All language subtitles for American Greed s05e04 Hackers Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin

In this episode of American Greed, it's
called Operation Get Rich or Die Trying.

The biggest ID theft in U .S. history.

A mysterious ring of social outcasts
with an insatiable appetite for sex,

and your encrypted information.

There's a very fine line between
exploiting a system to check it out or

exploiting a system for gain.

They were looking for data any way they
could get it.

They steal credit card numbers and make
a fortune by selling them on the black

market. It just kept building upon
itself.

500 ,000 numbers, then a million
numbers, up to 130 million numbers.

You or I might be a victim of this
crime, and we would never know.

Victims lose millions, but no one pays a
greater price than one of the gang's

own. It just cracked under the pressure.

In May 2008, federal agents in full SWAT
gear fan out across South Florida.

They raid private homes, condos, even a
suite at Miami's posh National Hotel.

We received multiple search warrants for
numerous houses, cars, for safety

deposit boxes, for servers, even
individuals in case they had possessed

drives or media in their pockets or in
their backpacks.

Agents seize more than a dozen computers
and obtain search warrants for servers

overseas. On those servers, they find
millions of credit card numbers.

Their victims were a whole range from
small banks and credit unions to some of

the largest retailers, well -known
restaurant chains, and some of the

credit card processors in the United
States.

The scheme's mastermind is 26 -year -old
Albert Gonzalez.

The problem with hackers is that those
who might be inclined to try to make

money off of their skills is that they
don't know anything about the criminal

underworld. And the criminal underworld
might not know that much about hacking,

but he could bridge both worlds.

I've always thought of him as a
forerunner, sort of criminal industry

this whole area.

For Gonzalez, who also goes by the
handles Soup Nazi, Kumbhajani, and

anonymity is key.

Most individuals will have more than one
handle. So on one particular forum,

you'll be known as a certain individual.
On another forum, you'll be known as

something else. In some places, you'll
have a number. It'll be a sequence

number, a non -sequence number,
depending upon what you're doing.

These criminals can communicate to one
another anonymously, so a lot of times

the co -conspirators may not know each
other in real life, but they communicate

via instant messaging, and they can
assist each other in their crimes.

But Gonzalez is no ordinary criminal.

He'll soon be known as the most cunning
cyber crook in American history.

Albert Gonzales spends his childhood in
South Florida.

His father came to America from Cuba on
a homemade raft in the 1970s. And they

raised him in a working class
neighborhood in Miami.

Gonzales earns allowance working for his
father's landscaping business.

Albert grew up in a very...

politically conservative home, church
-going Catholics, in a working -class

environment. And he was a very sweet,
good -natured boy, outgoing.

But all that changed when Albert was
about 12 years old, and he bought his

computer. At first, his hobby seems
innocent enough.

He just absolutely loved it, and he
wanted to spend all his time with it.

But before long, Gonzalez's fascination
with computers becomes an obsession.

His grades started dropping. His mom
begged him to see a psychologist, and he

absolutely refused.

He falls in with a group of hackers
called the Keebler Elves Gang, and they

into NASA and the Indian government's
website.

It was about...

Being able to pick those locks and get
those bragging rights to be able to say,

see, I did this. I might just be a
teenager, and I might be powerless in

real world, but online, I'm like a god.

After graduating in 1999, Gonzalez
enrolls in community college.

Albert dropped out of Miami Dade
Community College after less than a

and moved to New York to take a job with
a dot -com company, which very quickly

went under.

Then he took a job with Siemens in their
IT department, but they very quickly

relocated to Pennsylvania, and he opted
not to move with them.

Jobless, he begins dabbling in drugs and
illegal online activity.

He was in New York sort of feeling like
he had hit rock bottom and not really

knowing what his options were. What he
did know was that he was really good at

hacking, and he had access to...

this internet carding forum that he was
well aware of called Shadow Crew, and

that seemed like as good a career option
as any.

In 2002, black market carding websites
like Shadow Crew are beginning to crop

up. You go to these forums. You can buy
or sell credit and debit card

information. You can buy access to
retailers.

You can even hire people to launder your
money off of these web pages.

These carding forums have no boundaries,
and criminals from every continent join

them and participate in them.

Using the alias Kumbhajani...

Gonzalez quickly becomes a shadow crew
site administrator.

He helps crooks sell more than a million
stolen cards for between $10 and $15 a

piece. It's millions.

I mean, we're not talking about somebody
making a couple of thousand or five,

ten, fifteen thousand. We're talking
about millions and millions of dollars.

they steal a debit card number and a
PIN, and they can re -encode that on

plastic, walk up to an ATM, put the PIN
in, and clean out the account.

Shadow crew members call these cash -out
trips.

Once that ATM is out, you go to the next
one, and you continue to do that until

you're either out of cards or the ATMs
are out of money.

It's a cash -out trip that would be
Gonzalez's unlikely downfall.

In 2003, New York police officers see a
young man loading card after card into a

nearby ATM machine.

During the arrest, officers discover
he's cyber criminal Albert Gonzalez, and

they turn him over to the Secret
Service.

The Secret Service is responsible for
investigating cyber crime, and they very

quickly recognized Albert's potential in
helping them to bust other cyber

criminals. There are places that a
cooperating defendant in the cyber world

bring you that you can't go on your own,
and that is the value of working with

them. The Secret Service flips Gonzalez
and pays him $75 ,000 a year to help

with Operation Firewall.

It wasn't as if we were all sitting
around a table together and he was

hearing, understanding our strategies,
our techniques. His role was to continue

as administrator of the site, typing on
a computer, communicating with his

individuals. The successful undercover
sting nets 28 Shadow Crew members.

It was a benchmark investigation,
benchmark prosecution, and everything

every step of the way.

Authorities say the thieves they
arrested had cost more than $4 million

losses.

After Operation Firewall, the Secret
Service cuts Gonzalez loose and he

to Miami.

Once a hacker, always a hacker.

Legitimacy for him was not really an
option at that point because...

Albert had gained so much insight while
working for the feds, and he was not a

person to pass on an opportunity.

Next on American Greed, Gonzalez forms
his own gang with a plan to make

millions. He called it Operation Get
Rich or Die Trying.

It certainly was a very ominous title,
and it certainly foreshadowed what was

come.

Miami, Florida.

It's a playground for the world's
wealthiest and for those aspiring to

all, like 23 -year -old hacker Albert
Gonzalez.

In October 2004, Gonzalez turns rat and
helps the Secret Service bring down

Shadow Crew, the biggest cybercrime bust
to date.

But all the while, he's plotting
Operation Get Rich or Die Trying.

I think it's safe to say the Secret
Service had no idea that Albert was

both sides, that he was becoming a
master criminal while at the same time

working as a snitch for them.

His overall business plan was to break
into a series of major

retailers, obtain their credit and debit
card information, and then either to

sell them or in fact use other members
of his gang to...

cash them out to go to ATMs and use them
as essentially cows and milk them until

they were dry.

Gonzalez enlists the help of several
hackers he'd met online years before.

They started off as teenage friends
trying to get into government sites,

military sites, and very quickly that
changed from hacking for fun and

to hacking for profit.

A number of the collaborators of Albert
Gonzalez had significant day

jobs. They were doing security intrusion
work, earning tens of thousands or, in

at least one case, in excess of $100
,000 a year in salary.

Stephen Watt, Patrick Toohey, Chris
Scott, and Jonathan James become

hack pack.

Stephen Watt was a coding genius.

He graduated from high school at 16.

He graduated from college at age 19 and
went on to take a job in the IT

department of Morgan Stanley, a Wall
Street investment banking firm in

Manhattan.

Gonzalez meets Patrick Toohey on a
shadow crew cash -out trip in 2003.

He came from a household with a shifting
cast of characters and had turned to

hacking as a way to kind of funnel his
alienation, his rage.

Patrick would do anything that Albert
asked, from the coding to the cash -out

trips and anything in between. He
probably would have picked up Albert's

cleaning if he asked him to.

Chris Scott and Jonathan James round out
the gang.

Chris Scott was a depressed, overweight
geek from Miami

who had been ejected from his high
school for disabling all of the

with the virus.

Chris's greatest strength was probably
that he was best friends with Jonathan

James, who was probably the most famous
hacker at the time. He was very well

known. At 16, Jonathan James stakes his
claim to fame by serving six months for

hacking into NASA and Defense Department
computers, becoming the youngest hacker

ever sentenced.

Together, Gonzalez and his crew become a
tight -knit band of brothers.

These guys are driven by a lot of the
same things that we're driven by. They

have an ego, they like challenge, and of
course they like money and everything

you can get from money.

Operation Get Rich starts small, using a
technique called war driving.

So we've just gone by a really nice
place that was not very well encrypted.

Chris Roberts is a gray hat hacker, an
Internet security expert specializing in

fraud.

As we're driving along here, we're still
pulling in a lot of wireless access

points, a lot of systems.

Some are encrypted, some aren't very
well encrypted.

And we've pulled in 800 access points
and almost 500 computers and systems

are attached to them.

Like Roberts, the hack pack uses a Wi
-Fi antenna to find unencrypted or

vulnerable networks.

We're able to just listen in and see
what kind of wireless systems are

advertising, no different than a radio.
As you drive along with a radio, you go

in and out of signal strengths.

This is basically the same thing.

Chris Scott and Jonathan James tune in
to one store at a time along US 1 in

Miami. They'll have pulled into every
single one of these retail areas, slowly

driven through to see what wireless
access points were advertising.

and then to see which ones were
encrypted or which ones were not

The first one that they found was BJ's
Wholesale Club, where they parked

and downloaded all of the credit and
debit card numbers as they were being

swiped. by the customers.

Gonzalez forwards thousands of card
numbers to Patrick Toohey and other

associates. So at that point in time,
you need a little device which is a card

reader and a writer, and you also need
some blank credit cards.

They then encode the information onto
blanks, and runners cash them out at

Gonzalez, who was raised a Catholic,
feels a slight twinge of guilt.

He told Patrick, we're going to hell for
this. And he really meant it.

But he made himself feel better by
telling himself that once the fraud was

detected, then the credit card companies
would restore people's money and all

would be fine.

But war driving and cashing out is
risky.

I physically have to put myself in a
position where I might be videotaped. I

might be caught on a surveillance
camera.

Somebody might be clever enough to work
out that these stores are getting hit.

Albert Gonzalez himself had learned that
cashing out was a dangerous mechanism

because he himself had been arrested
while cashing out.

Gonzalez knows there's a better way to
generate higher volume with less

exposure. He's associating with elite
carters and hackers in Eastern Europe

other places, so he's trying to refine
his techniques and make them even better

and less risky.

To do this, Gonzalez needs a program
called a sniffer code, which he lacks

technical skills to write.

That program then, on its own, will look
around your computer.

It'll look around for your social, it'll
look around for your credit cards,

it'll look around for your banking
information, basically whatever I've

programmed it to do.

And then it will call back to me and
say, here's all the information, have a

nice day.

Gonzalez calls on Stephen Watt, who
fires off the code in ten hours, free of

charge. It was really the key to this
being the cybercrime of the century.

Once the sniffer code is installed, they
can access, copy, and download data

remotely. And it starts to pour in.

Obviously, when you're attacking a
system, when you're gathering data, you

somewhere to put this information.

You're not going to want to put it right
on your computer, because if your

computer gets lost, stolen, taken, or
seized, you've just handed somebody a

amount of evidence.

Gonzalez needs a safe place to stash the
data.

Patrick Toohey had set up servers in
Latvia, Singapore, China, and Ukraine to

store all of these reams and reams,
mountains of data.

But in storage, the numbers near their
expiration dates and they diminish in

value.

So he calls on an international crime
lord to expedite distribution.

Maxi Khrushchev is a Ukrainian national.

who was the biggest wholesaler of credit
and debit cards around the world.

Yastrzemski sells the card numbers for
between $150 and $300 a pop, of which

Gonzalez takes half.

Yastrzemski would sell those cards via
the Internet or in these carding forums

or portals to other lower -level
salespeople who would then turn around

them again.

Yastrzemski distributes the profits to
Gonzalez through online currency

exchanges. Soon, packages containing up
to $370 ,000 are piling up

at Gonzalez's Dropbox.

He actually complained to Stephen Watt
that once his money counter broke from

overuse, and he complained that he had
to count manually $340 ,000.

By the summer of 2005, Gonzalez begins
to indulge in his new lifestyle as a

mogul. It was completely over the top. I
would say much of the profits from

Operation Get Rich or Guy Trying went
right up their noses.

Gonzalez and his crew book a $5 ,000 a
night suite at the Lowe's Hotel in South

Beach. When they were in Miami, they
would make this insane concoction called

magic milkshake.

which was cookies and cream, Haagen
-Dazs ice cream, skim milk, magic

LSD, and ecstasy, all blended together
to create just the most

extreme, insane experience ever.

Gonzalez also throws himself an
extravagant party to celebrate his

New York City.

Lay out a drug buffet on the coffee
table. So C for Coke, E for ecstasy.

They had the best champagne.

They had the best designer drugs.

They had the most beautiful women there.
It was like life as they would design

it. Despite this drug -fueled lifestyle,
Gonzalez never loses control of his

business. He was always reachable.

He slept with his laptop next to him. He
brought his laptop with him on

vacation, to the gym. He always had it
with him.

Next on American Greed, Operation Get
Rich or Die Tryin' gets more

sophisticated, and the hackers up the
ante.

The idea that these guys were able to
slip past all of these levels of

security was just incredible.

And the hackers take one company to the
brink.

What do you do when you're facing the
worst possible thing that can happen to

your company?

By 2005, Albert Gonzalez and his crew
have successfully hacked into several

retailers along US -1 in South Florida.

These big box stores send data to
corporate servers, which Gonzalez knows

real goldmine.

It's very much a case of like, well,
hang on, if I can do it to these couple

individuals in a store, or if I can do
it to these couple of stores, can I do

to more stores? Can I do it to a series
of stores? Can I do it to a bigger

store? And then you go to, can I
actually get the core centralized

then it's like, wow, okay.

If I can get the core system, who
processes all the data? I can go for the

mother load at that point. He orders his
crew to perform reconnaissance on

potential targets.

They identified them in a variety of
ways. Christopher Scott simply going up

down Route 1 with his computer, seeing
where there were vulnerable access

points, going down the list of Fortune
500 companies, identifying companies

shared a common credit card processing
system.

We're identifying ones that had
vulnerable payment systems.

So they'd walk in, maybe make a
purchase, or just walk in and look to

point -of -sales terminal the stores
were using so they could reverse

how to break into the corporate networks
through these different point -of

-sales terminals.

That July, they hit TJX Companies, the
publicly traded parent of Marshalls and

TJ Maxx.

Christopher Scott breaks into two
vulnerable wireless access points at two

Marshall stores along Route 1 in
Florida. Within a matter of weeks, he's

move from there into one of the major
payment card processing servers that TJX

is using.

You have access at that point in time to
the corporate site because now you have

all of these stores that are sending
their daily, weekly, monthly batches all

the way up to the corporate location.

Chris Scott, Gonzales' foot soldier,
explores the network.

He gets increasing amounts of rights or
privileges to move around the system and

discovers a storage location that has 40
or 50 million payment card numbers.

They download that batch of data.

But Gonzalez isn't satisfied.

He wants access to all the numbers
coming into TJX, not just the numbers in

storage. In May 2006, Chris Scott
installs and configures a VPN, or

Virtual Private Network.

Albert's crew had set up a virtual
private network, which is a secure

between TJX's server and one of Albert's
servers.

So whenever they wanted to, they could
just tap that keg, open up the

connection, and let the data stream from
TJX's server right onto Albert's.

Scott then installs a snipper code, the
program that copies numbers while

they're being processed.

It turns out that there's a very tiny
window of time when the...

Credit and debit card numbers aren't
being encrypted when it happens to be in

the open as it's being processed.

And it's during that period that they
make a photocopy of it all for

Using the handle 201679996, Gonzalez
instant messages

Maxim Yastrzemski, his Ukrainian partner
in crime.

In that chat, he mentioned the sniffer
code.

Soon, Yastrzemski could expect more
data.

Business is booming for Gonzalez, whose
crew downloads more than 45 million card

numbers through December 2006.

If you shopped at any of these retail
stores during that period of time,

a very good chance that your credit card
or debit card was compromised.

That Christmas, more than 18 months
after Gonzalez's crew first hit TJX, the

retail giant detects suspicious software
on its systems.

Alarm bells sound, and the feds begin to
investigate.

We didn't know if it was one individual,
if it was several different groups

doing these compromises.

What did we know from the forensics as
to where it was going? Did it look like

anybody else that we'd ever seen? All of
these things were being carefully

followed out, wholly, I'm embarrassed to
say, unsuccessfully.

By January 2007...

Gonzalez has pulled in more than 45
million credit and debit card numbers

TJX, and he decides to get out of the
corporate system.

The trouble is beginning to brew half a
world away.

The Secret Service had been conducting a
totally separate and totally unrelated

investigation into Maxim Yastrzemski for
his international sale of credit and

debit card numbers.

Turkish authorities arrest Maxim
Yastrzemski that July.

That leads to the seizure of a laptop
computer, which the Turks provide to the

Secret Service.

When they opened up his computer, they
found all kinds of things, including

of chat logs with an American who went
by an obscure string of numbers.

201 -67 -9996 is passing on a piece of
software and

says... It's one that I modified for use
in TJX.

And that starts the investigation of who
201 is and how Maxim Yastrzemski

relates to TJX and to other
investigations.

They find further chats about a breach
of Dave & Buster's, the entertainment

chain. Maszak Yastrzemski said he had
another hacker who was into a company

named D &B in the United States.

Yastrzemski had asked 201 to provide a
sniffer code to capture Dave and

credit card data.

That sniffer program was the same
sniffer that was utilized in the TJX

that was our first clue that 201 -67996
may have been involved with TJX. The

feds followed these leads for months.

Just as Gonzales heads into the final
phase of Operation Get Rich, with

Yastrzemski behind bars, Gonzales
decides to keep a closer eye on his

associates, especially Patrick Toohey,
his right -hand man.

It was more important than ever that he
exert as much control as possible over

all of the variables.

In August, Gonzales moves Toohey into
his Miami condo.

It's a far cry from the hotel suites
they've partied in before.

It was a dump. In part, it was because
he wanted to live under the radar,

because he understood from his
experience with law enforcement that

money is one of those things that gives
you away.

It's different, though, from some of the
hackers we've seen in Eastern Europe

where they'll buy a restaurant, they'll
buy a housing project or complex,

they'll buy million -dollar apartments.

That wasn't this crew here.

They might buy a few nice computers or
recreational items, but they're not

living in the million -dollar apartments
in Manhattan.

By late fall, Operation Get Rich
progresses from more driving to more

complicated web -based hacks.

Gonzalez conspires with TUI and two
Russians to commit a series of other

intrusions using a diabolical plan known
as a SQL injection attack.

SQL injection attack is an internet
-based attack on a website that's

-driven. So the most important
difference is you don't need that

proximity anymore.

to conduct these types of remote hacks
into systems. You can be sitting in

and do a SQL injection, internet -based
attack on a computer system in

California.

Coming up, Gonzalez and his co
-conspirators go to the motherlode and

credit card processing company, their
biggest prize yet.

They were in a position to...

accessed tens of millions of payment
card numbers quickly, and that was a

goose. So the hack is the credit card
processing company. It's like the Holy

Grail at that point in time.

By December 2007,

Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin' has
entered its most ambitious phase yet.

Albert Gonzalez and his co -conspirators
target several companies, including

Heartland Payment Systems, one of the
world's largest payment processors.

We process for about 250 ,000 locations
in America and a few in Canada,

and we process about 4 billion
transactions a year.

Bob Carr is the founder, chairman, and
chief executive officer of Heartland

Payment Systems.

There's no doubt that people who process
billions of transactions are the mother

load of data, that's for sure.

When we were doing our initial public
offering of stock on the roadshow, the

question everyone asked is, what keeps
you awake at night? And my answer was

always getting breached.

But Carr is totally unaware that his
worst nightmare is coming true.

Gonzalez and Patrick Toohey invisibly
hack into Heartland.

using a sequel injection attack.

If I were to walk up to you on the
street and say, can you tell me the

you'd tell me the time.

But if I were to walk up to you on the
street and say, can you tell me your

name, address, social security number
and mother's maiden name, then you're

going to do that.

You're smart enough to know the
difference between information you

out and information you shouldn't give
out.

Whereas with...

A website that's subjected to a SQL
injection attack, it's not programmed to

correctly recognize which commands it
should obey and which commands it should

ignore. They install a sniffer code to
copy data in small, well -timed chunks.

From there, it was a matter of having
that sniffing software work and send the

payment card information, the credit and
debit card information out to...

Hacking platforms in foreign countries
and in the United States that could be

used to receive and store the card data
that was stolen, but also the malware,

the software that was used to sell it.

For months, the hackers tap into
Heartland's network.

You don't want to turn the spigot on the
whole way and just drain the thing

immediately. You want to take a little
bit of time and keep on taking it.

They access more than 130 million credit
and debit card numbers.

These bad guys spent.

Hours and hours and hours for months and
months and months trying to figure out

and customize an attack that would get
through and get into our payments

network, and they were able to do that.

Back at the Secret Service, agents have
been combing through Maxim Yastrzemski's

computer.

They find chats referring to someone
with the initials CJ.

CJ is short for Kumbhajani.

which is the name we had Gonzalez use
when he was an informant in Operation

Firewall. It's a very small connection,
very much at the periphery, but we had

one or two of those little indications
start to unravel.

They also learn the Ukrainian crime lord
has been chatting with a mysterious

American, 201 -67 -9996, who was somehow
involved in the

TJX hack.

201 -679 -996 is connected to an email
address, supnazi at

efnet .ru.

And the Secret Service recognizes that
email address as one that has been used

previously by Albert Gonzalez. For the
first time, there was a major lead.

Shockwaves ripple through the Secret
Service.

Is Gonzalez playing both sides?

While Albert is masterminding this
incredible cybercrime, he is still

an informant for the Fed.

Agents move quickly to secure warrants
to arrest Gonzalez and his crew.

And by now...

Gonzalez knows the heat is coming down.

When you were involved with someone that
gets arrested, you're going to be more

apprehensive. And we had seen in the
chats that 201 person being apprehensive

about that situation.

So he most likely knew from reading
public information about our cases,

things that we were closing in.

On May 7, 2008, after nearly a year
-long investigation,

The feds go after their informant.

These young kids had access to documents
that would allow them to immediately

flee the country.

And we were very, very concerned that
Gonzalez was going to be one of those,

once he was gone, we would never get him
back.

About 150 agents scour Gonzalez's condo,
his parents' house, and several other

residences.

From Gonzalez's condominium.

There was multiple computers and media
that was seized, a large quantity of

from Gonzalez's parents' residence.

We seized a number of computers,
documents, a money counter.

But Gonzalez is nowhere to be found.

When they arrived at the place where
they thought Albert Gonzalez would be,

his parents' house or his girlfriend's
house, he was neither.

And that's when the panic began.

On a tip, they search a suite at the
National Hotel in Miami's South Beach,

where they find Gonzalez, along with two
laptops, $22 ,000 in cash, and a Glock

27 handgun.

They arrest Gonzalez and Christopher
Scott that same day.

Patrick Toohey is arrested soon after.

Patrick knew he was sunk. He knew that
he and the entire operation, they were

just dead meat. He started talking
immediately.

After Albert discovered that Patrick was
cooperating, Albert himself became very

cooperative, and he led them to a lot of
information, including he told them

where the money was buried in his
parents' backyard.

Investigators return to Albert's
childhood home, where they search the

They find a barrel buried beneath a palm
tree.

Once the earth was unsealed, inside was
over $1 million of vacuum -packed cash.

Gonzalez has stashed $1 .1 million in
plastic bags for safekeeping.

Soon, the feds unearth more secrets
about the case.

When we executed those search warrants,
one of the individuals spoke and said

that Albert Gonzalez used the nickname
Segveg.

And that was the evidence we were
looking for to get us over the edge and

able to indict him.

Segveg. The handle Gonzalez used during
chats with Yastrzemski about Dave and

Busters clinches it for the feds.
Finally, really, we're starting to

understand all these data breaches we
had seen happen over the years. It was

really exciting.

It was shocking.

A few weeks later, the criminal
complaint against Gonzalez is posted

it rocks the hacking underworld.

This is a very close community of
hackers.

These are people you have to remember
who are very alienated from the rest of

society. They feel that all they have is
each other.

24 -year -old Jonathan James, Gonzalez's
former war driver, was shocked to learn

that his boss has been working for the
Secret Service since 2003.

There's just been this nice set of
clicky groups, and you can trust

and now you're like, well, whose side
are you on?

James, who had become famous for hacking
as a teen, believes his friends will

rat him out.

Coming up, James takes matters into his
own hands, and Operation Get Rich or Die

Tryin' takes a deadly turn.

He did not want to have that kind of
heat on him again, and the idea that

were now turning on each other, it was
intolerable to him.

In May 2008, with Albert Gonzalez and
his hack pack behind bars, the feds

to shore up their case.

But Jonathan James, one of Gonzalez's
war drivers, is still free.

And he jumps to the conclusion that
Gonzalez is going to set him up. He said

that he was sure that he was going to be
the scapegoat for this crime, given his

notoriety, and also given that he knew
that Albert...

was a government cooperator, and he was
sure that Albert was going to pin the

crime on him.

James pens a letter titled Storytime.

In it, he says he had nothing to do with
the hats.

He couldn't bear the idea that they were
all betraying each other. Once these

hackers turned on each other, they had
nobody left.

Remember, it's not whether you win or
lose, it's whether I win or lose. And

sitting in jail for 20, 10, or even 5
years for a crime I didn't commit is not

me winning.

I die free.

Minutes later, he picks up a handgun,
points it to his temple, and pulls the

trigger.

If he, in fact, played a part in this
crime, he played a very small part, and

it's not clear whether he would have
been indicted had he not killed himself.

The feds file more indictments against
Gonzalez and his crew in August 2008.

And for the first time, the scope of the
crime becomes clear.

We had to keep replacing our press
releases. This is the most significant,

largest data breach we've had. It just
kept building upon itself.

500 ,000 numbers, then a million
numbers.

The first indictment is filed in New
York for the Dave and Buster's breach.

The second in Massachusetts.

for the hacks into TJX companies, BJ's
Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, and several

other businesses.

But despite being in jail, Gonzalez is
still wreaking havoc on the outside.

In October 2008, credit card companies
warned Heartland Payment Systems of

suspicious activity.

We hired forensics companies to help try
to find it. We got a report that there

were no problems found, so we thought we
were in the clear.

When forensics companies tell you that
they can't find anything and they do

for a living, you get some sense of
comfort that there's not a problem.

Three months go by, and in January 2009,
Heartland chiefs get the call they've

been dreading.

Someone had found data in our system
that could not be explained, data that

did not create.

In the next couple of days, we learned
that there was malware that was creating

this data.

And that turned out to be the card
numbers that were put into files that

compressed. I knew it would be
disastrous for a lot of the stockholders

company, including me.

Heartland goes public with news of the
breach days later.

Another big story at 6. A credit card
processing company gets hacked into.

The company's stock plummets from about
$16 a share to less than $4.

But the loss is really much greater.

We've reported losses of $139 million
that we've paid out or booked that we

pay out. So we suffered a net $110
million loss, and we still don't know if

we're finished. We probably are not, but
we think the bulk of it is behind us.

In focus this evening, security in
cyberspace.

A lot of people will look at Heartland,
and they don't want to be the next

headline on CNBC.

So they're going to be quite careful,
too.

improve the standards and make sure that
they're defending themselves.

In August 2009, Gonzalez, Patrick
Toohey, and two unnamed Russian hackers

indicted in New Jersey for conspiring to
break into Heartland and several other

companies. Software has sort of a
digital fingerprint, a kind of digital

And in the process of investigating it,
if it has that same DNA, there's a link

between those two victim sites.

And what we ended up with was...

enough similarities between the five
victim sites to know that we were

with one hacking crew.

But much about the case remains a
mystery, like how many credit card

were stolen.

There were tens of millions more at TJX
and in excess of 100 million at

Heartland that could have been taken,
but nobody knows the exact number.

And how much money Gonzalez and his crew
ultimately earned from their hacks.

They're young kids. They spent a lot of
money.

They spent a lot of money on partying, a
lot of money on drugs, fun nights out,

spending $80 ,000. So it's hard for us
to know if they didn't just spend most

it, too.

Prosecutors do know that victims lose at
least $400 million, and restitution is

set at $172 million.

Gonzalez, with his team, committed the
largest identity theft.

ever prosecuted in the United States and
perhaps the world.

The dollar loss was so large that it
changed the behavior of corporations as

they realized that they had to increase
the level of security because there was

a large dollar risk involved.

So it was changing to the whole culture
in the size of what he did.

Patrick Tuohy, Stephen Watt, Chris Scott
and Maxim Yastrzemski.

all served multi -year sentences in
prison.

And as for Gonzalez... He agreed to
plead guilty to all of them and

received a 20 -year sentence to run on
each of them at the same time.

Restitution well in excess of $100
million and forfeiture of jewelry,

computers, and over a million dollars in
cash that had been dug up in his

parents' backyard.

At sentencing, Gonzalez's attorney
argues these were not crimes of greed.

Rather, that Gonzalez suffers from
Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of

which could explain his addiction to
computers.

People with Asperger's are unable to
relate to other people. Whereas Albert

a natural leader.

He, by definition, could relate to other
people, size them up, negotiate with

them. squeeze work product out of them.
He was the exact opposite of somebody

with Asperger's.

Court -appointed psychologists find no
evidence of the disorder.

These guys spent a lot of time on their
computers, but so does about half to two

-thirds of all the students at nearby
MIT.

So the fact that you spend a lot of time
on your computer as a kid, that you

communicate with others on your
computers, does not justify crime.

In the end, What begins as teenagers
hacking for fun soon becomes the

cybercrime in history, an operation that
lives up to its name.

When Albert called this caper Operation
Get Rich or Die Trying, I'm sure he

didn't actually intend for anyone to
die.