The Megyn Kelly Show - Prince Harry Goes Woke at the UN, and Cybercrime Lessons, with Dan Wootton and Brett Johnson | Ep. 360

Episode Date: July 19, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Dan Wootton of GB News to talk about Prince Harry's "insane" speech at the United Nations about abortion and climate change, the truth about Meghan Markle and her celebrity "f...riends," how Prince Harry and Meghan Markle treat their families, the BBC's focus on racial identity, and more. Then Brett Johnson, one of the most wanted cybercriminals ever and host of The Brett Johnson Show, joins to talk about his life story, how he initially began his life of crime, the social engineering that criminals use, how he turned his life around and began fighting cybercrime, life in and out of jail, how he escaped prison, lessons for people to avoid becoming victims of cybercrime, the importance of a credit freeze and password manager, what identity theft is and how it works, whether Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency is legitimate, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. On the program today, a man once featured on the FBI's Most Wanted list. His name is Brett Johnson, and he has one of the most fascinating life stories ever told, which led him to a life of crime as a central figure in the cybercrime world for more than 20 years. He is the reason why after you file your tax returns, it takes a little while for them to upload and for you to get your refund. It's because of Brett and the work he did work, quote unquote, as a young man creating new cyber crimes no one had ever heard of before. But eventually, Brett found redemption and a life on the other side of criminality. And he's here to tell us that story.
Starting point is 00:00:57 Cannot wait to talk to you about it all. It's sort of like that movie Catch Me If You Can, you know, with Leonardo DiCaprio and that that whole story. This is going to remind you of that. But before we get to Brett, got some thought today on Prince Harry taking to the world stage to lecture us all on what terrible people we are. He's at it again. And it's absolutely absurd and worthy of a moment's pause. He's got strong thoughts on the U.S. Constitution. Didn't we fight a war to get away from British royals trying to tell us how to live? Shut up, shut up and enjoy your 17 million dollar mansion. But that's enough about my thoughts. Let's bring on Dan Wooten. He's host of GB News' Dan Wooten Tonight, which is a great program and a great network
Starting point is 00:01:42 airing in the UK. And he's also a Daily Mail columnist, well worth the read and the watch. Dan, welcome back to the show. It is so good to be here, Megan. My God, like the nerve. So just set it up first. We have a soundbite of what he said at the UN, which I'll play in a second. But, you know, why? Why is anybody at the UN calling
Starting point is 00:02:06 Prince Harry to show up and lecture us on anything other than what it's like to live in a palace? Well, even the UN didn't seem to be that into it, Megan, because he was actually speaking in front of a largely empty room, which sums it up. But the bloke is meant to be there celebrating the legacy of Nelson Mandela. And we all know what he went through. And instead, he used it to advance his woke political agenda, to attack the US Constitution, and quite shockingly, to compare the Roe v. Wade decision with the war in Ukraine. That may have been the most insane part of all. Here's a little bit for the people who didn't get the joy of hearing it the first time. Soundbite one. How many of us feel battered, helpless in the face of a seemingly endless stream of disasters and devastation? I understand. This has been a painful year in a painful decade. We're living through a pandemic that continues to ravage communities
Starting point is 00:03:13 in every corner of the globe. Climate change wreaking havoc on our planet, with the most vulnerable suffering most of all. The few weaponizing lies and disinformation at the expense of the many. And from the horrific war in Ukraine to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States, we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom. Okay. Yes. So the Ukraine war in which 5,000 civilians have been killed is the same thing as the Supreme Court reversing Roe versus Wade, which if anything is going to lead to the saving of lives of insane. What's particularly shocking to me is the way that this not only denigrates the memory of Nelson Mandela, but also the royal family,
Starting point is 00:04:16 Megan, too. And I know you're less worried about that where you are in the US, but in the UK, it's sacrosanct that the royal family stays out of politics. It's sacrosanct that they stay out of international politics. The Queen will be horrified that Prince Harry is expressing a view about Roe v. Wade publicly. And the fact that he's doing it at the United Nations, this beggars belief. And what it shows is that this is a man who no longer cares about the royal family. He no longer cares about the Queen's legacy because he will advance
Starting point is 00:04:55 a political cause come May. And you know the end goal, Megan, according to many of my royal sources, and while it seems like a wild idea, it's to get Markle in the White House one day as a Democratic president. We haven't lost our minds to that extent yet. I mean, she is the one who's been out there already touting this position.
Starting point is 00:05:18 She gave an interview, I think, in Vogue with Gloria Steinem saying her husband is a feminist, Harry's a feminist. And then his reaction to the overturning of Roe versus Wade was guttural, as if he knows anything about the U.S. Constitution or our jurisprudence on Roe versus Wade. I mean, he isn't he didn't he just call the First Amendment? He was like dumbfounded by it. He didn't know. Why would he feel the need to weigh in? Not just OK, maybe press abusing a member of the royal family.
Starting point is 00:05:49 That's something he's got deep and awful personal experience with. I can understand how he'd have a strong opinion on that. But why the hell would Prince Harry feel the need to weigh in on the U.S. Constitution, whether it's our First Amendment or the reversal of Roe versus Wade? The thing that's so ironic about all of it, Megan, is that he hates the UK. Remember, he hates the UK so much and the dastardly British tabloids drove him out of this country. Remember that? Actually, he prefers the UK when it comes down to it because our justice system provides no guaranteed constitutional
Starting point is 00:06:27 protection of freedom of the press. I can be chucked in jail if I publish something that he and a judge are not happy with. And he is using the legal process to gag the press in the UK. So it's hilarious to me that Harry went to America thinking that this was going to be the place where he would get complete freedom from any scrutiny. And in fact, he's had the shocking realization, my God, the US constitution actually protects the press, protects the media, protects journalism, and he doesn't like it. And he doesn't like it for incredibly selfish reasons, because he doesn't like it. And he doesn't like it for incredibly selfish reasons, because he doesn't want to be photographed. He doesn't want to have to deal with any scrutiny of his affairs. He wants to control the media and control the narrative.
Starting point is 00:07:14 He doesn't want to be photographed, but his wife does. We just put up the picture of nobody in the seats listening to him. But his wife, you know, at the Jubilee, you could see what she was very clear about pressing down the button that brings down her tinted window so everyone could get their shot of her sitting there next to Prince Harry and the nerve, Dan, of this couple to lecture us about climate change when they've never seen a private jet they don't want to board. The estimates are they've been on some two dozen of them over the past couple of years, including speaking of photographs, when she created a photo op out of the death of the children in Uvalde, Texas, and hopped on a private jet to get out there for her photo op so she could lay her white roses at the memorial. The only public figure to do that,
Starting point is 00:08:07 because it's not because other public figures didn't care about Uvalde. It's because they knew that it was a time for sensitivity and to not make themselves the center of the story. How did she get there? Private jet, as he's over there telling the rest of us to turn down our thermostat and not eat red meat. You couldn't make it up, could you? They are the ultimate example of do as I say, not as I do. They have a network of incredibly rich individuals, including the likes of Elton John, who loan them private jets whenever they want.
Starting point is 00:08:39 So they don't even pay for them themselves, Megan. And they don't give a damn about the environment when it comes to changing their own lives. They just want us mugs to have to go back and not take flights and live in some sort of Victorian world. To me, they are the absolute ultimate example of the elite. They are being exposed. And I think what's so good about this United Nations address now is the sense that I'm picking up, the mood that I'm picking up from the US is that people are getting, even in America, even in their adopted home, people are getting fed up with their woke, politically correct, virtue signaling nonsense.
Starting point is 00:09:19 And they actually don't even like the idea of embracing Prince Harry as an adopted American. Yeah, that's right. And did you think it was extraordinary earlier this week, Dan, when Serena Williams came out and corrected the record after Meghan Markle tried to say Serena was her friend and she'd invited Serena to the royal wedding and Serena Williams came out and said, that's not true. At best, we're acquaintances. And then reportedly, George Clooney said he didn't know the royal couple before they invited him to the wedding. They're a couple of celebrity wannabes. They're glommers who overstate their closeness to genuine sports and acting celebrities,
Starting point is 00:10:01 because what they really want is the spotlight. That's why she lowered the window. It's why she flew to Uvalde. It's why he feels competent to comment on our constitution or climate change in front of the UN to begin with. Well, let's be very clear on Meghan. Meghan, Ms. Markle doesn't have friends. She doesn't do friends. She does business contacts. That's why she had no one at her wedding who she knew from before she started. Every single one of her childhood friends, her school friends had all been ditched. She ghosts folk when she no longer needs to get something from them. So yes, absolutely. The likes of Serena Williams were not friends. Oprah was never friends. Gayle King, they were never
Starting point is 00:10:50 friends. These are contacts and they are contacts to further the career of Meghan because that is the way that she lives her life. It's a very ambitious Californian starlet. Prince Harry, on the other hand, he did have close friends, Meghan. And I think the thing that people close to Harry find particularly tragic about what's going on is that he has had his soul sucked out of him. He talks in this sort of Californian mumbo jumbo. I am told on good authority that Meghan scripts all of his public comments. So she is controlling him and And he no longer has a relationship with his family. He no longer has a relationship with his father. He no longer has a relationship with his brother. He no longer has a relationship with Kate, you know, Kate Middleton,
Starting point is 00:11:36 who once he was incredibly close with. And so what he has is Megan's mates and they're not true friends. They all want something out of them. And I actually think it's really sad. However, I'm not going to give Harry a free pass because he has signed up to this. And some of that is evident in another part of his speech where you can hear him do exactly what you just said. He sort of slips into this language of the super woke. I thought I'm going to play it a second, but I thought it was interesting because there's a report. There's a book coming out called Revenge by Tom Bauer. I'm sure you know this is coming. And this guy
Starting point is 00:12:14 claims to have the inside scoop on the whole Megxit and so on. But one of the things that he is going to be reporting, the book is set to be released in a day or two july 21st is how um uh wait i'm just want to make sure that it's his i think this is from his in any event the new york post was reporting this and i think it was based on his book uh that that harry's friends from eaton college when they first met megan yeah it is uh wereified. They thought he was effing nuts for dating her because when she showed up to their big rendezvous, they were engaging in banter and jokes and drinking. And she was reportedly running around challenging every guest whose conversation contravened her values without hesitation. Nobody was exempt from being chastised for the slightest inappropriate remark. So they said she lacked any sense of humor.
Starting point is 00:13:09 She was a damper on the party. And the friends, when it was over, were saying, oh, my, what is he doing? So flash forward, that's 2016, six years, 2022, and listen to Harry before the UN. But the right thing to do is not up for debate. And neither is the science. The only question is whether we will be brave enough and wise enough to do what is necessary. Heed the advice Mandela once gave his son to never give up the battle even in the darkest hour. And find hope, I see it,
Starting point is 00:13:47 in the newest generation of activists for equality and justice, who are mobilising people of all ages and races, all faiths and walks of life, to lace up their shoes and join the march. Thoughts on that? It's just meaningless, isn't it's absolutely meaningless it is the language of woke and when you break it down it doesn't equate to a single thing and i think we are sick of being preached to by prince harry when we know how he treats the folk around him we are certainly
Starting point is 00:14:23 sick of being preached to by Meghan, given that you talk about Uvalde, Meghan, and the thing you didn't mention is the fact that when she did make that sick publicity stunt visit, apparently followed by her Netflix cameras, her father, Thomas Markle, a man who I know very well, lay in hospital just an hour's drive or a couple of hours drive from her home in Montecito, having suffered from a serious stroke. And she chose to make that visit, that sick visit to Uvalde, rather than going to be by the bedside of her father. And let me tell you, Megan, at that point, it was touch and go as to whether Thomas Markle was going to survive his stroke. And I think that sums up the type of person Megan is. So why are we being lectured to about the way that we should live by two human beings who actually treat the folk around them so terribly?
Starting point is 00:15:20 And that's something else that has really emerged from Tom Bauer's book. And I'll tell you, Megan, Tom Bauer, I know him well. He's actually going to be on my show later this week talking about this book. And he is one of the world's best biographers. You know, he has gone for Boris Johnson in the past. He's gone for Simon Cowell in the past. He's gone for Bernie Eccleston in the past. This guy does his research.
Starting point is 00:15:39 He spoke to everyone who knew Megan in the years before she was famous and the years she was on Spooge and then the years that she entered the royal family. And it's damning about her. And one of the things that is most damning is the way that she tramples over the little guys to get to the top. And I remember speaking to one of the directors of a film that Megan had been in, and he said exactly the same thing to me. She was demanding. She wanted bigger and better hotel suites than the £1,500 a night hotel suite she was already staying in. And I think this couple have now been exposed, which is one of the reasons that there hasn't really been any positive hype around this UN appearance, we're all just looking at it and thinking, why did the UN ever allow them to be there? Why did Nelson Mandela choose such a divisive couple to represent this amazing man?
Starting point is 00:16:36 One of the things about Meghan Markle is she speaks the same way he does. So it makes sense she writes his speeches, if that's true. That's what I've been told anyway. I've been told she writes them all. And he's not the sharpest tool in the shed. You have to remember that. Intellectually, he is not one of the brightest guys. So I absolutely believe that he is manipulated by Meghan
Starting point is 00:17:00 and his political views certainly, Meghan, come from her. Because remember, this was a bloke who was in the army. You know, he used to love reading the Sun newspaper where I used to work. And the Sun, remember, had the page three girls, Megan, where, you know, which was the topless woman. You'd open up the newspaper and you'd see the topless girl on page three.
Starting point is 00:17:19 And he was into that sort of lifestyle. He was the opposite of woke. And so he has been manipulated he has signed up to this ideology as a result of oh yeah now he's a feminist with a guttural reaction to roe being overturned and this is her listen to her and her drivel in this vogue article that she did with um gloria steinem this is her bFF now, who she was spotted with after the U.N. trip, by the way. So this is Markle in vogue. Men need to be vocal in this moment.
Starting point is 00:17:51 She goes on to say, we have to do the work. Oh, my God, I threw up in my mouth. We have to do the work. This moment requires unity, really listening to people, understanding the Constitution was written at a time when women were second-class citizens. We're not. We're not. Certain things need to change. I think it's equally about honoring the people who've been doing the work long before us, like Gloria and so on and so forth. My God, this is straight out of like Yale law school after class coffees where we need to do the work. We're not second class. My God, Dan, like this couple and the
Starting point is 00:18:34 hubris that they think with absolutely no meaningful life experience, they have any sort of wisdom to offer us on the Constitution, on climate change or how the rest of us should live and that's not even to speak of the dynamic of somebody like harry with his life of privilege trying to stand up there and deprivilify the the world i know you couldn't make it up and i think this is one of the reasons though megan that he is so dangerous to the royal family and why there is still so much concern amongst the corridors at Buckingham Palace and Clarence House, where Prince Charles is based in Kensington Palace, where Prince William is based, because where does this logically end? If you just think it through, there's no way that Harry and Meghan with this woke philosophy can sign up to the concept of
Starting point is 00:19:28 the monarchy. Because if you're awoken, if you genuinely believe in this sort of socialist hellscape that they seem to want us to enter into, there's no monarchy as part of that. So even though I think what he's saying is totally ridiculous, doesn't stack up at all to the way they live their life, it's going to be fascinating to see over the next few years. And obviously, Megan, you won't hear this while the Queen is still on planet Earth because he knows that it would be incredibly disrespectful to speak out and come out against the concept of monarchy when his grandmother was still alive. But I just wonder, I just wonder if in the years to come,
Starting point is 00:20:12 this woke virtue signaling is actually going to become a campaign for Britain to become a republic from Prince Harry and Prince Meghan. When you just think, and Princess Meghan, when you think about that and you think about what that means, I just find it completely fascinating. And that is why, despite the fact that this speech can so easily be mocked and their virtue signaling can so easily be torn down, because as you've just proven, Megan, it is a bunch of mumbo jumbo nonsense. They are a threat. They remain a very real threat to the future of the monarchy. Yeah, everything they say right now is just an air sandwich you know you're just waiting for anything to resonate and it never does um but on that bauer book he seems to be i don't know you tell me
Starting point is 00:20:57 what's happening because you have at the same time uh the palace refusing to release the report on her bullying right there was a report an internal report on her bullying, right? There was a report, an internal report on her bullying the staff. And it seemed like they didn't want to poke the bear by making it public. But at the same time, Bauer's coming out with his book, and he's clearly had access to some people close to the royal family because they're talking about how the queen didn't want Meghan at Prince Philip's funeral, about how she was the one who desperately wanted them to be on the balcony for the Jubilee, and Charles vetoed it. And Harry asked specifically if he tried to make it happen because Meghan wanted it.
Starting point is 00:21:38 But Prince Charles said no, and that they were both furious after their Jubilee plans were blocked, of course, because they wanted to be on camera. So what's happening? What's the palace doing here? The machinations were absolutely fascinating. I think it backs up what I've just said. The palace are terrified of this couple because if that report into Megan's treatment of staff
Starting point is 00:22:01 and remember the accusations of bullying are widespread. Megan, this is not one or two staff members. It is far more than that. I spoke to a lot of folk who worked for Megan over the course of her time in the Royal Family, and she treated people atrociously, to the point, Megan, where it was actually Kate, Kate Middleton, who approached Megan Markle one day and said to her, I'm sorry, you can't speak
Starting point is 00:22:28 to my staff like this. This is not how we do things in the royal family. We have respect for people because Meghan was basically treating them as if they were Hollywood servants of hers. And that's not the relationship that the royal family have with their staff. It's a very different setup. And it's a setup that is based on huge respect because you don't get paid a lot to work for the royal family. You don't get paid a lot, but you are part of the family and you live within the grounds of the royal palaces. So it's a very different setup to what Meghan was expecting, where she thought she could just boss these people around. And look, there are people who have been in tears constantly because of the treatment that Meghan provided them
Starting point is 00:23:10 when she was in the royal family. And these are the people, by the way, who she claims were bullying her to the point of suicidal feelings. Well, come on, come on, pull the other one, as if. But what's so telling is that Buckingham Palace, in their attempt to try and smooth relations between Harry, Meghan and the rest of the family have said that report will never be released my goodness if someone has that report please god leak it to me because I think
Starting point is 00:23:38 the world needs to know but Harry is so delighted and Meghan is so delighted because you know her ambitions for a political career Meghan look we can laugh about it because clearly it does seem like a delusion. But it is a delusion that she is pursuing. And it would almost be killed off from the start, wouldn't it, if there was the official release of a Buckingham Palace independent legal report saying she was a big bully. So from Harry and Meghan's point of view, they've almost threatened the royal family for the past two years. And because the royal family have been so shaken and stirred by what they said in the Oprah interview, the accusations of racism, you might remember the royal tour that Prince William and Kate made to the Caribbean earlier this year in Jamaica. It was a disaster.
Starting point is 00:24:25 It was a complete disaster because all of these folk in the Caribbean, these young folk in the Caribbean think, oh, my goodness, the royal family is racist. Well, where does that come from, Megan? It comes from the Oprah interview where Megan made these false claims about racism in the royal family, and I am happy to say that they are false based on my reporting. And so what they've done is successfully threatened the royal family. And I am happy to say that they are false based on my reporting. And so what I've done is successfully threatened the royal family enough, the men in gray suits, as Harry and Meghan like to refer to them. And what it means is that this report will remain forever buried. Until her opponent gets his or her hands on it, if and when she actually does try to run,
Starting point is 00:25:03 somehow somebody will get it. All right. Two questions for you are related to this whole discussion on wokeism and on climate change. They're two big issues. The the UK presenters, which is how we refer to the news anchors over there, seem to be having a meltdown, pardon the pun, on the temperature. It's very hot in the UK right now. It's very hot in the Midwest. It's hot in New York City. And of course, they parlay this into catastrophic climate change. It's here. And even back home here for us, the president is talking now about a possible emergency action on climate change that he's going to try to do again, like pen and phone, like what we saw with Obama at a time when there's very little he can do without adding to our
Starting point is 00:25:51 rising gas prices, which are already at near record levels and so on. So why is there so much? I don't know, just fanning oneself both physically and metaphorically over what are high temperatures. It's like 99, 101 Fahrenheit. What's happening? The mainstream media have been absolutely appalling in this country, Megan. I think they are using a 48-hour heat wave. This is 48 hours of high temperatures. Yes, they are record temperatures. But in 1976, there was a famous heat wave in Britain where there were plus 30 degrees Celsius temperatures for 16 days in a row.
Starting point is 00:26:29 This is two days, but it is immediately being used by the health establishment to try and say there should be a ban on air conditioning so that we can pursue net zero quicker. There should be limitations on the hours that people are allowed to work. There should be new human resources laws brought in so that businesses can no longer operate if the temperature reaches over 25 degrees Celsius. And to me, this is all part of the march from the socialist health establishment that we saw gain a lot of power during the COVID-19 pandemic to control us, to dictate the way that we live. And I've been really disturbed actually to see even a conservative government minister come out this week and say, stay at home if you need to, because of the heat. And the media are reporting there are going to be thousands of deaths because
Starting point is 00:27:25 of this two-day heat. Number one, complete rubbish. I mean, that is not true. Less than a thousand people die of extreme heat in the UK each year. So that's the first thing. Number two, there's absolutely no reason why young and healthy people cannot be operating in these temperatures. Sure, if you are older or if you're vulnerable, absolutely we must. But this is a really worrying march towards the nanny state here in the UK. The health establishment have control. The green zealots have control. The net zero agenda is on the march. And the media. I've actually described it, Megan, in a column I wrote for the Mail Online yesterday. It's fair porn because they are just loving it. And I actually think they got addicted to a climate of fear over the course of the COVID
Starting point is 00:28:16 pandemic, didn't they? They want to terrify us. They feel it's their job and it's good for ratings. And for me, I am calling it out. Look, I don't like this extreme heat. It's pretty difficult in London getting about. But come on, I'm in the office. It's absolutely fine.
Starting point is 00:28:35 I'm not stopping anything that I'm doing. I'm still walking about. And the hysteria is basically being used, I believe, to create a nation of people who live in fear. And this is Britain, Megan. This is the Winston Churchill stiff upper lip. We fight on, we keep calm and carry on. And what has happened to that World War II approach to life, which really did define the 20th century in the UK, it feels like it's long gone. And that is a real shame. Now you're stuck with Prince Harry. Well, more accurately, we're stuck with him. Thanks, Dan. Yeah, you are. Wait, one last question. Speaking of the woke-ism piece of this,
Starting point is 00:29:20 there's some BBC presenter. I do not know how to pronounce her name the last name is barbara uh the one who commented on the women's soccer team how do you pronounce her name ailey barbara she is a scottish tv presenter and i couldn't believe it all right so he so fyi the women's soccer team did very well. There was a record-breaking victory against Norway during the Women's Euro 2022. And Ms. Barber, the BBC presenter, went on the air to talk about this amazing victory and had this to say. Watch. An historic eight-goal victory for England last night as the Lionesses secured their place in the quarterfinals. this to say. Watch. Dan, how inappropriate. And by the the way apparently not even accurate
Starting point is 00:30:26 no there were three non-white members of the team they just hadn't made the squad on that particular day and then the BBC followed this up Megan with a full-on investigation and how shocking it was that this team is all white and what it's doing to role models for sports in the UK. Problem is, Megan, there's no issue with diversity in football. The Lionesses, that's what we call our female football team here and they're very popular, have had a black manager for longer than any other manager.
Starting point is 00:31:02 Most of the most famous star players in that team have been black. So what is the BBC saying? What is the BBC suggesting with this? That there should now be racial quotas when it comes to football, that a coach should start thinking about the ethnic makeup of a team when selecting who's going to go on the pitch on a particular day. And it's very interesting, Megan, because the BBC never has a problem when some of our brilliant athletic teams,
Starting point is 00:31:26 for example, that do very well in the relay races at the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games happen to be all black. So what's so despicable about this BBC coverage? Because look, the BBC, they claim to be an organisation that loves Britain. If you look at the BBC closely, they despise Britain, actually. They want to bring Britain down. And to me, that was the coverage during the Euros final, when they should have been tub-thumping for our team. They should have been saying, oh my goodness, this team just thrashed their opposition by a record margin in the last game. It was 8-0, by the way, Megan, I'm not a big soccer fan but you know I'm told
Starting point is 00:32:05 reliably informed that's a record and instead of doing that instead of being patriotic instead of supporting this team they felt like they had to denigrate them because of the ethnic makeup and it to me sums up what's wrong with the media in this country it's racist it actually is point blank racist and it's why people are turning off the BBC and their drives. Because can you believe it, Megan? I mean, I know you've got PBS in the States, but can you believe we have to spend £159 every single year just in order to turn on the television and that funds the BBC. And the BBC competes against media organisations like the one that I work for, GB News,
Starting point is 00:32:48 and they have literally billions of pounds pumped into it because we have to force facts. Even if I never watch one minute of the BBC for an entire year, because I have a television set and I want to turn on another television channel I still have to pay what is effectively a poll tax for the BBC and the BBC doesn't represent me it increasingly doesn't represent millions of other Brits who are just furious with examples of broadcasting like that and also the fact Megan that actually I don't call it the BBC these days, I call it the Boris-bashing corporation
Starting point is 00:33:25 because the BBC was on a nine-month campaign to depose the democratically elected prime minister of this country, Boris Johnson, and as you know, they succeeded. They did it, yeah. I mean, back here, one of our conservative commentators, Victor Davis Hanson, has been saying, okay, you want perfect parity in sports?
Starting point is 00:33:44 Let's do the NBA. How about that? Let's make sure we have adequate representation of white guys, Jewish guys, Indian guys. Let's let's do it. You know, yeah, sure. Forget merit. You know, it doesn't matter who's the best. Let's make sure it's just this perfect. Let's get trans men in there. Let's make sure we got every group covered and see how the super woke feel then. Or I've been talking about sports. We mentioned Serena Williams. Great. Let's get trans men or trans women, I should say, which is biological men playing professional tennis against Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka and all the favorite women, you know, sort of fierce female warriors that are celebrated. See how you like it then. On your perfect parody. See how that goes. Okay.
Starting point is 00:34:25 Of course. This is the way they believe that we should be living though, because the BBC in that package that followed the clip that you played interviewed young campaigners who said a sports person can only be a role model if we see ourselves in the particular sports people. What utter baloney. I mean, I think the biggest sports people in the world in history. Who are they in my head?
Starting point is 00:34:52 Tiger Woods, Simone Biles, Serena Williams, Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson. Oh, I can't see myself in them. It doesn't matter. It does not matter. They are the best and most exciting sports people of all time. I don't give a damn about their color. And for me, this path that we are teaching young people that they have to be able to see themselves in their role model is just so scary. It's terrifying because what does that say about the future segregation of society and actually where we are going to end up with issues like quotas or sports team managers being
Starting point is 00:35:35 absolutely terrified about picking the best people for the team because they're going to be accused of racism by organisations like the BBC. And I just have to say one other hilarious thing, Megan, just very quickly, because I then researched the BBC's first 11, because you know, there's a first 11 when it comes to the football team, you know, you've got your 11 people on the pitch and the BBC just on the same day that they broadcast that had released their rich list. They have to reveal their top paid staff members. Guess what, Megan? Their top 11 presenters, every single one of them, white. And you don't see the BBC investigating that disparity, do you? BBC so white, coming soon. Dan, such a pleasure. Don't forget, Dan's on GB News. If you happen to be in the UK and see it, you should check it out.
Starting point is 00:36:26 Go check it out online as well. I constantly update my website and I follow them on Twitter. And it's well worth it. And you'll hear different voices on some of the favorite issues that you hear on this program that wouldn't be highlighted anyplace here domestically. So you'll love it. And Dan's the best. Great to see you, my friend.
Starting point is 00:36:43 Thank you, Megan. Speak soon. Okay, coming up, one of the most infamous cyber criminals. Now he's working as a good guy ever. Don't miss him. Our next guest is infamous in the world of cybercrime, known by the Secret Service as the original Internet godfather, the OG. His life of crime began at 10 years old, and he went on to create the first organized cybercrime community called Shadow Crew. He once escaped from prison and landed himself on the U.S. most wanted list. How about that? After going on a cross-country crime spree,
Starting point is 00:37:26 stealing over 400,000 from ATMs. How does one do that? In total, he served seven and a half years in prison, including eight months in solitary confinement. But he is now a changed man and has crossed over to the other side. He's a security consultant and a public speaker and consult with Fortune 500 companies
Starting point is 00:37:47 and law enforcement, places like the FBI, to help protect them and us from the kind of criminal he once was. In addition to telling his fascinating story, he will also share how we can best protect ourselves from criminals like the one he used to be. I'd love to welcome Brett Johnson to the show. Brett, thank you so much for being here. Megan, I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.
Starting point is 00:38:09 I love your story. I mean, it's like it's full of all sorts of fun color. I mean, I get it. It's fun to listen to, not to live. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, now that you've crossed over, we can have a laugh about it and learn from it, which is a story of redemption. And I love redemption stories. So take us back. I grew up in Kentucky, right? It was in Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky. It was Eastern Kentucky. I grew up in Hazard, Kentucky, right in the heart of coal country. My mom was basically the fraudster of the entire industry there. At one point, she steals a 108,000 pound Caterpillar D9 bulldo there. At one point, she steals a 108,000 pound Caterpillar D9 bulldozer. At another point, she takes a slip and fall in a convenience store. That's mom. We had a neighbor that she acted as a pimp for. That's my mother.
Starting point is 00:38:56 It wasn't just my mom that was like that. It was that entire side of the family was involved in some sort of scams or hustles, frauds, whatever you want to call it. I didn't really know that until I got to be about 10 years old. My dad was a helicopter pilot captain in the U.S. Army. His problem was, is he loved my mom so much that he became the enabler. If she wanted to commit a crime, he would co-sign on to it. If she wanted to abuse someone, he wouldn't step in the way. And she wasn't a very abusive parent. I remember with him, she used to bring men home in front of him. He would sit there and literally cry, beg her not to do it. She'd do it anyway. She finally leaves the man. We were in Panama City, Florida at that point in time. We moved
Starting point is 00:39:40 from Panama City back to Hazard, Kentucky. And my mom was one of these people that she liked to party. And if we were lucky, she would take me. I was 10. My sister Denise was nine. She'd take us with her. She'd leave us in the car. Sometimes we'd wait in the living room as she adjourned to the bedroom. Most of the time, she just left us at home. And the way I committed my first crime, my mom was gone for a few days. I'm the kid that I get the worst parts from my mom and my dad. From my mom, I get that criminal mindset. From my father, I get that fear of being abandoned, of the people that I love leaving. So mom had been gone for a few days. I'd post up at the door, kind of look outside, see if she's coming home. Sometimes I'd walk out into the driveway, see if she's driving down the street. Denise, my sister at nine years old, she wasn't like that.
Starting point is 00:40:27 My sister was just the child who was angry all the time. So we didn't have any food in the house. Denise walks in one day and she's got this pack of pork chops in her hand. And I'm like, where'd you get that? And she's like, I stole it. I'm like, show me how you did that. So she takes me over, shows me how she's shoplifting food. And I'm like, best idea ever.
Starting point is 00:40:47 Let's do that. So we start stealing food. Look across the way. There's a Kmart over there. Kmart's got clothes and books and jewelry and toys and everything. So start taking that. Mom comes home, sees all the stolen stuff we've gotten. Ask where it came from.
Starting point is 00:41:03 I'm 10 years old. I stand up. We found it. She's like, no, you didn't find that. My gotten, asks where it came from. I'm 10 years old. I stand up. We found it. She's like, no, you didn't find that. My sister, Denise, she's nine, nine years old, and she never lies at all about it. She stands up. We stole it. My mom looks at my sister. Show me how you did that. And she joins us. Not only does she join us, but she goes to get her mother to join us as well. We become the center generational shoplifting ring in Eastern Kentucky. And that's, that's the first crime I really committed right there. And I,
Starting point is 00:41:30 and I like, I like people to know that I don't blame my childhood on my choices as an adult, because that's not the truth. My choices as an adult are mine. When you're a child, you can't help that. You have to do what the adults in your circle do. But once you become an adult, I made the active decision to victimize other people and commit crimes. My sister had the exact same upbringing that I did, other than that one shoplifting experience. She doesn't break the law again. She goes off to be a great teacher, a parent, just a good citizen overall. I'm the guy that kept on going. And as I kept going,
Starting point is 00:42:05 I got more involved in the types of crimes that my mother and that entire side of the family committed. So we're talking insurance fraud, charity fraud, faking accidents, burglaries, drug trafficking, illegally mining coal, you name it, until I finally branched off on my own. That's a fascinating backstory. And I thank you for sharing that because you make a good point about the distinction between you and Denise. But it's also true that that moral imprint was made on you by your mom, by your parents. I mean, that's just, there's no denying your parents have some influence. You know, the children come into the world and there's some predetermined behaviors for sure. We all know that if we have kids, there's like the energetic one and the one
Starting point is 00:42:47 who's more lazy and so on, but the parents have the opportunity to make a moral imprint. So I'm not saying it's not your fault or I'm trying to give you an excuse, but there's no question that behavior by your mom had an impact, could have gone another way maybe, but it had an impact. Well, you know, it certainly laid the path if I chose to make those decisions later on. And that's one of the things that even today I struggle with because I want to accept responsibility and I'm adamant about my choices being my choices. I believe that we have to do that. But certainly there is that influence in the past. For example, my cousin just died the day before yesterday.
Starting point is 00:43:26 And we grew up together. Five of us boys grew up together. And all five of us suffered some sort of damage from our environments. And it's hard to dismiss that. You're absolutely right. It's hard to dismiss that. I think that ultimately we have the decision whether we let our environments control us or we accept responsibility and control ourselves. And you eventually got there maybe a little later than Denise, but you eventually got the
Starting point is 00:43:56 white hat going instead of the black hat hacking. So let's talk about the beginnings of that. Let's talk about it. This is fascinating to me because my husband in another life, now he's a writer, an author. But he when we met, he was running an Internet security firm. And they used to have guys who had who are from Russia or Ukraine working for them because they had had, you know, sort of the black hat tactics that my husband's firm wanted to learn from and help people protect against. And you you are one of the pioneers, Brett. It's funny because when I was reading up on you and it was like your list of crimes and the things that you had broken ground on criminally,
Starting point is 00:44:31 it read like a resume, you know, like almost like you were proud, but it didn't come from you. It was just funny the way it was listed. Like first person to ever think of, you know, this phishing scheme or what was it? So as I understand it, the very first crime happened, what,
Starting point is 00:44:44 when you were around 15 and that was a violent crime, but it it, the very first crime happened, what, when you were around 15, and that was a violent crime, but it would kind of set you off on a path of criminality and ostracization that would foster more criminality. So when was the first cyber crime, right? And how old are you? So just so we know like what year we're talking about when you started to figure out cyber at all. Sure. So I'm now 52. And really when I first started into internet crime was 94, 95, somewhere around there, probably right at the advent of the internet. Right. So first internet crime, I got married and I faked a car accident to, to get the money to get married. We moved from Hazard, Kentucky to Lexington. Exactly. So moved from Hazard, Kentucky to Lexington, Kentucky.
Starting point is 00:45:25 Exactly. So I moved from Hazard, Kentucky to Lexington, Kentucky to go to university. I was majoring in English Lit and theater. And like I said, I get the worst parts from my mom and my dad, my dad, that fear of being abandoned. So here I am. I've never been able to show love in some sort of healthy way in a relationship. I'm still learning how to do that at 52 years old. Back then, it was, hey, don't worry about working. I've got it. Well, don't worry about the cooking and cleaning. You worry about going to school. I'll do the rest of it. So here I am with a 60-hour-a-week job, 18-hour class load, all the cooking, all the cleaning, something had to give. What gave was the job. And well, you've got to eat. And with that proclivity of fraud that I've already got
Starting point is 00:46:09 established. So I was doing little scams and hustles around the Lexington area. And finally, I found eBay and I liked eBay a lot. Didn't really know how to make money on eBay, but fortunately Bill O'Reilly was around and he was giving me a lot of inspiration on Inside Edition at that point in time. He was talking about this show. They were doing a show on Beanie Babies, and Beanie Babies were the high-dollar collectible back then. The one they were profiling was Peanut's Royal Blue Elephant. So I was watching. It was selling for $1,500 on eBay.
Starting point is 00:46:41 So I was sitting there watching, and I was like, man, I need to find me a peanut. So I skipped class the next day, went around all the Hallmark stores looking for the damn animal. Couldn't find it. Figured out pretty quickly. Well, idiot, he's on eBay for $1,500. But they had these little gray beanie baby elephants for $8. So you buy a gray beanie baby elephant for $8. Stop by Kroger on the way home. Pick up a pack of blue Rit dye, go home, try to dye the little guy.
Starting point is 00:47:09 Turns out they're made out of polyester. They don't hold dye very well. Get them out of the bath. Look like they've got the mange. But I ripped a lady off of $1,500 and found a picture of a real one online, posted it. She thought I had the real thing. She wins the bid. As soon as she wins the
Starting point is 00:47:25 bid, this is where social engineering kicks in. And social engineering is one of these necessities of successfully committing cybercrime. Forgive me for jumping in, but I love the social engineering piece of it. And it's probably one of the most important things we'll discuss. So I don't want to squeeze it in before the break. I want to pause, squeeze in a break here. When we come back, we'll talk about the beginnings of your understanding of that. It's what made you such an effective criminal and it's what makes the rest of us quite vulnerable. Brett's got all you need to know. You were talking about how all your bad decisions started with Bill O'Reilly, which is a story many of us, many of us get. No, just kidding just kidding just kidding i figured you could relate
Starting point is 00:48:06 you know you know the beanie babies i understand but there was inside edition days talking about beanie baby so you decided if i can get 1500 for a blue beanie baby i will make a blue beanie baby with fake dye and a gray beanie baby sold it for 1500 bucks and what happened did the lady sue you like what happened at that point it falls apart, doesn't the angry customer get somebody involved? Well, what happens is, as I was saying, social engineering kicks in. What I've noticed now that I'm on the good guy side of things is that more experienced cyber criminals, the real experts in that arena, they become social engineers as children, like I did, in order to survive my environment. As auding, I didn't want to be on the defensive. I wanted to put her on the defensive. So she wins the bid for this fake animal. As soon as she wins
Starting point is 00:49:11 the bid, I send her an email. And my email basically says, hey, congratulations. I'm glad you won. By the way, we've never done any business before. I really don't know if I can trust you. What I need you to do is go down to the U.S. Postal Service, pick up a couple of money orders totaling $1,500. Send those to me. Those are issued by the United States government. They protect us both. Send those to me. As soon as I get those, I'll send you your animal. She believed that. So she sends me the money orders. I cash them out. I send her this creature in the mail. I immediately get a phone call. The phone call was basically, hey, I didn't order this. My response was, lady, you ordered a blue elephant. I sent you a blue-ish elephant. And right there is the first lesson of cybercrime that most criminals learn. And that lesson is,
Starting point is 00:50:00 if you delay a victim long enough, you just keep putting them off, a lot of them get so exasperated, they throw their hands in the air, walk away, and you don't hear from them again. And none of them complain to law enforcement. Now, there's several reasons why they don't. They don't know who to complain to. There's jurisdictional problems. We've got 7,500 security companies and a lot of the media that tell people that, hey, these people are hackers. They're computer geniuses. You can't find these people. So because of all that rolled in together, a lot of the victims never complain or file a police report. So you were able to walk away from that crime. That's the first online crime. This happened in my own history, both when it comes to cyber attempts at crime and actual
Starting point is 00:50:43 theft of my purse out of my law firm office one time. And I went down to file a report. They sold three thousand bucks for my accounts. And the cops just told me, honestly, yeah, we don't even investigate it. It's less than ten thousand. Oh, right. I guess we won't be finding you guys. You know, you say that, but when I was running Shadow Crew, we were aware of the cities that we were operating in, what the dollar amounts were for that to gain federal interest.
Starting point is 00:51:09 And we always tried to stay under those dollar amounts. So that is something that does matter, that dollar amount. It absolutely matters. You know, you take a lot of a lot of cities, federal investigations, you have to hit a million dollar mark for the feds to even pick it up and be interested in it. And that's that's unfortunate at best. Unfortunately, that's one of the things my husband told me that at his firm, they would see that like the Russians in particular would get into all these people's accounts and they would just steal one dollar a month.
Starting point is 00:51:36 And, you know, you wouldn't even know you'd have no idea unless you really pour over that bank statement that one dollar a month was being stolen and going out to some weird account. So clever, right? It's like you'd notice $1,000, but $1 now. Right. And same thing with, you see a lot of fraudsters that do recurring billing. So you'll have like a $4.99 charge on there every single month. And a lot of people don't even notice that because how many streaming services are we paying for? So it just kind of gets mixed in with there. And because of that, some of these billing, these illegal things that they last for months, maybe years, a couple, for a few of them.
Starting point is 00:52:12 So I ripped this lady off. Yeah. And then there was a period where, right, because we're going to get to Shadow Crew, which was the big sort of cyber crime organization that you and two other guys really kind of formed that changed the way cyber crime is done. Again, I'm talking about it like it's good, but people know it's not good, but it's interesting. Anyway, so there was the silver coin crime. That one's kind of sad, Brett.
Starting point is 00:52:39 Yeah, it is. There was this lady on eBay, and it was not even when I began my career as a cyber criminal. It was during the last days, but I got to the point where I was running counterfeit cashier's checks. I was looking for victims on eBay that were selling bullion, coin collections, watches, diamonds, stuff like that. And I would engineer them or con them into sending me the item as a cod collect on delivery so that way you know the driver would hand me the package i'd hand them a counterfeit cashier's check this lady was selling a coin collection she was a single parent selling a coin collection to put a roof on her house for her and her kids and And I stole that from her. Um, just one of the, uh, one of the many, many despicable acts that I did. Um, you know, I can't, there's no justification for that.
Starting point is 00:53:36 How do you make peace with that now, now that you're on the other side and you take responsibility for it and you've served your time, do you ever like try to track down these people and try to cut them a check? You know what I mean? Is there, is there any. So I am making restitution. I think this lady did get her, her, you know, she was paid back. I'm not part of my plea agreement was I'm not allowed to do any freedom of information requests, track down these people, anything else like that. But I do have restitution.
Starting point is 00:54:02 I'm making that making amends there. I don't believe that you can make amends for those types of acts. I don't think that I don't ask for forgiveness. I don't expect forgiveness. I don't, I can't forgive myself for it. So, um, I just don't think you can make amends. What I, what I try to do is I try to make sure that my decisions now are decisions that help people and not hurt people because I had a lifetime of just criminal acts and, you know, I victimized everyone. I lied to friends, family members, people I knew, people I didn't know. I hurt people I knew, people I didn't know. Just a very, very despicable life. But it seems like one of those things where it might be a little easier to be a serial criminal
Starting point is 00:54:54 in this department versus face to face on the street with a stick up. You know, it's like, you don't have to see the faces of most of the people. It's like usually the credit card companies will, you know, they're the ones who will take the fall. You know, it's not always the individual who you're stealing from. I can see how the mindset would allow you around those moralities of it. You know, like it's not as bad. That's one of the that is one of the easy things about cybercrime, online crime. You don't have to see the consequences of your actions. And you can lie to yourself.
Starting point is 00:55:30 You can tell yourself, you just said it a second ago. You can say, well, the credit card companies pay for that. Well, no, not really. So what happens is if you're committing online credit card fraud and I'm hitting, say, a camera store, what happens is, yes, I'm using a stolen credit card to do that, but because that transaction is online, it's a card not present transaction. Because of that, the credit card company doesn't pay for that. The camera merchant pays for that. They're the ones paying out of pocket for that. And some of these stores only operate on a 2% margin. So they get hit with a bunch of credit card fraud or return fraud or something
Starting point is 00:56:05 like that. They're potentially out of business. So it's doing an online crime as a criminal. You don't have to see the consequences of that action. And it's very easy to compartmentalize. You can say, and I'm no different. I said the exact same thing. I said, Hey, you know, it's the banks that are paying for it. It's the credit card companies that are paying for it. That's not true. I also said, well, you know, I'm, I'm just on online. I'm a bad guy in the real world. I'm a really good guy. Well, that's a lie as well. So it's, it's very easy to justify those actions, not see the, uh, the damage that you're doing to individuals and to, you know, walk away feeling better than you would if you had to do it in front of somebody to their face.
Starting point is 00:56:48 Well, so back in the midst of it, you form this group that would become known as Shadow Crew. And this is a group where this is what my packet says. Shadow Crew was formed as a domain for chats, info and forums for hacking tricks, fraud, scams, virus development, and phishing. And they say one of the first things taught at Shadow Crew was that the first crime committed should be identity theft. So this may sound pretty basic, but what is identity theft exactly? And why was it so important at Shadow Crew? Ah, you see, that's a good question. To answer that, you've got to answer what is identity. So back in the day, before the internet, the identity was your social security social. It's your date of birth. It's your address history.
Starting point is 00:57:45 It's who you associate with. It's the sites that you visit, what you buy, what you like or don't like online. It's it's your biometrics. It's the way that you hold your phone. It's the way that you type on your phone. It's all these things rolled in together is your identity. So identity theft, if you're doing it online, can be the spoofing or the stealing of any of that data or biometrics or anything else that happens in order to gain access to a target website or to commit some sort of fraud or crime. The reason I say it like that is I don't always need someone's social security number in order to take over an account. Sometimes it helps, but I don't necessarily need that.
Starting point is 00:58:32 Sometimes I just need your password and login, or sometimes I just need your biometrics from your cell phone, something like that will allow me to access an account, pretend that I'm you on that service, and then defraud that service in your name. So that's what we're talking about with identity theft. ShadowCrew, you're absolutely right. Let's talk about the company that you might do. How would you do it? Because typically I still need to enter my numbers if I'm going to use my Amex. What website would you try to exploit using my biometrics data?
Starting point is 00:59:06 Let's talk about, let me try to pick one that won't be really pissed off at me. I talk about them. Hypothetical, hypothetical. Hypothetical, she says. Okay, so let's talk about fintech companies. We'll just talk about fintech companies as a whole. That can be PayPal. It can be cashing out.
Starting point is 00:59:27 Anything else. All right. What I would do is typically you can go on the dark web or one of these criminal marketplaces. You can buy someone's credentials. So their password and login. All right. I go and I sign into that account. Now, once I sign into that account, depending on the security of that website, sometimes the only thing I need to be able to do some sort of action
Starting point is 00:59:54 is just the credentials. All right. So your password and login. Once I sign in, if the website has very low security, I can go in there and start doing whatever I want to do, send money out, maybe change the billing address to order replacement cards, whatever I need to do at that point. If the security is more advanced, I may need to spoof the browser fingerprint of your cell phone. So what am I talking about there? So when you visit a website, that website typically captures about 42 different unique characteristics of your cell phone. It captures the cell phone, the IMEI, it captures the browser type, the Java type, the language, the date, the time, all these different characteristics.
Starting point is 01:00:39 It's enough, those 42 unique things can potentially identify one specific person out of millions of different users on that one website. So what I can do is I can use your password login, your credentials, and spoof the browser fingerprint. And sometimes that's enough to trick that website into thinking that I'm you. And at that point, I can start changing information, sending money out, whatever I need to at that point in time. All right. Sometimes it goes a little bit further than that. Sometimes I'll need the, if they've got even better security, sometimes I'll need the password and login, maybe the browser fingerprint. And then I'll also need an IP that matches the geographic or the zip code area that you are actually in. So what I'll need to do at that point is buy a SOX5 proxy.
Starting point is 01:01:32 So what happens is, is you take an attacker, a criminal. He may be located in Ghana, Nigeria, wherever. By using a SOX5 proxy, he can make it appear that he's in Florida, Colorado, California, wherever he needs to make it appear. And those things cost about 30 cents to a dollar. All right. So that's another tool that I would use to gain access to your account. So and it just keeps going from there, depending on the security of the site is the different types of tools or information that I would need to get information, access, data, or cash from that website that I'm trying to victimize. And all that stuff is out there. Would you say like, okay, I'm going to do Brad Pitt's
Starting point is 01:02:15 information today? You know what I mean? Whose identity would you know to try to go after? How do you find the targets? Well, it's interesting that you would say that. A lot of people, and I'm asked this at conferences quite often, what can we do to make sure that our information isn't compromised? Well, there's nothing you can do for that because your information has been compromised for years. Just last year, we had over 2,500 just reported breaches. Of those 2,500 just reported breaches, over 57 billion records compromised just last year. So everyone's information is available. The reason you may not have been victimized yet is think of it as the worst lottery on the planet. There's just simply
Starting point is 01:02:59 not enough criminals to get to you yet, but they're coming. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. And usually it's a question of, well, it's not really your first time, is it? So if you can accept that, then you can ask the next question. What can we do that if a criminal gets our information, he or she can't use it? And that's the more appropriate question to ask. But we have to really get to understand that all of our information is out there. Yeah. I like, I know you like two factor identification or authentication. I like that too. So you get, if somebody tries to get into your email or change the password, you get the text saying, is it really you? And only if you confirm by your
Starting point is 01:03:45 phone, will they allow it? I mean, that makes me feel a little better. But wait, I want to ask you about this because I read that you've said children are the number one target of identity theft. So how does that work? You know, I'll tell you now, my kids are young and I'd like to think they have no online profile. I work hard to make sure they don't, but they do go on games, you know, they and the games say, what's your date of birth? What's your name? You know, they don't know their social security number, nor would they ever type that in for anybody.
Starting point is 01:04:16 You know what I mean? Like, how does one's child get swept up into this? So the the actual statistic is that 25 percent, one in four children will be victims of identity theft. Children are the number one victims of ID theft. And that's because of three things. It's because of this thing called synthetic fraud. It's because of tax fraud. And it's also because of medical fraud. The way those breaches, the way that information gets out there, you've got insiders that do that. You've got man in the middle attacks that do that. You've got breaches for hospitals that provide that type of information, things like that. Just four years ago, four years ago,
Starting point is 01:04:49 a child's identity. So when I say a child's identity, that would be the child's name, social, date of birth, mother's maiden name, place of birth. That information was selling for $2.08 on the dark web. Today, that same information is selling for $25 because there's such demand for children's information because of this thing called synthetic fraud. The way that you protect against that, credit freezes became free September 18th of 2018. Do that. Everyone in the house needs to have a credit freeze in place, including your children. So what happens is, is you have to contact all three credit bureaus. You tell them, hey, I want to place a freeze on my credit.
Starting point is 01:05:38 And they're going to try to talk you into paying for some sort of monitoring service or something like that. You're going to basically tell them to go to hell. No, I want a credit freeze in place because it's free. What that means is, is that no one can pull your credit report without your specific permission. So if you go over to finance a new car or whatever, you'll be there financing the car. You'll say, okay, who's pulling my credit? They'll say Ally Bank. You'll notify the credit bureau.
Starting point is 01:06:03 Hey, Ally Bank is going to request my credit report. The credit bureau will lift the freeze just for Ally Bank to pull that report. As soon as that report is pulled, the freeze goes back into place. No one else can pull the credit report. It stops all new account fraud dead in its tracks. You cannot open a new account with a credit freeze in place. Works great for children. All right. If you don't have that, and I'll tell you this now, Megan, if you don't have that in place for your kids, you need to, because there's a one in four chance that your kids have already been victimized. So put a credit freeze in place. And anybody that listens to this today, if you don't do anything else, put a credit freeze in place when you get off this show. So understand it stops all new account fraud. Great for kids,
Starting point is 01:06:46 for adults, we have existing accounts. We've got credit cards, we've got bank accounts, things like that. It does not stop fraud on those accounts. So what you have to do is you have to put, you have to monitor existing accounts. So that's credit reports, tax statements, bank accounts, email accounts, retail merchant accounts, things like that. Monitor those accounts. Place alerts on those accounts where you can. The lowest dollar amount alert that you can. For example, Discover Card has a zero dollar alert, meaning that a criminal like I goes on the dark web, buys your Discover Card for $12, which is what this sells for.
Starting point is 01:07:23 Buys it for $12, just pings the card to see if it's alive. You get an SMS message saying, hey, some idiot's trying to steal your card and you can have it locked down at that point. So monitor accounts, place alerts. And then finally, the big thing, because there's really just three things that you, well, there's more than three, but the three big ones. The other big thing is that 80% of every single person on the planet uses the same or similar passwords and logins across multiple websites. That's a problem. And yeah, so what can happen is it's this thing called credential stuffing. So I can send out a phishing email that looks like it comes from your financial institution. Your level of awareness
Starting point is 01:08:05 is high enough that you'll look at it and you'll typically say, obviously a phishing email. I'm not going to fall for that crap. But what happens if I send out a phishing email that looks like it comes from Hulu? Level of awareness, not as high. You're probably going to look at it and say, Hulu. Does anyone even watch Hulu? I mean, the only thing they've got is The Handmaid's Tale. That second season sucked. And it did. You know, it did. First season was outstanding. The second season, oh my God. But because your level of awareness is not as high, you're going to go ahead and put those credentials in. For an attacker, for a criminal, it's literally an automated program. I plug those credentials into the computer. I go to sleep. The program tries to log into tens of thousands of different websites while I sleep. I wake up the next morning,
Starting point is 01:08:55 I've got your tax statements, your credit cards, your bank account, your Hulu account, and I can do whatever I want to do at that point. All right. The answer to that right now is a password manager. I don't care which one you use. Just use one of them. As a matter of fact, Chrome's got one built in. Apple's got one built in. They don't charge anything for it. Use that, but use a password manager.
Starting point is 01:09:17 You can trust that. That's not hackable. That's the fear of those. While the bad guy's going to get in there, then he's instantly going to have everything. There you go. But I like a password manager. A few of them have been hacked or breached. But the thing is, is that while LastPass has been breached, while Dashlane has been breached, the program has been breached.
Starting point is 01:09:37 But the passwords themselves have not been because those are encrypted with 256 bit encryption. So the passwords have never been compromised, even though a password manager itself sometimes has. All right. I feel better. All right. So you were, this is so fascinating, by the way, I could not be more interested than I am right now in what you're saying. So that you, you use these skills that you're telling us about on the, on the bad side. And this is while you're doing shadow center shadow crew shadow crew. So that lasted for about two years and then it got busted by the feds. I want to jump forward a bit because I know there's a lot in there, but it got busted by the feds and you were about to get married. It was like February 2005.
Starting point is 01:10:23 I think it was. These guys got busted in August of 2004. But you kind of hung up your hat in April of 2004, as I understand it. And you were about to get married. It's February of 2005. And it's like, okay, things are... And then, boom, you're arrested
Starting point is 01:10:38 too. They had a record. There was a guy who had been with Shadow Crew who had turned and was helping the Secret Service. And you get arrested. But at that moment, you must be thinking, oh, who had turned and was helping the Secret Service. And you get arrested. But at that moment, you must be thinking, oh, this sucks. This is terrible. No marriage and no freedom.
Starting point is 01:10:56 But the weirdest series of events would happen to you over the next couple of years. I mean, I've never heard of such as like in prison, out of prison, in prison, out of prison, with the Secret Service, not with the Secret Service, escapes from prison, like the weirdest. So the first one was you get an offer to work with the Secret Service and you do it for a short time and try to walk me through what happened after the first big arrest. That is, yeah, you're right. It's weird. So what happens is I'm picked up February 8th of 2005, three weeks before I was supposed to get married. I'm held in the county jail in Charleston, South Carolina for about a week. After a week, the Secret Service flies in from New Jersey because that's where all the cybercrime investigations at that point in time were coming out of. So they fly out of New Jersey down to Charleston, South Carolina, pull me out of the cell. They look at me and said, we've got your laptop.
Starting point is 01:11:43 And I'm like, yeah. They're like, got anything on it? I'm like, yeah. Well, you're going to be charged for it. I'm like, I figured. And then they looked at me and they said, is there anything you can do for us? And my exact words were, you let me get back with Elizabeth, my fiance at the time, and I'll do whatever you want me to do. So they looked at me and said, we're going to get you out. I'm like, okay. They let me sit there for 90 days to get a taste of what jail is supposed to be. They get me out after 90 days. I go to work for the Secret Service. And my job was as a paid informant slash consultant. They moved me from Charleston up to Columbia, South Carolina. I would go into the Secret Service offices for
Starting point is 01:12:22 four to six hours a day. They had me in a big war room where I was hooked up to a laptop outside line. The laptop was hooked up to a 50-inch plasma monitor on the wall, so they monitored it at all times. In the room at all times were two Secret Service agents and one South Carolina law enforcement agent. They had their own desktop computer right next to mine with an outside line as well. And on my machine, they were capturing everything. They had Camtasia that captured screenshots of everything that was going on. And they had Spectre Pro that was a key logger as well. So all the data was recorded every single night, went on a DVD on a spindle. So for the first two weeks, they were extremely diligent.
Starting point is 01:13:02 They were asking questions, everything else. But my job really consisted of surfing the web as fast as I possibly could, targeting individuals and doing stuff like that. So after two weeks, it got really boring. The agents, because they were bored, I want to make clear that they were good guys, but they had never really dealt with any cyber criminals before. And they kind of classed us with the other types of criminals that they had, that had been, they had been working with. And that's really not the case. We are a, we tend to not do well with authority to say the least. So after two weeks, they got bored. They started to watch porn on their machine. So I'm sitting there watching them like,
Starting point is 01:13:52 huh, nobody's watching me. So I start to break the law from inside of the Secret Service offices for the next 10 months. The way they find out about it is this was March of 2006 at this point in time. March of 2006, there was going to be a nationwide arrest roundup going on called Operation Rolling Stone. One of the people that I was an associate with on Shadow Crew, I'd actually taught him how to do tax return identity theft. He was slated to be arrested in Los Angeles. So they go to arrest him. They arrest the guy. He's in an apartment. The apartment manager comes out and says, hey, I don't know what went on, but Sean last night, he had a U-Haul here and packed out all kinds of stuff. Well, it turns out that stuff he packed out was all of the evidence the
Starting point is 01:14:41 Secret Service might need to charge him with. So they come back to me and they said, hey, we need you to take a polygraph. And my answer was no. So then they were like, well, you can take it or you can go back to jail. And I was like, OK, I'll take it. So they they gave me the polygraph, which I promptly failed. They revoked the bond. At that point in time, I was only on under state charges. I hadn't been federally indicted. So they revoked
Starting point is 01:15:06 the bond. A week after the bond had been revoked, they searched my apartment. They found prepaid debit cards. They found cash, found a laptop, cell phones, everything else. They come in after a week of me sitting in the county jail, pulled me out of the cell, the second in charge in South Carolina. He looks at me and he's like, here's the way it's going to work, Brett. You're going to tell me everything you've done the past six years, or I'm going to make it my mission in life to screw over you and your family. Not just right now in this case, but once you get out of prison, I'll hound you the rest of your life. Then he slides a Miranda waiver over at me and he looks at me. He's like, now you want to talk to me? And my answer was, no, I don't. I want a lawyer. So he gets up red faced, says some, you know,
Starting point is 01:15:49 some derogatory words as he walks out. A week later, the judge reinstates my bond and had said that they revoked it improperly. So I walked out of the jail. Nobody calls the Secret Service, tells them I walked out and I take off on a cross-country crime spree. Still, I stole $600,000 in the space of four months. I was in Las Vegas, Nevada the night before. I had stolen $160,000 out of ATMs, woke up the next morning, signed on to cartersmarket.com, which was ran by another shadow crew associate, signed on to Carter's Market. There's my name, U.S. Most Wanted Beside of It. And that's, I say it's an aha moment. It's more of an oh shit moment. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I sat there and looked at it. That was the first time that my name and my picture had ever been published online. So I sat there and looked at it and it was talking about how I was, how I had screwed over the secret service and how I had screwed over all my criminal associates. So they'd cut time. It was done so that no one would help me. So I was in Las Vegas and I sat there for a few
Starting point is 01:17:00 minutes. And finally I said out loud, I was like, well, Brett, you've made the United States most wanted list. What do you do now? And then I said, I'm going to And finally, I said out loud, I was like, well, Brett, you've made the United States most wanted list. What do you do now? And then I said, I'm going to Disney World, which is what I did. So I go to Disney World, buy my park passes for Universal Disney. I'm going there every day. And the idea was, well, I'll just lay low, enjoy Mickey Mouse for about a year, and then I'll bug out to South America.
Starting point is 01:17:27 I was wanting to go to Florianopolis. So I lasted about six weeks. Secret Service, September 16th of 06. They I'm at I'd rented this timeshare. I'd paid for it for nine months straight cash. And they were still building the timeshare. And I was used to all the builders coming by and knocking, asking if everything was all right. So it was Saturday, September 16th of
Starting point is 01:17:49 06, about 1030 in the morning. I hear this knock on the door. So I get out of bed, walk up, walk up to the door, look out of the peephole and nobody's there. And I'm like, huh. So then I opened the door, stepped out into the hallway and walking down the hall are two South Carolina Secret Service guys and an Orange County sheriff. They turn around. They're like, hey, Brett. I'm like, hey, guys. I'm like, how you doing?
Starting point is 01:18:11 I'm like, I'm doing fine. Would you guys like to come in? And they're like, well, let's put you in cuffs first. And I'm like, probably a good idea. So they put me in cuffs, walk me in and then sit me down on the sofa. And they're like, have you got anything in the apartment? And I'm like, well, I've got $150,000 cash in the bedroom. So they start walking toward the bedroom. Then I go plus an AK 47 and they stopped dead in their tracks. And they're like,
Starting point is 01:18:34 are you serious? And I'm like, no, I'm just kidding you. So my fingers are my weapons. Yeah. Yeah. So they, they, so let me, let me, let me back up. This is so super fascinating. They're not going to have enough time on the show to get to everything I want to get to. I'm so sad. Right. But let me back up and give me quick explanations on how does a prepaid debit card lead to crime? So there are three necessities to successfully committing online crime. You have to gather data. So that's the PII, your social, your date of birth. It's also any tool that you may use, like a prepaid cell phone or that Soxfy proxy that I talked about. You have to gather data, then you have to commit the crime, and then finally you have to cash it out. If you can't put cash in pocket, you're useless. So there are very few avenues where you can actually cash out. There's,
Starting point is 01:19:25 there's bank accounts, there's prepaid debit cards, and then there's gift cards. That's why you see all these phone calls all the time about trying to engineer people to go down and buy gift cards. Okay. Because there's very few avenues where you can literally put cash in pocket. Prepaid debit cards is one of the big ones because you can go down to Walmart, you can buy a prepaid debit card for say $10, and then you can receive an ACH deposit on it. What I was doing, I invented this fraud called tax return identity theft, where I will use your information to file a tax return and then have it deposited onto one of these prepaid cards. I was stealing about $160,000 a week, 10 months out of the year doing that type of fraud.
Starting point is 01:20:05 So that's, that's where the prepaid cards come in today. Dead people's identity for that. Is that dead people's identities right now, over time that morphed into where you see today that you'll see these criminals, they'll, they'll talk a company or, you know, still W2s from a company or something like that and do it on living people. But back in the day- And you download it onto your prepaid ATM, which goes from $10 to $160,000 in the course of a week. Okay.
Starting point is 01:20:31 Exactly. And that's one of the things that you saw with stimulus fraud during the pandemic. You saw a lot of prepaid cards being used by fraudsters because it's easier to use those than it is to set up bank accounts or anything else. All right. What about, how do you get $400,000 out of an ATM? I mean, how do you rob an ATM? Well, so you've got a stack. You figure, so I was filing usually about 100, 150 tax returns a week. I got to where I was filing a tax return every six minutes manually.
Starting point is 01:21:01 I would file those tax returns for three to four days. On the next day, I would take a road trip and actually plot out a map of ATMs, all right? Then the next two days, usually Friday and Saturday, I would hit those ATMs. I would have a stack of prepaid debit cards, a backpack, and I would stay at an ATM until I started to see the same car pass around maybe twice or stay there maybe
Starting point is 01:21:25 20 or 30 minutes and just withdraw $20 bills, stuff in a backpack. So a Jansport backpack, like you see these kids carried college, that will carry $150,000 in 20s. So typically I would steal about $160,000. $150,000 of it would go into a backpack. I'd come back home to Charleston, South Carolina. I had a spare bedroom. I would open up the door, chuck the backpack in there. And then one day you open the door to that spare bedroom. You see all the damn backpacks and you're like, got to do something with that. That's when you find out that, okay, let's learn how to launder money from there.
Starting point is 01:22:00 And that's what happened. I joke about it. Do you have a thought that if you worked this hard at a normal desk job, you'd be even richer than you became as a criminal? That is absolutely true. I mean, a lot of people think that criminals are very lazy people. And from what I've seen, not just myself, but prison time, the people that I associated with online, we are not lazy people. Typically, when they say criminal lifestyle, they mean that. It's 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. It's constant, and you're constantly doing something. There's got to be an adrenaline rush,
Starting point is 01:22:35 and as you say, the disrespect of authority, the need to not be under somebody's thumb. Wait, stand by, because we have to get to next. They did get you in Disney, as you point out. They did. Back to the pokey you go. But Brett would not stay there. And it wasn't because he was released with the permission of the authorities. We'll get to that story, his escape and then his turn to the bright side. So yada yada, you wind up back in prison and um you wind up in particular going to uh
Starting point is 01:23:10 ashland kentucky to the prison there your dad starts visiting you and then what happened so so what happens is my my dad my mom leaves my dad and i don't really get to have a conversation with the man for over 20 years. He shows up at my sentencing, and he stands up at the sentencing, and he tells the judge, hey, I'm here for Brett. I want to make sure he has a good start when he gets out. He's welcome to come and live with me, everything else. I get sent to Ashland, Kentucky, and what had happened was I was an asshole, and I had told everybody that if they gave me any more than 60 months, I was an asshole. And I had told everybody that if they gave me any more than 60 months,
Starting point is 01:23:47 I was not staying. So they gave me 75 months. So I was already of the opinion, I'm going to release myself on my own recognizance. So my dad comes to visit, about the third visit in, he's talking to me. He's like, hey, I've been reading about you online. I'm like, yeah. He's like, yeah. He's like, that's a lot of money you made. And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, do you think you could teach somebody how to do that? So what I used to say when I first started this legal career of mine, what I said was, and I lied about it.
Starting point is 01:24:16 I was like, well, I thought my dad was back in my life. And it turns out he was just trying to use me. The truth of the matter is that, like I said, my dad hadn't talked to me in over 20 years. And I really think that he was viewing me in that frame of my mom. And that's the only way he thought he could communicate with me. And I chose to manipulate the man into helping me escape. So I taught him how to do tax return fraud. And in exchange for that, he had $4,000 cash to his name. He gave me the 4,000 cash, dropped me off to change the clothes, a cell phone, and a driver's license. I lasted, I was at a minimum security camp.
Starting point is 01:24:50 I had a job outside of the fence and I escaped. Lasted about three to four weeks. The U.S. Marshals meantime are canvassing a three-state area. They find me after, I think, three weeks is when they found me. And they found me, how I was back doing the same stuff I had been doing, trying to commit crimes, steal identities, tax return fraud, everything else. And I was just very fortunate that I wasn't charged for any of that.
Starting point is 01:25:16 That was the escape. It's nothing romantic, nothing, you know, I wish it was something like Shawshank Redemption. Or a helicopter or something. But it wasn't. No, it's pretty crazy. So you finally get out of prison in 2011.
Starting point is 01:25:33 You wind up going back to your life of crime. You tried not to, but you were on food stamps. But you wind up shoplifting basics like toilet paper. You got a job in landscaping. Then you go back on the dark web using stolen credit card information to order food. You get arrested again on a food order. My gosh, it's like I'm reading the story like, no, Brett, no, stop. It's like an alcoholic, you know, like stop it, stop it, put down the bottle.
Starting point is 01:25:58 And then you make it. Yeah, good. I am a poster child for that thing where recovery is never a straight line. All right. I am. I am that poster child for that thing where recovery is never a straight line. I am that poster child for that. And it's true, though. My thing is I had three big turnarounds. The first big turnaround for me was my sister. My sister disowned me.
Starting point is 01:26:21 That's before I even escaped from prison. My sister disowned me not because I was a criminal. Denise knew I was. She disowned me because of the stripper that I was engaged to be married to. So because of that, she doesn't talk to me for over a year. The stripper was a religion major. Didn't that soften Denise at all? She was a theology major. So it's like, oh God, can't you get a grip? Denise dis but Denise this on me after my escape. Denise hadn't talked to me for a year when all this stuff is going on. I escaped from prison, get caught quickly after that.
Starting point is 01:26:55 My dad comes to visit and he's like, can I do anything for you? And I'm like, yeah, you can tell my sister. I said, I love her. Denise, seven hours away, gets in the car pregnant, drives to come see dumbass brother for 10 minutes to tell me she loves me. And I don't get to see her again for five and a half years. That's the first turnaround right there. It took two and a half years behind the fence for me to really accept responsibility and say, hey, I didn't do it for my family or for my wife or for my stripper girlfriend. I chose to victimize people because I wanted to.
Starting point is 01:27:25 So that's the first real turnaround right there. After I got out of prison, like you said, I couldn't get a job. Nobody's going to hire the guy that steals everything. Plus I couldn't touch a computer. I actually had a couple of job offers, but I couldn't take them. I ended up shoplifting toilet paper, met my wife, Michelle, and that's the second turnaround right there. Um, Michelle was the first relationship that I've had where it wasn't about what I could give somebody. It was just about, she wanted me for me. And, um, it took dumb ass Brett going back to prison to understand that that was the second turnaround. And then the third turnaround is when I got out of the probation violation, I reached out to the FBI,
Starting point is 01:28:10 this guy named Keith Malarski out of the Pittsburgh field office. I reached out to him, sent him a message. I was like, hey, man, I think you did a great job with all the arrests. I've got a lot of respect for you. By the way, I'd like to be legal. The guy took me under his wing, gave me references, gave me advice. He retired a few years ago, but he still does that to this day. And that opened these doors for me. From there, it was the head of the Identity Theft Council. He took me in under his wing. The C&P group, the Cardinal Present Group, they gave me my first paid speaking job.
Starting point is 01:28:44 Microsoft finds out about it. They come down and hire me as a consultant. And then today, I've got the show I'm trying to build behind me that you see on the big thing back behind me. But I'm also an ambassador for AARP. I speak across the planet. Arcos Labs has named me as the first chief criminal officer on the planet. I lead a very blessed life that I'm going to tell you outright. I really don't deserve it, but I'm damn grateful to have it.
Starting point is 01:29:19 Do you ever miss the life of crime, the adrenaline, the uncertainty? You know, I don't know. Do you ever miss that? No, I don't. I don't. I don't miss the the knocks at the door. I don't miss having to have your front lines drawn all the time. Scared of when a cop pulls in behind you. I don't I don't miss any of that. I'm on the dark web all the time. I'm talking to those those guys. I do it under my name i go on these these and these websites and forums and i talk to the guys there and get information and i'm accepted in those groups uh i don't judge those people because i used to be there but they know i'm on the other side and i know they're on the other side and uh why are they why would they give their tricks up to you why would they give their modern day tricks up to you knowing that you're a problem?
Starting point is 01:30:05 Sure. The reason is that the threat landscape is so large, you're not going to plug all those holes. And the other reason is that cybercrime tends to be an open environment. When I built Shadow Crew, we built it with the understanding that by everyone being open source, by everyone sharing, exchanging information and collaborating together, everyone becomes more educated. Everyone becomes more profitable at the end of the day. So even though you have these environments where somebody like me, I'm in there under my own name, you've got FBI, you've got worldwide law enforcement, you've got security people in there all the time that are reading these things, even though those people are in there, it really doesn't matter at
Starting point is 01:30:45 the end of the day. You're still able to find targets and victimize either individuals or organizations pretty effectively. Such a target rich environment, sadly. So what about, can I ask you, Coinbase, Bitcoin, I know more and more of these are being used to try to get people's money and scams. What do you what do you make of them? It's interesting. Bitcoin, there's actually a couple of precursors to Bitcoin, and those precursors are e-gold and Liberty Reserve. And those were strictly those are exactly what what cryptocurrency is now, just minus blockchain, that distributed ledger. Those were invented so that criminals could transfer money to each other or as a store of value for criminal enterprises. Bitcoin, its main use case, its initial use case was exactly the same thing. Ross Ulbricht, the guy who started Silk Road One, he builds a criminal website,
Starting point is 01:31:50 basically a drug marketplace. And the only form of payment he accepts is Bitcoin. So that really gives crypto its first use case. Today, I have to say, and I'm going to upset a lot of people saying it, but that use case hasn't really changed much. You're still laundering money. You've got things like Monero, which is an anonymous form of laundering money. You've got things like Monero, which is an anonymous form of laundering money. You've still got those types of tokens that do that. My view of crypto is that by and large, it is a Ponzi scheme that is on the verge of becoming legitimate. Is it? I don't know. I mean, right now we've got a 16% adoption rate in the United States. So 16% of the U.S. population has some form of crypto. We're also seeing crypto winter right now where people are starting to understand that while you may be an exchange, and we've seen several exchanges go bankrupt recently, while you may be an exchange that has a lot of crypto, you may not have a lot of US dollars to back that. So you're seeing a lot of scams. You're seeing a lot of problems in the crypto industry. I really think that we need for it to be legitimized, for it to move past that
Starting point is 01:32:55 being on the cusp of a Ponzi into legitimacy. I think we need proper regulation. But the problem with that is none of the idiots in Washington have any idea how to do proper regulation on the thing. So I don't know how it is. All right. Now, forgive me for asking you for a 60 second answer on this or less. We're almost out of time. Election fraud on voting machines. If I wanted to commit that, I'd hire you. I'd say, Brett, change the votes. Can it be done? What do you think?
Starting point is 01:33:27 Is that possible? Obviously, this is relevant in the news cycle. Sure, sure. So the answer is, and again, I'll piss off more people. Why not? But the answer is it can be done. It absolutely can be done. The more effective way to do that, I believe, is this idea, and I've said it back in Shadow Crew and I continue to say that today.
Starting point is 01:33:48 The perception of truth is more important than the truth itself. All right. So while I could do all know, put fear, uncertainty, doubt into a voting segment and then get them to react the way that I want to. Hmm. And, you know, there's a strategy question. All right. So before I let you go, what's next for you?
Starting point is 01:34:18 Family. You know, I know you said you used cognitive behavioral therapy to sort of work through some of your childhood issues. That's good. So what's next? What does 62 look like for you? I honestly don't know. My goal right now is to make sure that I am not the guy who is remembered for stealing everything, but the guy who is able to turn it around.
Starting point is 01:34:39 That's my big thing. I want to make sure that I'm helping people, not hurting people. As long as I'm able to do that, that's exactly what I'm going to continue to do. I know I'm working on a TV show that it looks like it's finally going to get off the ground. We're working on a book as well. Other than that, just continue plugging away and doing the best job that I can to help protect those businesses and people from that type of person that I used to be. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:35:01 I mean, it was all part of your journey and you wouldn't be able to do the good you're doing now if you didn't have that history. I'm so glad you crossed over to the good side and very glad that we have you as a resource. And I would love to have you back when you publish your book or whenever you want to come on. It's been a fascinating discussion, Brett.
Starting point is 01:35:19 Thank you so much, Megan. I appreciate it. All right. So we're all putting a credit freeze with all the credit reporting agencies and we don't need the monitoring service today. Get two factor verification and check your accounts and use the password manager. Those are very helpful action cues. Now, tomorrow, don't miss the show because you know how they cancel live PD. Well, guess what? A version of it is coming back with Dan Abrams, the guy who hosted it before,
Starting point is 01:35:45 and he's going to give us a little preview of how it happened on the program tomorrow. Plus, we're going to dig into the crisis at the Southern border with some new facts you haven't heard before. Meantime, download The Megyn Kelly Show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher. Leave me a comment on the Apple reviews and give us a five-star review too. That'd be awesome. Go to youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly if you'd like to see the show. Thank you so much for being a part of it and we'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

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