Another Excerpt from Chapter 2 - Digging Up New Business: The SwitPad Takeover

Trapdoors and Easy Money – A Word from Our Killer

I wish sometimes that I had a friend I could share my story with, someone I could talk to directly, personally, without holding back. There is no one I could trust enough to really do that with, but still, I think about it and like to pretend that you are out there, listening to me.

But who would listen? Who could listen? I know when I explain it all, in the proper context, it will make sense and – while most of you wouldn’t want to emulate me or follow my road, but at least, maybe if you knew it all, you would understand it. So I am going to pretend you are here now, not as a friend, or an admirer – but certainly more than just a witness or cold observer. You are not a colleague, and not a Sancho Panza either. I can’t control what you think of me, but let’s pretend I can insist that you listen to the whole thing and that you will “reserve judgment.” I love that phrase for some reason – saving the judgment, putting it aside, not including it in the story as it unfolds. I do that. I don’t judge anyone.

You probably have to be a man to really get me – even though it is women who are the primary object of my attention. So whoever you are – maybe it’s better if I don’t know who you are – then I’ll just be frank and not assume I know what you want to hear – I’ll just talk and address you as – you.  Who can know what anybody thinks, or can guess what is in anybody’s head? I suspect you will think me Beyond the Pale – unworthy of the normal respect we give anyone who is honestly telling their story. Perhaps you will think I am impertinent and cheeky. But believe me, I am very serious. You’ll have to wait to see what I mean by that.

As to my business, I actually have several businesses, as you will subsequently learn. In a sense I am a pirate – to that, for now, I’ll admit. A pirate, in it for the easy money and protection from discovery. I sell my information and make a lot of money. It is information I sell – like I said – easy money. I am an information technologist, and it makes sense that my product is information, right? I think you will find that there is nothing that crosses my mind that hasn’t crossed yours – perhaps you decided a long time ago that what I do isn’t for you, the risks aren’t worth the reward, or that you simply don’t have the talent and nerve to pull it off. That is OK.

But my business – it really is not so bad. I use my skill as a computer guy, hacker if you will, to invade and steal data. I have a view that stealing information is not so bad – it’s not like stealing a little kid’s bike after all. I am definitely not a hacker in the way that you think, not in the way you probably understand the word. I’m not some tattooed snarly long-hair who sleeps until noon and lives on energy drinks.

When cops used to stop people with pot in Oregon, they had to let them go if they have a medical marijuana card, which anyone could obtain with a note from their doctor. The cops said that the card was easy to counterfeit, so about ten years ago, they hired me to build a little program that could look up the names in the Med-MJ database with a special text message and confirm it – and then respond to the messages. That way they could arrest people who were not in the system. That gave me access to the entire cop communication system, in Oregon anyway. I built a little back door and with it I can spoof any cops account and send or receive orders or other info. I don’t use it much, because I don’t want to tip them off. But in a tight spot it’s handy.

The other project, which in some ways is much cooler, I did for the Oregon Arms Collectors Association, which is like a local auxiliary for the NRA. When Oregon passed a law requiring that vendors at gun shows could not sell Uzis or AK-47s to convicted felons, the OACA got their representatives in the legislature to attach a rider saying that the police had to provide way for gun show vendors to be able to check on the record of their customers in real time, so that the law wouldn’t seriously affect business. They hired me to build the application, which required that I get access to all of the criminal data, including the FBI records. I have sold it to a couple of other states too, but have stopped marketing it, because I didn’t want to show up on any anti-gun political radar. Don’t need that.

The data from the criminal databases is my product. I sell it to my other customers, former East bloc guys, mostly Russians, Central American narco guys, and others whom I am careful not to inquire too closely about. B-movie bad guys, if you catch the drift. It is all done from a distance – I don’t know them and – hopefully – they don’t know me. My business is too big to handle all by myself of course and I have partners who handle a lot of the technical details, keep the lines of communication open if you will, and I have the same deal with them – anonymous transfers, no names or places. I don’t even know where some of them are from and have met none of them. If they fail to live up to their agreements, they are cut off and left out in the ether. They are not nice guys, so I protect myself, we just wire money to numbered accounts and I give them what they need. So – I got that going for me. Like Caddyshack Carl’s deal with the Dalai Lama.

So those are some of my businesses. We’ll continue this discussion. Now – you go away. I’m busy.