other than a few times just to show examples of it. And our first guy we ever caught Scrappy and I was we decoyed for that one because we just wanted to make it happen that night.
Starting point is 00:50:02 But yeah, I totally understand. And reading the chat logs, even not interacting with them. is hard enough. It's creepy. Yeah. It's super creepy. We got this guy to go drive across state lines, Michigan and Ohio,
Starting point is 00:50:14 or at least where I was south, eastern Michigan. That's a felony in itself. Yeah, you can get to delete it. Well, that was the idea because the local cops were like, oh, it's not us. It's AOL. They're in Virginia and the FBI finally was like, okay, the locals are not going to know
Starting point is 00:50:26 what the hell's going on with this. Right. So we basically just came up with the idea to get them to cross state lines. And then the FBI could say, oh, now you're crossing state lines to pay a minor for a, a sexual encounter. You know, it's a traveling charge for a felony, sex crime. What always kept me up
Starting point is 00:50:42 at night and still does to this day was I saw so much incoming and there's no way we even got one in a thousand of them. No. And that was in the 90s. That's definitely the truth. It's, I don't believe it's stoppable, but I believe that, you know, whatever impact you can make is good enough. If you just let it go rampant and, you know, hope for the best, it's just going to continue to get worse. I don't have the answer to pedophilia. I don't have the answer to pedophiles or human trafficking, but I do know that I can offer some of my abilities and some of my network to do something about it on a large scale. That doesn't mean it's going to end it, but even if I make a small dent, or like I say, you know, if I can help one kid, it's worth it. I mean, recently in the past few
Starting point is 00:51:30 weeks, since, you know, my stuff has been going pretty, I guess, viral for other words. I've had two mothers come up to me from like just two different areas too. It could have never known me otherwise. It hugged me and thanked me. And like, you know, I'm not doing this for recognition by any means, but it felt good to know that I made a difference. And maybe their kids won't have this problem because of something that I said or did. So that stuff makes me feel good.
Starting point is 00:51:56 And the flip side of that is do I recommend anybody else? Do, you know, vigilante justice go out there and catch them on your own? No, I don't. Yeah. I think that it's dangerous. and I think you're putting people, well, they're putting themselves in a situation, but they're the most vulnerable people in the world
Starting point is 00:52:13 because they know they did the worst crime possible, and unfortunately they hurt people. They kill cops. They do really bad things. Do I recommend that you go out and do it? Absolutely not. Backing somebody like that into a corner could be dangerous, right?
Starting point is 00:52:26 If they're desperate, I would imagine if you're one of those guys, you have a nightmare scenario, and maybe you have a plan for that scenario, which is kill the person who's after you and then possibly just kill yourself later and you just don't want to be there. Yeah, and that happens a lot.
Starting point is 00:52:42 Yeah, it happens a lot. I mean, you can look up cases about it all the time where they're serving warrants on this type of stuff and they'll blow their heads off or they'll kill the people serving the warrant. It happens all the time. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Yeah, so I'm not saying that I'm some fearless guy
Starting point is 00:52:56 because I'm just, I'm a skidding computer geek. You know, and Dustin isn't going to out punch a bullet. Nah, but you turn sideways, they can't hit you. You know that thing. Yeah, exactly. I could just float through the air. Superpower. Exactly. If for some reason, something did happen to me, at least you guys know, I was trying my best. You know, that's the best I can say. You know, I really don't have a better answer for anybody on that one. Because a lot of people are messaging me saying, be safe. You need 24-7 security. You need this.
Starting point is 00:53:23 They're going to suicide. And they have all these things that people keep saying to me. And it's like, if that happens, like I said, God had a plan for me. And I don't know why this was his plan for me. I have a passion for helping victimized children and victimized people. And like I said, even goes back to drug addicts. But this is my goal right now to not only run my companies, which is a separate thing, but in the time that I do have available, focusing it all on this.
Starting point is 00:53:49 Knowing that you've done something similar to what I was doing when I was 17, 18 years old with the chat room stuff, let me bounce this off you because there's nobody I've ever been able to bounce this off of. So people used to ask me, why do predators in the chat rooms? Some of them will say they're a 17-year-old boy and they're talking to a 17-year-old girl,
Starting point is 00:54:08 but others will say, well, they'll just tell you that they're 53 even though they think you're 14. And my theory, and this is just a theory, I have no real basis for this other than experience, is that the ones who lie about their age, they either aren't going to do anything in real life, they're just perverts, they're looking for a LARP kind of experience, or they're inexperienced
Starting point is 00:54:29 and they have some sort of like vague, terrible, plan to deal with their real age gap at some point later when they meet up. But the guys who admit that they're 50 and they're talking to a 14-year-old, those guys are scarier because they're admitting their age for a reason. And I think the reason is because from the jump, they're planning on a real-life encounter and they don't want to break trust. Right. Because otherwise, why risk scaring away a kid in the chat room if you're just going to stay
Starting point is 00:54:56 in the chat room? They know they have to disclose because they're grooming the target. Well, I have a story for you there. I mean, and I agree with you to some degree, but I've seen the opposite. One of the first people I caught in South Florida, for example, he was using a picture of a guy that was in a band. And he was portraying himself to be 19. He was using a fake name. And he wanted to meet what he believed was an 11-year-old girl at a hotel in Pompano Beach, Florida, which is, you know, not one of the best areas around here, but either way. He wanted this little girl to meet him at the hotel. I already found out who the guy was by, you know, O'S. and I knew that he was in his mid-40s. He was working where he worked. I knew everything about the guy going up there. And I found out that he had a room book specifically for that girl to stay the night.
Starting point is 00:55:42 He ordered food. You know, he admitted to everything on camera. He admitted to all of his intentions. Wow. Nothing happened from it. But the guy that just think of it like this, if it wasn't us that showed up, an 11-year-old girl would have seen a man in his mid-40s,
Starting point is 00:55:55 not some 19-year-old boy that wasn't even the picture that he was using. Right. He had like a slight resemblance of the guy, but like not even close. Like very, very slight resemblance. Maybe the same haircut, maybe. So his plan was to just hope for the best at that point? I don't know.
Starting point is 00:56:12 His plan could have well been grabbing the girl as soon as he saw her and bringing her to the room. We don't know. But instead it was, it actually wasn't just Scrappy and I. It was one other guy we brought because he happened to be with us. And he was, I don't believe he was in the video. He might have been. We never published that one yet. We still have it.
Starting point is 00:56:30 But I don't know what his plan was going to be with that 11-year-old girl. That's scary. I just always assume the guys who disclosed, they were like, eh, if I tell them up front, then it's one less way for my plan to fail because they're already comfortable meeting an old man. It goes both ways because some of them, some of them don't want to meet. They just want you to send them pictures or talk sexually, whatever they want, and they don't ever want to meet up.
Starting point is 00:56:52 They could talk about their real age because for some reason it's not illegal to do that, not illegal to fantasize about kids. Yeah. It's just extremely gross. It is illegal to act on it. So it's just a really weird set of rules there. And I'm learning more about it as I go. Indeed.
Starting point is 00:57:09 Look, I'm no professional when it comes to how the government handle this stuff. It handles this stuff. I don't know the psychology of a pedophile or predator. And I've been doing it now for three years, and I still don't understand it. But I'm picking up pieces, you know, especially doing these investigations.
Starting point is 00:57:25 Well, we've gone quite a ways here. There's going to be a two-part episode for sure. And I will say, it made me feel a little gross. I'm sure you used to that, but I am so glad that you are doing what you are doing. And next time I find myself in Florida, I'll come hang and I'll take you to dinner. But I am not going to eat Campbell's chicken noodle soup. You're going to have to expand your palate, man. For God's saying.
Starting point is 00:57:44 Maybe, but I feel like I'll bring some Campbell's with me to the restaurant. If you bring a can of Campbell's to a Morton Steakhouse, we might get kicked out, but it'll be a good story. We're going to find out. We will. Look, I'm going to steal a comedy. bit that I think is relevant in lighten the show up right here at the end. I did not ask John Marco. Don't sue me, John Marco. This is required to lighten things up, but it's very relevant. You'll hear. I have a girlfriend right now. Thank you. Thank you. Neither of us has very good
Starting point is 00:58:14 taste in music. So whenever we're about to make love, I put on a random Spotify playlist. And a couple months ago, I put on an R&B playlist. I was feeling ambitious. And R. Kelly came on. Yes. You've heard the news? And my girlfriend was like, oh, no, we cannot listen to R. Kelly. R. Kelly is a pedophile. And here's the thing. And just hear me out for one second.
Starting point is 00:58:52 Technically speaking, technically speaking, R. Kelly is not a pedophile. Just give me one second. I promise this close. Just hear me out. The term pedophile refers to people. who are attracted to those that are prepubescent. Then there's something called a hebophile. That's people who attracted to those in the early stages of puberty,
Starting point is 00:59:14 like 11, 12, 13, 14, and then there's something called an e-fibophile. That's people attracted to those in the later stages of puberty, like 15, 16, 17, 18. But I think the reason we don't make those distinctions is because it's very hard to explain the difference without sounding like a pedophile. Yeah, that is exactly right.
Starting point is 00:59:42 That's a great one. I hope I don't get frigging canceled for stealing this, but I think I thought it was so good. And I'll link to that in the show notes. John Marcos Oresi. I love that. Yeah. I've never heard that before.
Starting point is 00:59:53 That is so true, though. That is so true. Yeah. Imagine somebody tries to, imagine like, dude, you're kind of a pedoph. No, actually, I mean, he, before. You're like, okay. No, never hanging out with this guy. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:00:05 Ryan, thank you so much, man. I'm proud to know you. You're taking a real risk to expose this in the way that you have, and I think it's admirable. Thank you so much, and I appreciate you having me on the show, man. I've got a lot of thoughts on this episode, but before we get into that, here's what you should check out next on the Jordan Harbinger show.
Starting point is 01:00:23 There is no pill that cures malignant narcissism. There just isn't. You can't take a pill for it. Character flaws are fixed and rigid, and they remain with us, and it would take heroic efforts on the part of the person to overcome these things. Only they can fix themselves. The point is things will not get better, so document everything. The person with the best set of records of events wins.
Starting point is 01:00:53 I have to be honest and say, look, as you said, Jordan, it's not going to get better. Things will get worse, and unfortunately it usually does. and the person that pays the price are those that are closest to the malignant narcissist. Once I teach you to look for these behaviors, you will never forget them. You will be more aware and you will be able to notice them. And when we begin to accumulate these behaviors and we aggregate them and they go into that checklist, you know, there's 130-something items on the predator checklist, and you say, wow, this person tops 50.
Starting point is 01:01:37 This individual will put you at risk. They will victimize you. It doesn't matter where you're at. There is no safe place. There is no safe church. All it takes is one predator to undo all of that. For more on dangerous personality types and how to spot them before they can do damage to you or those you love,
Starting point is 01:02:02 Check out episode 135 with Joe Navarro here on the Jordan Harbinger show. Dark topic. I'm not sorry for ringing this to you. I think it's extremely important adults. We need to realize that this is out there and probably worse than we thought. Kids and young folks, you need to smarten up on the internet. I thought I knew a lot. I met a lot of kooky people from the internet. It's a million times worse now. Way more dangerous. Not that the internet is dangerous. You just have to be damn careful that you know what you're getting. and parents and kids talk to each other. If you're not sure about what's going on,
Starting point is 01:02:36 open up those channels of communication, just better safe than sorry. I'm going to put some apps that keep kids safe or help keep kids safe in the show notes as well, recommendations from Ryan. So those will be in there as well. Have a look for those. Also, of course, there's a discount code
Starting point is 01:02:49 for Ryan's company, pentester.com. You can get 15% off and secure your websites and companies, but more importantly, your kids. All things Ryan Montgomery will, of course, again, be in the show notes. so you can also ask the AI chatbot at Jordan Harbinger.com. Transcripts in the show notes, advertisers, deals, discount codes, ways to support the show,
Starting point is 01:03:08 all at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support this show. Our newsletter, Jordan Harbinger.com slash news, highlights and takeaways from some of the popular episodes of the show going all the way back. I reply to you when you reply to me there. Send me your snarky comments, passive aggressive, and even, dare I say, constructive feedback. Jordan Harbinger.com slash news. Don't forget about six-minute networking as well, also at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram or hit me on LinkedIn,
Starting point is 01:03:39 where all the normal people with more than two brain cells seem to be hanging out these days. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Millio Campo, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for this show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who needs to keep their kids safe online, is interested in hacking, social engineering, penetration testing,
Starting point is 01:04:09 definitely share this episode with him. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a new great podcast shouldn't be this hard, so let me save you some time. If you like the Jordan Harbinger show,
Starting point is 01:04:25 you'll probably like Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. It's one of those shows that makes you smarter in a practical, useful way. Same curiosity vibe we go for here, just in a fast-focused format. Mike brings on top experts and asks the exact questions that you'd want to ask, and the topics are all over the place in the best way. Recently, they've covered things like why we care so much what other people think, the benefits of laughter, why sports fans get so invested, and what makes people like you or not.
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Starting point is 01:05:06 itch, search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts. Look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening. You can thank me later.

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