162: Hieu

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27:17Check it all out at blackhillsinfosec.com slash darknet. That's blackhillsinfosec.com slash darknet.

27:30Hugh gets back to Vietnam. He's around 20 years old at this point. He goes to see his mother and his father, and they heard about his fraudulent concert ticket thing, and they were mad. They scolded him. They shamed him. and he was just lying back to them. I give them all the false promises, you know. I told them, you know, I will be a good boy and be a better person, not doing anything illegal. You kind of feel like very ashamed, you know. So my mom was crying a lot. But back then I was like 20 years old, 19 years old. Try to be a good person. I didn't touch the computer within six months when I got back from New Zealand.

28:16And I told my mom, you know, I want to go to Ho Chi Minh City to learn computer science at the university in Ho Chi Minh City. My mom and my dad, you know, they kind of believed me that I'm kind of a changed person. And hopefully this time will be the last change for me. So around 2009, he moved to Ho Chi Minh City and enrolled in the computer science and cybersecurity program at the university. But during that first year, I went to hang out with other old school hackers in Vietnam. They're all blackhead hackers. They heard about, you know, I got a problem. I got trouble in New Zealand by using stolen reddit call.

29:07I say, yes, you know, that's why I don't want to touch computer anymore. I got so scared. I almost got caught. And they told me, you know, why you don't think about U.S. identity or personal information? It should be safer. It should be easily to sell that. So these hackers were telling him, yeah, of course you got in trouble for stealing stolen credit cards. Man, don't mess with money. The police are going to get mad if you do that. That was your mistake. They take credit card theft very seriously. Heck, I bet the U.S. Secret Service probably has a case opened on you. What you should have done is gone into the business of stealing the identities of U.S.

29:45citizens and sell that. Not only can you make money doing that, but the Secret Service doesn't give a crap about stolen identities. In fact, nobody does. They'll never come after you for stealing identities, especially if you stay here in Vietnam. They can't touch you. So you should try stealing U.S. identities. So Hugh starts looking into it. My goodness, he thinks. They're right. Stealing identities and selling that is far less of a crime than stealing credit cards and just as valuable on the dark web. He wasn't sure why it was valuable, but if he could get all the personal details of someone, like their address, social security number, phone number, work history, the type of car they have, then people will buy that up like crazy on the dark web.

30:26So he starts looking around for places that might have all this information on U.S. citizens. I didn't think kind of in the long term. I just see whatever I see in front of me. And the money just kind of blind my eyes. And I thought it should be safer. And I'm in Vietnam. And this U.S. identity should be fine. I mean, the logic checks out, right? Stealing identities of people in a far, far away country? No chance of them catching him in Vietnam, right? And eventually, I spent like almost a month. I recon and also doing a lot of hosting to get me a list of only data brokers in the U.S. to be able to provide this data.

31:21Data brokers, of course. They would absolutely have a ton of people's identities. Okay, so if you don't know, a data broker is a company that spends an enormous amount of effort gathering up as much information as they can about you. Here's how they do it. Number one, they'll copy the whole phone book into their database. That's got everyone's name and phone number. Then they'll take a copy of all the county records. This includes who owns which property, court records, marital status. Then they'll look at your social media account and scoop up any photos that you have taken of yourself and posted, email addresses you list, affiliations, like which school you went to or place you work.

32:00Like LinkedIn is being scraped by data brokers all day, which you personally have told what your skills are, who your coworkers are, where you work, and what you look like. Now, to me, that's already spooky enough that someone would go through all this trouble to get all this data on me by doing all that. But some data brokers go far deeper and are way more sinister at getting data on us. They have been known to install trackers on your phone, which typically just comes along for the ride on popular apps. Like a data broker may pay an app developer to put a tracking pixel on the app so that they can track people even more.

32:37This means a data broker is often collecting cell phone data, which could include your phone number, the app usage, but more interestingly, up-to-the-minute location information. Some data brokers go even further and set up antennas around town and watch what phones interact with those antennas. And they can track your phone's location that way. Some have been known to put little sensors on roads to identify which cars have passed down that road and take pictures of license plates going by too. Of course, purchasing history is important to them. I've heard stories of data brokers buying your purchase history data from retail stores.

33:14And if you don't know, a lot of retail stores are very closely tracking all the purchases you make with your credit card and have a complete history of everything you've ever bought with that card in their store. Sometimes they even track where you are in the store and what you stop to look at to see what interests you. And yes, absolutely. Data brokers are buying up all this data that the stores are collecting on you because this consumer behavior is worth gold to these data brokers. So why do these data brokers do this? Why do they go to such great lengths to build databases on us? Because there's a lot of people who are willing to buy this data.

33:47Your data is very valuable. And I'm not talking about selling it on the dark web. We'll get to that. Data brokers often sell their data to law enforcement. And this has been a growing problem over time. I feel like law enforcement has found a loophole to ignore the Fourth Amendment. As a refresher, the Fourth Amendment says you have a right to privacy from the government. The government should not be able to see into your life without a warrant or probable cause. But they are through data brokers. There's something called a third-party doctrine now, which says if you give your data to a third party, you no longer have a reasonable expectation of privacy from that data.

34:27So that means if you have money in the bank, the bank can share your data with the government without a warrant. And law enforcement can purchase your location data from a data broker without a warrant because it's commercially available data. Data brokers are trying to ruin the Fourth Amendment. And I want you to look a little closer at where this data is coming from. Yes, a lot of it is publicly sourced, but a lot is not. A lot is data that you think is just private between you and the party you trusted your data with. But they're selling that data to others. And so if you think it's safe and secure, but it's secretly being scraped and sold, I would say that's spying on you, which the government isn't allowed to spy on its own citizens.

35:10I mean, mass surveillance is against the law flat out, but they can get away with it because data brokers are the ones doing the spying and the mass surveillance, not the government. And then they're selling it to the government. Now, I've tried to remove my digital footprint as much as possible, but there are still things that I'm forced to do, which hurts my privacy and I hate it. Like for instance, anytime I see a doctor, I can't do it under a fake name. They have a strict policy where I have to prove my identity in order to get medical treatment. And then my medical records are being passed around to millions of people.

35:49HIPAA isn't there to protect our privacy. It's there to assist others to get our data. The portability part of it means they're making it easy to package up our data and send it to whoever asks for it. and there are millions of people and entities that can access HIPAA and patient data. Second is banks. There are laws in place where the banks have to verify who you are before they do business with you. Know your customer type stuff. And the banks are forced to report certain activity to the government. So millions of customers' banking data is going to the government again without a warrant. Lastly, I hate all this public record stuff.

36:28If I buy a house, get married, go to court, start a business, get arrested. All that is public record. And it gets abused all day, every day, because it is. I have no choice when it comes to these matters. My banking history, medical information, marital status, there's no way to opt out of any of it. And data brokers are just licking their lips, sucking it up as fast as they can. And they're profiting off of it. And they're using it to strip away my rights. But don't think it stops there. Data brokers are just companies trying to make money. So they have no problem selling your data to Walmart, Facebook, Google, insurance companies, credit card agencies, ad agencies, because all these businesses would love to know more about who you are so that they can target you with ads or to calculate the risk of doing business with you.

37:17And these data brokers absolutely do not want you to know they exist. They do a great job at hiding their presence in the world. Let me give you an example. I'm going to list eight of them for you. And I bet you've never heard of any of these companies, yet there's a high chance that all of them know exactly what you're doing right now. Merkle, Locate Plus, LiveRamp, MicroBuilt, Ventel, SafeGraph, X-Mode Social, Court Ventures. I certainly don't know anything about these companies. but Hugh was learning a lot about them.

38:04And I found out, right, there are a few key players in this data business related to the US and they provide his data to law enforcement, to lawyers, to private investigators, stuff like that. And I see, man, it's kind of very difficult to get this information. You have to prove yourself. You have to be verified. So that's why I put a lot of time, like almost a month. And I hacked into two different data brokers. Very popular one. The first one is this Locate Plus. Locate Plus is a data broker that markets itself to people doing background checks and investigations. They get their data from criminal records, property records, the phone book, and also gather social security numbers and date of birth.

39:06The first one I have to do is the Locate Plus. And the second one is the MicroBuild. MicroBuilt collects data on U.S. citizens, which includes criminal history, employment history, address history, and social security numbers. They also keep records of your utility payments, rent payments, loan payments, and stuff like that to see if you pay your bills on time. The big credit bureaus use this one, like Experian and Equifax, because your credit score is a reflection of how well you pay your bills. But not only that, landlords use MicroBuilt. Employers do background checks on it. And lenders look to see how much of a risk you are before doing business with you.

39:49So the two companies, LocatePlus and Microbute, I hacked them a few times. First, single injection. The second one, the five upload vulnerabilities. And the third one, cross-site scripting. When I got into their database, right, I steal the customer logins of their platform. And then I use that to be able to log it into the platform and make a query. Okay, interesting. He didn't get into the main data broker database. Instead, he was just able to get into the web portal side of things, which had user accounts. And that's the people who use the site to do background checks and lookups with. He was able to steal some of their logins.

40:37So now he could log into the site and use it as if he was a lawyer or a cop or an investigator who's been vetted by the site to look up anyone's data. I can search your name, the state that you've been living or the city you live in, and that's all. It will pop out the possible people identity related to that name and in that city. and you can get the social security number, rival license, all the previous 10 years addresses that you've been living, even the current one. And also you will obtain your relatives, your family members, right? You can also get the information. Now these sites charge for their service.

41:26It's often a pay per search kind of thing. So when he would search, it would go to someone else's bill. And he thought if he did a lot of searches on one user, then their bill would go way up, and then they'd investigate what's going on here, and they would find out that he's been using their account, and they would shut it down. So he would cycle through all the accounts he had to spread out his activity. I remember I was using more than 5 ,000 accounts on my rebuild alone. So with his access, he could look anyone up and get their full name, maiden name, phone number, email address, where they live, address history, social security number, driver's license, where they work, work history, and the VIN number for their car.

42:15He decides to build a website to charge users to be able to look up people in this database. Because so much information, then I build a website, and then through that website, I sell to all the cyber criminals around the world. for like$1 for one search. Kind of like$1 for one information. One identity, basically. The first week of him launching this website, he made$5 ,000 from people doing searches on it. It was an instant hit. He wasn't sure why people were using his site to search for other people, but he didn't care. He just saw the money coming in. It was like, yeah. And interestingly, this was the early days and crypto wasn't really adopted so well yet.

43:00So he wasn't accepting that. Back then, I didn't use Bitcoin. We used Liberty Reserve. Liberty Reserve was sort of like a PayPal in the way that you could send money to someone online, except they didn't do much in regards of checking people's identities. So it became known as the place for criminal transactions around 2010. It was the go-to place for stuff like that for a while. So he was getting tons of Liberty Reserve dollars, and they were piling up in his account there. Then he was using some Vietnamese money mules that he found on the dark web to send them his Liberty Reserve dollars, and they'd cash it out and give him cash.

43:36And things were looking good for a few months. But, you know, the thing is not stable. Because the two companies, they find out about the vulnerability, so they shut down, and they also fix the vulnerability. Kind of like me and them, you know, we've been playing the cat and mouse game. They fish the bird race ability. I found out another one, so we just keep hacking and fishing. So I got tired. He was getting tired of constantly trying to find new ways to stay in the system. They were getting good at detecting him and kicking him out. So he stops to think about it. And he thought, why struggle to maintain access when he could just become a paying user of the site.

44:26Now, micro-built would only allow certain people to use their site. You had to be a professional investigator or a cop or in a position that you can be trusted with this data. And there's a serious vetting process. So Hugh decided, why not try to act like a private investigator and get in? Step one, create a driver's license with a fake name. At first, I got the license to Google, but it didn't work. I tried to do Photoshop and stuff like that but couldn't work out. It's not good quality. Okay, that didn't work. Time for plan B. Try to impersonate someone who is allowed to have an account there.

45:05So I did an OSINT to gathering all the lists of emails address belong to the private investigator. And you know, when I hacked into MyReview and Locate Plus, right? I got the email address already. I got on the list already. So I used that to do phishing. I was phishing them, you know, to a malware so I can got into the computer. Wow. So the 5 ,000 users that he got from MicroBuild, he could see which ones were private investigators? and get all those emails and also their data from the data broker to know everything about them and then send them phishing emails? And if they clicked the link, he would infect their computer with malware, essentially giving him access to their computers.

46:03And when he got access, he would look around to see if he could find any identifying documents for these private investigators so he could impersonate them. And one of the private investigators, I remember he was living in Michigan in the US. And I got into his computer to the malware. I got all the data on his computer, including like the private investigator license, even his passport, his social security numbers. And I got, I mean, I got everything. And back then, you know, like the people, they still got a habit saving all the sensitive stuff on their desktop inside the spreadsheet right? Kind of like an Excel file storing the username and password like sensitive information in that file and I got that file too you know so I got all the information their birth and driver license stuff like that so I impersonated as him under his name I obtained an account at MyRebuild.

47:19So I got a MyRebuild account officially. I was using that maybe a month or two. So they found out this is a fake account. So they shut down my account. So he's realizing MicroBuild is giving him a lot of trouble and decides to look at another data broker to maybe register an account there. And that's when he found a data broker called Court Ventures. Court Ventures providing API and data access for the people to make queries to be able to obtain the U.S. identity. Oh, this is even better, he thought. If he could get API access to make queries and do searches, that's a whole lot easier to integrate into his website.

48:00They were just like the others. They had address history, criminal history, full identity data. And yeah, investigators, cops, fraud detection agencies, and credit bureaus loved using CourtVentures to look up people's data. He found a private investigator in Singapore and was able to obtain all his details and was going to impersonate him to try to get an account at CourtVentures. I got his license and I impersonated that guy, the private investigator in Singapore. and I use them to apply the Code Venture account. And I pay for them. I was dealing with them like real businessmen. I was doing for big companies, doing background check for Microsoft, Google.

48:51So I need a lot of queries every month to do background check. And they're okay with that because I pay for them. And I told them, you know, I want to have a good deal. And then the CEO of that co-denture company, they gave me a good deal. Like, I remember like 14 cents. 14 cents for one information. So I said, yes, okay, we make a business contract too. Like, I paid the signature. I paid the name, everything. So I sent back to him. and they didn't verify anything. They just keep going. They okay everything. Okay, he got the account. He could do searches on people now. Good, good, he thought. But he wanted that API key.

49:41So he applied for it. And a few weeks later, they gave it to him. Incredible. So I got the account, man. I said, oh, oh my God. I got the API asset to like almost 200 million US identity right there. and all I need to do, you know, to integrate that into my website. That's all. Yeah, 200 million U.S. citizens details were in this data broker. That's like over 60 % of all U.S. citizens data. That's incredible. And at 14 cents per lookup, he could sell each of those searches for a dollar on his website. His grand plan was starting to come together. So at that time, my website is still on the clear web.

50:25you know like anybody can get access but most of the clients that I have is all cyber criminals around the world. And technically I didn't care what they whatever they been using this identity. So I just keep selling to the API of the code venture. And I remember every month I was making more than 120k per month. USD. Yeah, he really didn't care who would use the site or why. He didn't even ask. All he knew is that people liked using it to look up people and he could make a nice profit off it. So it seemed like a good business model to him. But even though he was making$120 ,000 a month, he still had a massive bill to pay to court ventures every month.

51:14And I was paying for CodeVenture every month from$20 ,000 to$35 ,000 USD per month. Yeah, they're happy. And I'm happy as well. So it was kind of a win-win situation. I keep running that website for over two years. and I was making more than$3 million USD by selling the U.S. identity. It makes me wonder, is any of this illegal? I mean, can you squarely point at who the victim is here in this situation? Do you know the story of I-Rate Joe's? It's an interesting one. So there's this U.S. grocery store called Trader Joe's. It's fantastic. I love it. A majority of food there at Trader Joe's is the Trader Joe's branded stuff, and people get hooked on that brand.

52:12Well, up in Vancouver, Canada, they were begging Trader Joe's to come open a store here, but Trader Joe's refused. They're like, no, we only focus in the U.S. We're not going international. So some guy in Vancouver was like, well, you know what? I'm going to open my own Trader Joe's in Canada. Why not? Because if they're not going to do business here, then there's probably no jurisdiction issues or harm. should be fine. So he crosses the border into Washington State, buys a ton of Trader Joe's stuff, and drives it back to Vancouver and opens up a little shop called Pirate Joe's. He charged more than Trader Joe's did because of the logistics of it.

52:46But hey, people in Vancouver were happy to get some of their favorite food items. Finally, Trader Joe's was like, hey, you can't do that. And Pirate Joe's was like, yeah, yeah, we're in Canada. Your U.S. laws don't apply here. He was right. Trader Joe's had a really hard time getting anywhere legally. But eventually they convinced a U.S. court to force a trademark infringement on Pirate Joe's, saying the name of the store is too similar to Trader Joe's and they're smugglers. So what did they do? Pirate Joe's dropped the P and renamed the store to Irate Joe's. And they clearly put all over their store, we are unaffiliated, unauthorized, and unafraid.

53:28Trader Joe's was furious that they stayed open and started banning them from coming into the store to buy stuff. They banned the owner who was driving twice a week to buy$5 ,000 worth of groceries from Trader Joe's. Then he got his co-workers to go to different Trader Joe's and try to buy stuff from there. But Trader Joe's started figuring out which stores in Washington they were visiting and buying food in the shop so they would block these other people from purchasing things. So irate Joe's started asking their customers to help stock the store. They're like, hey, if you're going to Washington, Please pick some stuff up for us at the store.

54:00And soon dozens of people were now helping stock the shelves at Irate Joe's. I'm telling you, people really love Trader Joe's stuff. And crowdsourcing the buying was working for them. But Trader Joe's was putting more and more limits on how much people could buy in the stores that were close to Vancouver. The guy who owned Irate Joe's is like, bro, I'm your biggest customer by far. I buy more than anyone else in this store. What is your deal? We're not asking for anything special. So we just want to buy what you have. But Trader Joe's kept giving them legal trouble. And eventually, irate Joe's shut down from the expensive legal fees that they kept facing.

54:39And again, here's a situation where I wonder, who's the victim? Trader Joe's sure thought it was them. But what do you think? I mean, when I was a teenager, I used to buy things from the dollar store and then sell them on eBay for$5 each. If it's legal for data brokers to sell identities of U.S. citizens, why would it be illegal for Hugh to buy those and resell them for more? This is the part I don't get. It's apparently perfectly fine for a data broker to buy and sell identifying information on U.S. citizens, but it's not for Hugh? In Hugh's case, he didn't hack into the site. He didn't steal anything.

55:18He was a paying customer of Court Ventures and was paying them a lot of money for all the searches people did. And they seemed to be fine with that. Happy that Hugh was their customer. So he had his little website set up and accepted payment from Liberty Reserve and users could search Court Venture Database through the API. And at first, that website is called the ussearching.info and then eventually, like, suppergate.info and findget.me, stuff like that. I change the domain constantly to avoid law enforcement. And I was selling a little more than 3 million U.S. identities during that two years, from 2010 to 2012.

56:12Okay, let me do the math. Okay, 3 million searches, 14 cents per search. That's$420 ,000 that he paid to Court Ventures and all this. Jeez, that's a lot of money Co-Adventures made off him. And that was fine for him because he made over$2.5 million in profit after that. Unbelievable. And during 2011, right, I dropped out the school. I didn't study and finish the university anymore because I was thinking that, man, I was making a lot of money. Every month, like, I was making up to 120K per month. What were you using the money for that you were getting? Back then, it's too young, too dumb, you know, like, a lot of money.

57:00I spent on stupid stuff, on five-star hotel and business class. Spent a lot of money on, like, stupid things. And I waste a lot of money for cars and luxury stuff. What kind of car did you have? I was having like three different cars, two sports cars. One of them is a BMW, the convertible one. And another one is a customized car, like full customized one. That I don't even know that, you know, what kind of car is it, but like one of the… I remember I used that call to be in a contest for a good customized call. And I won the prize as well, too. Because I spent so much money on that call. And customized that and fine-tuned that call.

58:01And the other call that I have is luxury call. Luxus. Right. Yeah. So what did your parents think of all this money? I was lying to them. you know, I was working for an international bank in the US, and they hired me to protect the system and also building their website, you know, like all the lies, you know. And when I meet up with other people, kind of like same age, even like the people that I know on the street, they ask me, you know, why I am so rich. And I lied to them, you know, because my family was a wealthy family. and they got everything for me. That's why. So I kind of like lines with each other with different stories, you know, and I kind of very tired though.

58:56What were the people that were using your site? Do you know why they were searching for people? What was the point of them paying for people's searches? That's a good question though. the question you know like the the answer for this is at that time I didn't care much about how how did they use this information all I know you know maybe they use that to impersonate somebody or even like they use that to bypass the ready call transaction authentication whatever that's all I know

59:38So like he said, this went on for years He was able to automate a lot of it So he would only do a few hours of work a week to keep it all going Life was going great for him Eventually, Court Ventures, right? They got acquired by the Experian Oh, interesting In December 2011, Experian bought Court Ventures Now, Experian is one of the three major credit bureaus in the U.S. They create a credit score for every U.S. adult, and rental places and loan agencies will check your credit score before doing business with you. So Experian loved the data that Court Ventures had on people so much that they just bought it outright.

1:00:19I couldn't find what the purchase price was for 200 million U.S. citizens data, but I imagine it was in the millions of dollars. Now, after Experian bought Court Ventures, the Secret Service contacted Experian and was like, you know that company you just bought? Yeah, well, we have reason to believe that they are giving data to someone who is illicitly reselling it to criminals. Experian is like, what? Say that again? Court Ventures never told them this in the trade deal. So Experian quickly shut down Hugh's account and cooperated with the Secret Service. In fact, Experian was so mad that they sued Court Ventures for not taking action on this earlier.

1:01:04I suspect the lawsuit was because they were misrepresenting their business in the trade deal. And so the Secret Service now had their eyes fixed on Hugh.

1:01:17One of the court requests from the U.S. Secret Service, you know, asking about the status of my account, the fake account. And eventually they shut down my account at the code venture.

1:02:00It shut down his account entirely. Anyway, this company, I got one of the accounts who phishing attack. And I use that to do manually searching identity for other people who still need the service. He wanted to get another API connection to Court Ventures. This hand searching stuff was just taking way too much time. So he starts emailing them. Hey, how come you shut off my API connection? I need it back. But what he didn't know is that because the Secret Service were investigating him, it was them who was responding to his emails. And they was making up a story that, you know, they will offer me a good API connection, not only to the U.S.

1:02:48identity data, but also the U.K. identity data. I say, well, you know, it's a good business. and it's kind of too good to be true. But, you know, at that time, the money just blinded my eyes. I said, okay, it looks good. But the thing, you know, I feel something suspicious going on too. Something not right. Apparently, there was another guy that was doing the same thing as Hugh, also reselling data broker data. But the Secret Service caught that guy who was in the UK, and that guy was assisting the Secret Service to catch other people doing the same. So that's what felt off to Hugh. He was talking to both the Secret Service, an agent named Matt O 'Neill, and a guy from the UK named Mark, who got caught reselling identities.

1:03:34His name Mark, he still keep communicating with me through email, and even call me, I remember, through Skype back then. And they say, you know, they want me to go to the US and also go to Australia. or go to Hawaii. I say, no, I don't want to go there. But Matt O 'Neill and Mark, they collaborate together, and they lure me to Guam. They told him if he can meet them in Guam, they'll give him all the things he needs for his API access. They made up a story of why they need to meet him in person. Something like, the big boss really wants to meet you. You're one of our best customers, and we can get the contract signed right then and there.

1:04:24And then we can open a big party, you know, so we can have fun together. And then you can fly back to Vietnam, everything good. So he decides to fly to Guam, which is kind of near Southeast Asia. He figures it's the closest option that they gave him and looks safe. You know, I didn't do any research about Guam. I thought it's just like an island. Nobody cares. And I heard that some of the Vietnamese people, they live over there as well too. Maybe it's fine. If there's any problem, I will go to talk to my people asking for help. And then I bought a ticket and then I went to Guam with my sister.

1:05:07Because back then, my English is not really well. And I went there with her together. And the moment I landed at the international airport, They escorted me to US Customs office. And that moment, that right moment, you know, I just feel like, man, something going on, something fishy. And then they told me, sit down here, you know, we want to talk to you a little bit. And I was so nervous. I was trembling, you know, like, man. And I was shocked. I said, man, something not right. They put a stack of the paper, like, I remember, like, maybe, like, 10 inches thick, very thick documents. And they told me, you know, we know about you.

1:06:07We know everything about you. Maybe more than your family knows about you. And that moment, I said, man, it's over. It's over. And that's it.

1:06:25I feel like I was on top of the wall and right now I was living in hell. And that's it. They sent me to the jail in Guam. After that, and they sent my sister back to Vietnam. I talked with the prosecutor and the US Secret Service agent. I said, my sister had nothing to do with this. It's all about me. So they released my sister. And I was staying in the jail in Guam for like a little more than two months. And then they sent me back to the mainland, the U.S. mainland. To many different jail. They sent me to Hawaii, to Los Angeles, Nevada. They sent me to Oklahoma. New Jersey And then New York And then New Hampshire New Hampshire is where his case was going to be tried So that was his final destination And he was stuck in prison through the entire legal battle Apparently the U.S.

1:07:33prosecutor who first investigated him Was in New Hampshire And so that's why his trial was there Reflecting back on how he got caught He has a few theories First, he blames Brian Krebs A cybersecurity journalist who did an article that said how criminals can look up people on the dark web. And his website is listed there. And so he thinks, that's how the Secret Service probably first learned about my website. And on his website, he made a few mistakes. The first week of having it, he used a hosting provider but registered it under his real name. But then he changed the registration to an anonymous name.

1:08:07But those past records are still visible. Second, he used to have his personal email address on the website for contact details. So these slip-ups would have easily traced someone to Hugh. And I also believe that the Secret Service probably used his site, did some searches on people, and then tried to correlate that with the logs at Court Ventures to pinpoint exactly which user Hugh was using for his site. But this whole time, he wasn't sure exactly why he was arrested. He was paying for these searches in full. Where's the fraud here? Where's the crime? But it wasn't until after his arrest where he learned what people were using his site for.

1:08:43The federal court, they told me, you know, the information that I stole and also like sell that to other people. They're using that for tax return. That's something new to me. I never know that, you know, tax return. And then I find out what tax return. And then it's very serious. What people were doing, it was going to Hughes' site, looking someone up, getting all their details, and then trying to file the taxes for that person. See, here in the U.S., we pay taxes to the government all year, and typically people overpay on their taxes. So they get a big return come tax season. So a lot of Americans get a check for maybe a few thousand dollars every year from the government because they've overpaid on their taxes.

1:09:26Well, criminals know this. So they file tax returns on other people, and they put on there that they should get a$2 ,000 refund. And then the IRS processes the tax filing, and they look at it, and it looks legit, and sends this person a$2 ,000 check. And when the real person goes to file their taxes, the IRS is like, oh, no, no, no, you have already filled it out. We've already sent you a check. And now suddenly there's a bunch of Americans saying, oh, no, I didn't. Give me my money. And there is a big problem. So the Secret Service was investigating this because Hughes People's search engine was complicit in helping criminals defraud a lot of American citizens.

1:10:07And apparently there were a lot of people in New Hampshire that someone stole their tax return check. And you know, I got so much information and they turned kind of like thousands and thousands victims in New Hampshire. Okay, there's the V word, victim. We found a victim. The people of New Hampshire who didn't get their tax refunds. Okay, sure, they're victims of identity theft. I'll give them that. But typically the IRS will understand and pay them anyway, essentially giving out two refund checks. So this makes the IRS the victim But then you could say, no, it's the U.S. taxpayer That's the real victim Because this is money that's just lost And it drives me nuts How much money the IRS loses on this every year Like every single year The IRS will give out billions of dollars To criminals submitting tax refund scams And I just have to ask IRS, when are you going to take this problem seriously?

1:11:06You're world class at collecting our money But terrible at distributing it to the right people Billions of tax dollars are lost every year Because a criminal asked you for money How is this acceptable? So what were your charges? Because I have no idea what you're actually guilty of still Yes Certainly you can read that on the US records Okay, fine I will. All right. He's charged with three items here. All three are violations of the CFAA figures, right? The first specifically says he used a data broker in a way that they didn't authorize him to use. It's against their terms of service to resell the data that you're given access to or to impersonate someone to get an account there.

1:11:55And he did that. He absolutely violated their terms of use. And that is what the Secret Service is saying he's going to prison for. Unauthorized access, which we can guess means that he impersonated an authorized user, which is against their terms of use. You know how many of us violate the terms of use on websites? We all do, all the time. Like if you ever let someone use your Spotify or Netflix login, that's the same violation, unauthorized access. He's being charged with that sort of thing. Second item, specifically it says he's personally gained money from violating his access. And the third item is that it was in excess of$5 ,000.

1:12:37So all three of these are CFAA violations. And it drives me nuts that if you violate a website's terms of service, it's a federal crime. I don't know why it's not just a civil issue, a problem between you and the website. Like, why is it a federal crime? I think the site has grounds to terminate you, ban you, and probably even sue you for violating their terms of service, but prison time? I think that's just going too far. But that's how it is. It's a federal offense to violate a website's terms of use. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Aaron Schwartz here. Aaron was an MIT student, and because he was a student, he had access to academic research papers through a place called JSTOR.

1:13:19Well, he thought this information was so valuable to the world that he was downloading it and publishing it for free. The world should have this academic research, not keep it exclusive only for university students. But J-Store was pissed. They called the feds on Aaron for violating their terms of service, and the DOJ charged him with 13 felony counts, and he was facing 35 years in prison. They told him, look, if you take a plea deal, you'll probably only do six months in prison. But he absolutely did not want a felony on his record, a felony for violating the terms of service. The pressure was too much for him.

1:13:55And Aaron killed himself. So after that, politicians were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, why does the CFAA have it written in there that unauthorized access to a website is a federal crime? People are dying over this. Just because you violated a website's terms of use should not be a federal crime. And so Aaron's law got proposed, which asks to change the CFAA to stop saying that a terms of use violation is a federal crime. But sadly, the law didn't get passed. Can you tell I hate the CFAA? See here, I'm upset about this because, first of all, these data brokers are collecting data on us without our permission.

1:14:42And so they should be the ones that are doing illegal things. Second of all, they're selling this data for$0.14 per lookup. You're selling it for$1 per lookup. Yeah, so the only real thing here is that you're saying, hey, I'm just doing an upcharge for this and giving access to more people. It's not really stolen data. It's actually paying for the data as you're using it. And you're right. The unauthorized access is a CFAA violation, and I can see them saying that. But I'm just so frustrated about this because you didn't do any money laundering in the U.S. So for them to say you did money laundering there, it's not true that you did that in Vietnam.

1:15:31So I'm just frustrated on your behalf. I know, but the thing is, it's what I did though. That's how it works. And also the damage amount that they put in my case is very huge, like over 60 million USD. Prosecutors were saying he caused$60 million in damage. And of course, they didn't explain how they came to that number. It's kind of impossible to look through 3 million lookups on Hugh's site and then connect that to what identity theft crimes happened for those people and then add up how much money was earned from that. And anyway, all that was secondhand. None of that stolen money was done by Hugh.

1:16:15So they likely just made up some number, but he's not the one who did the identity theft. He's not the one who did tax fraud scams. So it's maddening that they're saying he's the one who's responsible for all that damage. Like, Hugh is a criminal. He is the bad guy here, okay? I'm not trying to say he should have gotten off. He absolutely did break the law. What I'm saying is that this is the wrong law to be charging him with because I hate when the CFAA is used like that. They tried to say he was also in trouble for money laundering, but he didn't do any of his money laundering in the U.S. I'm not sure if that one even flies, but like none of his charges were for any of the credit cards he stole or drained.

1:16:54All those sites that he hacked into back then. There's nothing about all the concert tickets that he bought and then essentially scammed all those people. Like those are easy charges to slap him with. Yet they're completely absent here. There is a law around identity theft, but I think it would be hilarious if they charged him with that, since that's the whole business model of what data brokers do already, right? They work every day to grab as many identities as they can without anybody's permission and then sell them. And not only that, he didn't steal the identities, he paid for them. So the theft part would be in question too.

1:17:31I think the proper crime here that they probably should have charged him with is that he was knowingly helping criminals conduct crimes, right? Like aiding and abetting and conspiracy, that sort of thing. Hugh knew his site was used by criminals and they were his favorite customers because they would pay for tons of searches. So he was catering to them, making it easier and better for them to use his site. So while he didn't do any of the tax fraud himself, he did help a lot of people do it. But he wasn't being charged with aiding and abetting. He was being charged with violating the terms of service of a data broker, where he was impersonating someone else to get an account there.

1:18:11But the thing is, the feds would have a much harder time proving his site was intended for criminal use compared to simply giving him a CFAA violation, which is easy to convict someone of. Like I said, we all violate the CFAA all day, every day. So in my opinion, the feds charged him with the wrong crime because of the almost guaranteed win for them, as opposed to charging him with the right crime and then struggling to find evidence to prove that he did that. And by the way, while the feds said that he caused$60 million in damage, Nobody was asking for restitution there. None of the data brokers were saying he caused them damage.

1:18:46So if he did do all that damage, find that victim and bring them into the case. Because here's the thing. I'm looking at the indictment and there's not a single company name here or victim name listed at all. Of course not. Because the data brokers want to hide from you. So the only thing listed there is Company A, headquartered in New Jersey. And it said he did an SQL injection on Company A. Well, by doing a little bit of research, it's kind of easy to figure out that the data broker in New Jersey that they're talking about is U.S. Info Search, which Hugh did, in fact, steal credentials and use that site.

1:19:21But not much at all. I mean, it was such a small blip in his story that it's hardly worth mentioning. Yet, that's the company that was saying he got unauthorized access to. But here's the thing. Here's how it all connects. Court Ventures was partnered with U.S. Info Search. If you are a paid Court Ventures user, and you look someone up, they had a connection to US InfoSearch. So you'd get results from them too. Now, I'm just connecting the dots here, but that sounds like to me that Court Ventures was reselling data broker information that they got from US InfoSearch. Like, surely, whatever deal they had with US InfoSearch, they were selling that data for a higher price to their own customers, right?

1:20:02You see my point. This story is pretty bizarre. So you could say this company listed in the indictment, U.S. InfoSearch was the back end and provided data to Court Ventures. And it's U.S. InfoSearch that the U.S. government is saying Hugh got unauthorized access to and profited off that access. You say the victims were the people who got their tax fraud or whatever stolen. But I really think the victims are the people you were stealing from, right? Locate Plus, MicroBuilt, and the source. Co-Venture. Yeah, venture. I think those are the people you were robbing or attacking, and I'm surprised. Were they part of the case at all?

1:20:49Did they come and testify against you or give evidence? No. No. I didn't see anybody from this company. Yeah, but I can't. Did you have a good lawyer? I pay for the lawyer. I spend almost more than, I think, up to 700 K. Wow. Yeah, for the lawyer. Because I would have fought to say, yeah, you're saying that he caused$60 million in damage. However, he did not actually do any of that damage. He just gave the information to someone else, and someone else did the damage. He never did a tax fraud. So you can't say he's the one who did tax fraud It's like if I sell you a lighter And then you take that lighter And you burn a building down with the lighter I'm not in trouble for selling you the lighter The person who burned the building down is That's true But you know back then A lot of people told me the same thing You know I shouldn't keep I shouldn't hire the lawyer I should keep that money Yeah But you know, like my family, you know, they're so worried and they just look up on the internet, you know.

1:22:06Oh yeah, this is good lawyer, like good rating. Like five-star rating, international lawyer, whatever. In New Hampshire, you know, like professional one. And yes, that's what happened. I remember like every time the lawyers and his team met me up. like every every time like that it cost me like five to ten thousand USD and an email I sent to him on the lawyer team like it cost me like two or three hundred USD for one email lawyers are so so expensive I know it's very expensive but you know it's easy money easy go so I'm And for real, you know, I don't really complain about it. Like, because at the end of the day, it's kind of dirty money.

1:23:07You know, another thing that really bugs me about this whole thing is neither MicroBuild, Locate Plus, or Court Ventures ever told their victims that there was a database breach. No. They never say, even until now, I search about them and they never mention anything about it. Even though it really happened to them. What scumbags? I just have no sympathy for these data brokers. I absolutely hate them. They take my data without consent. I can't even opt out if I want. They don't protect it. And when it's lost in a data breach, they don't even have the decency to tell me that my data that they gathered on me got loose.

1:23:46Hugh was desperately trying to get his lawyer to help him. But here's the thing. There's a 99 % conviction rate when the feds slap you with a CFAA violation. In all the cases of the feds accusing someone of a CFAA violation, I've only been able to find two or three cases that the defendant actually won. The rest were people pleading guilty or found guilty in trial. So the chances of Hugh getting off were slim to none. He tried to fight it, but everything they tried just kept getting denied by the courts. And after a few years of fighting, Hugh got tired and was running low on cash. You know, my lawyers explained to me, you know, I may lose the trial.

1:24:29I may get up to like 45 years in federal prison. 45 years? And I got so, right, I got so scared. All the charges like all combined together. Not only from New Hampshire, right? But also from New Jersey as well too. So I got two criminal charges from New Hampshire and New Jersey. So they all combined together. And they say up to like 45 years if I lose. So my family and me were so scared. So we played, kind of like we played plea deals. And, yeah, I played guilty during the summertime of 2015. Guilty. Guilty of doing$60 million in damage. When your sentence came up or during the play deal, did you offer to give up your money to reduce the sentence?

1:25:34How did that go? Oh, yeah. My family also asked them, you know, like they want to give back all the money. But they say no, they don't need that.

1:25:48Really? Right. They don't need money. They don't need any assets. And they don't need anything. So, it's what it is. So, but the thing, you know, I spend a lot of money on lawyers. On, you know, like during my incarceration as well too. for food and medication and stuff like that. So they didn't take any of your money or property or cars or anything? No. They didn't care. They said they don't need that. They just want you. They just want me. After pleading guilty, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison. 13 years for getting access to data broker data which he wasn't authorized to access? At this point, I'm wondering, what if instead of Hugh accessing data broker data to sell that, what if he just made his own data broker business, you know, for anyone to access?

1:26:48Would that be illegal? Like if Hugh copied all the data out of the phone book and all the court records and the county records and scraped some LinkedIn data to build complete profiles on millions of people, that's all public information, right? And it wouldn't have been that hard for him to do because he's a clever guy. Are there laws that he would be breaking if he sold that data? I guess what I'm wondering is, are there laws that data brokers have to follow? Well, I had to stop and look into that. Basically, yes, there are data broker laws, and often states regulate them. And the gist of the laws is that data brokers have to prove that they aren't selling their data to criminals.

1:27:28I mean, think about all the dangerous household things we probably all have, right? Box cutters, a hammer, matches, lighters, gasoline, bleach. These are all things that can cause a lot of harm and destruction, right? Yet when you go to buy them, the store doesn't verify your intent. They're not like, hey, what are you going to do with that box cutter? You have to prove to us that you're going to put it to good use. Yet that's how data brokers treat their customers. Their customers have to show proof that they have a legitimate reason to search their data. and they're on the approved list of okay people.

1:28:03Apparently, it's not good enough for data brokers just to say, hey, you can't use this for malicious intent. They have to verify every single user to try to prevent any of them from using the data maliciously. So the approved list is people like law enforcement, marketers, investigators, loan agencies, those sort of people. And that distinction is very fascinating to me. Data brokers are legal, but only if they sell their data to an exclusive group of people. And I don't like that. Not one bit. I mean, of course, I don't like that there's a business out there buying and selling my personal information.

1:28:41That's gross. Go get a real job, all right? But I think I might have a hot take here. I don't like that they only sell their data to a certain group of people. I wish they sold it to anyone. Only people in some exclusive club can look up my data. A club that I'm not allowed in. I mean, the reason why states regulate data brokers is because if anyone could search those databases, then we'd all be flooded with scammers and identity thieves and stalkers. But to me, that's not the problem. To me, the problem is, one, I don't even know how much data those data brokers have on me. And two, I don't even know who has my data.

1:29:18Like if I could somehow feel the sting and pain every time my privacy is lost, I would take my privacy way more seriously. So like I know there's probably apps on my phone that are sending real-time location data right now to a data broker. And if someone took that data and saw where I was and came to my house and knocked on my door, of course I wouldn't answer because I never answer my door. But I just imagine them continually pounding on the door like, Hey, I know you're home. Answer the door. Your phone is sending me real-time location data to me right now. I'd immediately be like, wait, what app is sending you my location data?

1:29:53And I think having a scary moment like that would absolutely force me to uninstall apps that are tracking me. So my hot take is that stalkers aren't the problem here. It's the obsessive collection of my data that's the problem. If data brokers open themselves up to let anyone search their site, we'd all be way more private and secure. Because we'd all be taking huge steps into protecting our privacy way more seriously. When we don't know what's out there, we don't think it's a problem. And they're trying to hide that from us. Of course, the data brokers say they take our privacy seriously. And security is their top priority.

1:30:37Yeah, well, until it isn't, Hugh got into four different data brokers all by himself. And it didn't look like it was that hard for him to do. Not only that, there's news story after news story of data brokers getting hacked into. The biggest one is when Equifax got breached. If the data brokers were so worried about their data getting into the wrong hands like scammers and stalkers, then don't collect it at all. Because if there's one thing I've learned about doing over 160 episodes on hacking, is that you will fail at securing your network and data at some point. There is no safe way to collect and store my personal data, much less sell it.

1:31:16The regulators think forcing data brokers to vet every user is stopping criminals from accessing the data. But clearly, criminals are in fact accessing the data. Since when do criminals follow regulations? So really, all the regulations are doing is stopping people like you and me, normal citizens, from being able to see what's in there. There are so few people who truly understand what is happening in this data broker world since they like to operate in the dark, in the shadows of the internet, and they work hard to keep everyone else in the dark. I want to believe that someday privacy will be in style again.

1:31:53And we just need enough cool people to tell us it's worth wanting. Because data brokers has a bad aesthetic. Surveillance is sterile. It's cold, gray, and depressing. There's nothing cool or romantic or aspirational about being trackable down to when you're peeing or having sex or eating or sleeping. Yet these data brokers are feverishly trying to know all of that about you and build a complete behavior profile on you. And then selling that to millions of people who are on the allowed list. I hope someday wanting privacy doesn't make you a weirdo. But it makes you cool.

1:32:36Hugh was sentenced in 2015 Which meant he'd get out in 2026 Because he already spent two years in prison by that point And it was there in the New Hampshire prison Where he learned English And studied all kinds of things The police asked if he could share his story with others To teach them how the darknet works and all that So he cooperated and told his story And was trying to self-rehabilitate to get out early But when he was in prison he heard some news which really crushed him. That Liberty Reserve website was seized by the feds and the owner was caught. I heard on the news that he got caught.

1:33:11And the thing is, Q had a lot of money still in his Liberty Reserve account. But when the feds seized the site, he seized all that money too. How much did you lose there? I was saving up over there a little more than$300K. Wow. I was thinking, man, I will go home and maybe get that money. But, you know, the moment I heard on the news during my incarceration time in 2014 or 2015, and I said, man, it's over. No more money. So he continued serving his prison sentence, staying out of trouble. And because he had good behavior, they let him out early. after serving seven years in prison. They let him out in 2020.

1:34:01There was a lot of complications getting out of prison in the middle of a pandemic, so it took him eight months to get home after he was released, but he eventually made it back to Vietnam. When you got home in 2020, did you have money remaining from all this? I still got a little more than 50 ,000 USD. and one apartment. When he got home, he got a job with the Vietnamese government to help with their national cyber defense. They so-called the NCSC, the National Cyber Security Center. And been working there for like four years. I just left NCSC just five months ago because, you know, like the government, they restructured the agency.

1:34:57And that's why I left NCSC. And right now, I just try to mainly focus on cybercrime investigation. And I love hunting cybercriminals, technically. And to the day I got home, until now, I was helping law enforcement in Vietnam and other countries as well to arrest more than 200 cyber criminals. He says he also enjoys helping victims of scams and identity theft by educating them on what options they have and helping them regain control of their life and use the law to help them out. In fact, it sounds to me that Hugh feels pretty bad for all the people who got scammed from his service. I feel like, you know, I owe a lot to the people, especially the people in the U.S.

1:35:49I hurt and harm so many people's lives And I always feel ashamed about it So he wants to be clear that he is sorry For anyone whose identity got stolen And lost money from his website He truly feels bad about it And has apologized publicly multiple times And wants to try to do what he can To correct the wrongs he's done Which is why he's helping victims now and worked with law enforcement to catch cyber criminals in his home country.

1:36:29Thank you so much to Hu Ming-No for telling us this incredible story. This one was wild. I had to stop and think like multiple times while making it. And I love a good story that puts me in deep thought like that. And I hope it did for you too. I recently read a book about data brokers, which was extremely eye-opening, and I encourage you all to read it. It's called Means of Control by Byron Tao. Check it out. It's a total page turner. You will not see the world the same again after that. Don't forget, you can pick up some really cool shirts at our shop. I guarantee you will find a shirt you love there.

1:37:02Go to shop.darknetdiaries.com. This episode is created by me, the Hack Street boy himself, Jack Recyder. Our editor is the hash slashing Tristan Ledger. mixing by Proximity Sound and our intro music by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. They say if you don't pay for it, then you're the product. But what if you pay a data broker to look up your own data? What then? Hmm? This is Darknet Diaries.