YouSaid · the spoken record

Brett Johnson

lines on the record: 306
first: 2022-03-27
most recent: 2022-03-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So convinced her that I was a legitimate person, that, you know, hey, send it to COD. You can use my FedEx account to do that or my UPS account to do that. I'll pay with a cashier's check. You can take it in, same as cash. She believed that. She was even on the ad and we talked on the phone and everything else. She had told me that she was a single parent and it was the only money that she had to put a roof on the house for her and her kids. I didn't give a damn. I didn't give a damn. What was more important was me at that point.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Defrauding people with that, having them send products or bullion collections, what have you by COD collect on delivery, and I would pay with it with a counterfeit cashier's check. This lady was on eBay. She had been collecting these silver coins all of her life, you know, the silver. So if she had a whole collection of these things, like, I don't know, 80, 90 pounds of this stuff. I'm a very good social engineer.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The coin lady. By that point, Shadow Crew had made the front cover of Forbes, August of four, october twenty sixth of four Secret Service had shut us down thirty three people arrested six countries and six hours. I was the guy that was publicly mentioned as getting away. What happened was I was the guy who was, I had kind of invented this crime called tax return identity theft and was stealing a lot of money. I went through all my stateside savings and Shadow Crew gets shut down. I don't have any way to come in with any money, so I start running counterfeit cashier's checks.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let me say that I did not care about my victim. All right. I cared about me is what I cared about. It's rough to admit that. You know, that you don't give a shit what you're doing to anybody else. You only care about you. But that's the truth of the matter. I didn't care about the victims. The lady, that wasn't even at the beginning of my career as a cyber criminal. That was right at the last of it.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To take part in those crimes so that Denise didn't have to. And she was able to avoid all that. Other than that one shoplifting stuff, Denise doesn't break the law anymore. She goes off to be a she's a good parent. She's an angry parent. She's a good parent. She's a teacher, good citizen overall. I was just the guy that kept right on going with it.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a control mechanism. The only control you had was that. And she's like, kids do that. And I was like, so I'm not unique. She's like, no, you're not unique in that. So this whole history of abuse, Denise dealt with it by drinking, by trying to commit suicide, things like that. And then finally, she escapes. I'm the kid that didn't. And not only that, my wife pointed out to me that, again, it's that East Drink Kentucky mentality stuff. You know, the males expected to do things. So with me, it was almost like I stepped up.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No idea why. All right, but I would because on the carpet. Carpet pissers like the Lebowski, right? I really tied the room together. I was talking about that, and this lady comes up to me after the presentation, and she had a career previous to that where she dealt with abused kids. And she told me, she's like, Brett, she's like,”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's one of these guys that I told him. I told my dad about the abuse and everything else. And there was a point. So, you know, I told you about the elevator stuff. But before that, man, it was, it took me 40 years to talk about that, but it also took me 40 years to Talk about there was a point that My mom and dad would leave the house, and I would urinate in the floor. All right.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, not at all. So my ultimatum to my mom was look. You're able to admit that you abuse the people in your life. Accept that responsibility and be able to discuss it with me. We'll have a talk. Other than that, I don't want to talk to you anymore. So for the first year, it was, you know, calling, cussing my wife out, cussing me out. I don't need you out of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then finally it started to taper off. And she's never really contacted me after that point.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My boundary with my mom, the reason I've not spoken with her, over two years ago, I started this legal career of mine, I've been the guy who has, I spent a lot of time thinking about my past and those choices and what brought those choices around. So I'm big about taking responsibility for my actions. I truly am. I think it's really important you have to do that. Well, my mom, not so much. So I was talking to her and I would start saying, you know, she was start the conversation talking about she didn't understand why Denise wouldn't speak to her anymore. That was one of her tropes. And my response started to become, well, because you were the abuser and you spent your life doing that to her. So it's more healthy for her not to talk to you.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're on your own. It's up to you. And Denise has always been that child that has expected someone to come in and savor.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Looking at things now, I think that's where our paths diverged. Me, it was if you want to do it, if anybody's going to take care of you, you got to take care of yourself.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That victim of abuse You've never seen it before. You've never encountered it, and then it happens. Well, you're like that frog in water all of a sudden. You get to the point where it gradually increases until how do you get out of it? Everybody else sees what's happening, but you don't. I grew up in that environment, though. So it took me a long time to come to terms with that. My sister came to terms with it long before I did. You know, my sister, she's been a decade without talking to my mom. Like she had tried to commit suicide. I didn't know that. What got me so bad is she said at one point. That she always thought someone was going to come in and save us. And my response, just immediate response, not even thinking about it, my response was, well, Denise, I knew no one ever was.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, I called my dad yesterday. My dad, he's dying now. He's got a heart condition. He's not going to get the operation to fix it. So he's like, fuck it. I'm ready to go. And I'm like, I looked at him because, how I'm 52 now. Prior to 52, I'd have been like, no, you need to do this. But I looked at him and I was like, I understand. I understand. You're done. And so he's not going to get the operation. I was talking to him yesterday and he asked me, he's like, have you seen your mom? And I was like, dad, I'm not talking to her for about two years. And I told him, I was like, I love my mom, but my mom is not a good person. She's not. And he told me I was talking to him on the phone yesterday. And he told me that it took him several years to really understand that. You know, he loved her too, but it takes when you're getting an abuse like that, especially my dad. My dad came from a good family, everything else. And upstanding family. And I think that when you're...”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Charity fraud, it's much more romantic than what it sounds. It was basically standing beside the road with a sign and a bucket Taking up collections for homeless shelters for abused women, for children, stuff like that. Then later on, I branched off when I started off on my own, I would set up my own charity company and do some telemarketing and going by and collect checks and things like that.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Learned how to run a loader, run a dozer, learned how to clean off a pit, everything like that. So this is the lifestyle you grow up in. You know, you learn how to do this stuff. And so knew how to do charity fraud as well, insurance fraud.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How pure the coal is, what BTU it burns at. Back then, a good BTU was around 12-9 was what you'd get. So 12-9 coal, $36 a ton. You'd take that sample over to the coal tipple. They'd say, okay, we'll buy this for you. How many trucks you got or how many tons you got? And you'd say, this is what we've got. Then you'd hire the trucking company. And where you get it out because, you know, you've got the agents that are looking for you by this point because the people that, you know, you've bought the rights to whoever the landowner is. You said you're going to give them $2 a ton or whatever this is. Well, the other people there, are you paying them off or are you not? Well, if you're not paying them off, guess what? They know your ass is mining it illegally. They're going to report you. Well, all of a sudden, you've got all these inspectors that are coming around and everything. Hey, we know what you're doing. So they're looking for you to get the pit out. So when do you get the pit out? Right in the dead of night.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you learn this shit, right? You can rattle this shit off. So you uncover the pit, and then you've got to sell the pit. Well, the thing is, is that where are you going to sell the coal? Well, you sell it to one of these other coal tiples that knows that they're buying the shitty legally. So back then, a ton of coal was, they'd give you like 36 bucks per ton is what that is. And you'd have to go out and you'd test the BTUs on it. You'd take a sample to the lab, test the BTUs, you'd take that into the company. British thermal unit. So you test what the BTU on the coal was, how back.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can do it with four or four people. So, you got your loader operator, you've got your Dozer operator, you need farm out the trucking to someone if you need our trucking company, if you need to do that. Then you've got whoever owns the business as well. So very few people can run an operation like that and profit fairly well as long as you don't have to do the reclamation, all that crap on top of it. All right, the reclamation gets pretty expensive. So if you're uncovering a pit of coal, a pit, so a ton of coal is basically about 36 cubic inches is what a 2,000 pounds of coal weighs if you're in eastern Kentucky because it's at the weight of the bituminous coal and everything.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So to properly mine coal, you have to get a permit. All right Eastern Kentucky, a lot of people don't, they can't afford the permits. They can get them a piece of equipment. You get a dozen or a loader or whatever you're going to get or an auger or what have you. So you start mining, but you don't get the permit. So you don't have to pay. Back then it was like $3,500 for a two-acre permit or $5,000 for a two-acre permit, let you strip mine the coal on that, then you have to pay for the reclamation on top of that. So once you uncover the pit, take the coal out, you have to cover back up the pit, sow grass, make sure everything is environmentally friendly. You got a silt pond, everything else at that point.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Went into just full fledged into scams, crimes, everything else. I had already been when I was a minor. I'd already been kind of brought up on that side of the family with the crimes that they were doing. My mom was, you know, drug trafficking, the pimp stuff, illegally mining coal, charity fraud.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He gets out of the car, and I was like, I'm walking over to him. I was like, Hey, man, I'll walk in. You can meet my parents. He's like, no, I got it. I was like, okay. So I keep shooting ball. He walks in the house. Stays about 15 minutes, walks out, white as a sheet, doesn't say a word to me, gets in the car, leaves. I don't hear from him again, had no idea what went on. Takes me a couple weeks. What happened is my mom, he walks in and introduces himself. My mom pulls a knife on the guy. I will kill you. You are not going to steal my goddamn son from me. Scare as the guy to death, he bugs out, and kind of broke my spirit at that point. You know, I was like, okay.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it had made a shitload of money. So he invites Ed Emanuel to come down and see the play, and Ed had written this Civil War piece. So we put that on. I was doing like, it was a multiple role thing. I was doing like 18 different roles in the show. So Ed sees the show and he's like, scholarship. He said, look, he said, right now you're a big fish in a small pond. We'll make you a big fish in a big pond. And I was like, Deal, so I took the scholarship, man. And he was like, I'll be back in two weeks. So he flies out. Two weeks later, this guy flies back in. He drives down to where I'm living. I'm out shooting ball with my cousins and friends. He pulls up”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not professionally. We've done the college circuit stuff like that. What happened was, so I turned down the. Turn down the scholarships scared of leaving, I guess is what it was. Starting community college. And the community college there hires a new theater director out of California. Well, he knew the guy that ran the San Jose State Theater Program. A guy named Edward Emanuel was his name. His claim to fame, he had written the Three Ninjas movie. Remember that?”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She used to tell people they would the high school that I came from was Weitzburg, and the first time that Weitzberg came against us, she told me I was talking to her about a year ago, and she told me she's like, Brett, she said, that first meet against Weisberg, she said. The captain came in, looked at you, and said, Oh, you've got that Johnson boy on your team? And she said, my response was that Johnson boy is our team. But did that. And then with theater, I ended up my senior year. I won best actor and actress in the state. Only God ever do that in the state. So did pretty well, man. Did pretty well. Had scholarships coming out of high school and everything else, and I'm the idiot that turned them down.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm like, no, I'm not interested in theater. I'm interested in academics. Well, she was the head of the drama department and head of the academics department. So the deal was, tell you what, you can get on the academics team if you start with theater too. And I was like, okay, so what happens is she was the first decent person I met my life. And she became this kind of surrogate mother to me. So under her tutelage. I become one of the top academic team guys in the state. I was captain of the team. I was just scourge across all the counties in that part of Kentucky. had a meet, it was like, Jesus Christ, that's Brett Johnson. It was like”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my mom wants to raise him, and I'm like, no, let's just take me to this other school. So this other school is like 15 miles away. So I go there and they accept me. And I walked in the first day and this English teacher. Name's Carol Com I walked in and Handed her the paper out. She was my homeroom teacher. And she heard this voice, as the way she explains it to me. She heard this voice. And she looks up and she was like, Son, have you ever done any drama before? I'm like, no, ma'am, but I'm interested in the academic team. I was this quick recall guy, right? And she's like, no. She's like,”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everybody knows. So I move. We move. We were in Weitzburg at that point. I finish up the year there and moved to back to Perry County, which is where Hazard is. So we moved there, and they've got three high schools there. They've got MC Napier, they've got Hazard High School, and then they've got Dill Scombs High School. So I was within, me and Denise were within. Half mile of MC N Show up there the first day of school And I met me and my mom and my sister were walking into the school, and the kids won't let me in. Stand out there. He's not coming in. So my mom starts raising hell, and I'm like, no, let's just go, let's go. So from there, it was, we went down to the city school hazard. And the principal tells my mom, Denise can come. He can't.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And what happens is, uh, You're 15. Fuck, man. You're 15. So I go back to the high school that I was in and I'm this piece of shit”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Went to counseling. I wanted to, but mom was like, don't need it. So never went to counseling. And I became this pariah. The county. It's crazy, man. I mean Not a day goes by that. I don't think about that.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An hour later, Kentucky State Police pull up in the front yard, and two of them get out and I'm sitting on the front porch and me and my cousins are and they start walking up where everybody starts walking out of the house. And I'm like, I just remember saying, what do you want? What do you want? Well, you knew what they wanted. They wanted to arrest Brett Johnson. And they arrested me. I went in and I told him everything. Spent three months in a county jail. They didn't have juvenile facilities in that county, so I spent three months in solitary. Went to trial, pled guilty to assault in the first degree. The judge sentenced me to time served and a psychological valuation where they sent me to Louisville, Kentucky. Spent 30 days up there. They cut me loose. They wanted me to have counseling after that.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah The elevator beat the hell out of this lady. The elevator door is open. One of the security guards I played basketball with his son, so he saw me immediately. I knocked the hell out of him, took off running, made it back to the house where my grandparents were. They didn't know what had happened, so I didn't say anything.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Coma dad one day. I was set to go to me and my cousins were going to go see Return of the Jedi that had come out again in the theaters. So I called my dad it was a Sunday, called my dad and he told me. He had either gotten married or he was about to get married to this woman. And basically Brett Johnson wasn't going to go down to Florida. I was going to stay in hazard. Call my dad from payphone, but the result of that was I walked into a hospital Got in an elevator And a woman got in the elevator at the same time, and I snapped, and beat the hell out of her. Right there, and I was fifteen. Didn't really know what the happened. Didn't really know. But”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The abuse would, it was crazy abuse, man, just crazy stuff. She would tell me and my sister, you know, that she gave up her life for us, that she was going to leave one day and never come back, that we'd find her dead in a ditch someplace. She'd go out and date these men and she'd come back and she'd talk about how these men were abusing her. You know, so she'd be dating this guy, and she'd come back and she'd start talking about how he had tried to rape her, you know, trying to get me to respond to that. And I would respond to that. Make no doubt I would respond to that. Well, what happens is, and I knew that, I don't know if I knew it was abuse at that age, all right, but I knew things were fucked up. And I was talking to my dad in Panama City, and I really had it in my head that I was going to go down and live with my dad.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. Absolutely. So, what happens is, you know, the abuse, everything continues on. When I'm 15, my dad was in Panama City, Florida, my mom was in, you know, we were in Hazard, Kentucky. She was dating this guy. My mom was this woman that...”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the truth is, I say, and I do mean it, that I'm responsible for my choices as an adult. All right, I believe that when you're a child, you can't control that. The adults in your environment control what you do, all right? Once you're an adult, though, your choices are yours. Now, that being said, there's some... You can't dismiss that childhood Influencing what I did as an adult. You can't do that. I mean, it was kind of written on slate that, hey, this guy's going to be this guy when he grows up.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She starts seeing this shit. She's like, Where'd this come from? And I'm like, well, we found it. She's like, you didn't find that, Denise. Denise stands up. We stole it. My mom showed me how you did that. And she gets her mom too to join in. And she used to run Mandenace's these little shoplifters. We'd take, you know, we'd steal stuff for her or we would distract security and her and my grandmother would steal stuff. They got caught doing that. But that's the entry into crime. And Denise, you know, I'm adamant. I kind of mean”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was a high school teacher. So, what happens is, you know, we start shoplifting food. My mom finds out that we've been stealing stuff and, you know, she joins us. She joins us. Yeah, she comes in. You know, I've got the intellivision, I've got the Atari 2600 playing the hell out of it.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it gets worse than that. I was in an environment where. There were no decent people. I didn't really meet my first decent person until I was 16 years old.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're pretty young. Yeah, 10 years old, pretty young. But seeing how they act, how they respond to things. And my mom, I guess you could call it a good thing. They never kept any of that hidden from the kids. There was no discussions behind closed doors. All that happened in front of everybody.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You got to think through it But you got to realize by this point, hell, I'm already seeing what my parents are doing. You know, I'm already seeing that.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Denise walks in one day. She's nine years old, man. She walks in one day and she's got a pack of pork chops in her hand. And looked at her and I said, where'd you get that? And she's like, I stole it. And, you know, it's like, show me how you did that. So she takes me over and she shows me how she steals food, how she's stuffing it down her pants. So we start stealing food. I'm like, hell yeah, let's do that shit. So start stealing food and we get to the point where we're wanting a sandwich. Well, you can't stuff a loaf of bread down your pants. So there was a Kmart in the shopping center. I go over to the Kmart, get a hoodie off the rack, take the tags off of it, wear it out, work just fine. And the way you steal bread is you put the hoodie over your shoulder, stuff a loaf of bread down the sleeve, and you walk out with it. So we started doing that.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, sometimes she'd like me at nice weather. We'd wait in the car. Sometimes we'd wait in the living room as she went and partied and everything else. Most of the time she left us at home, and my entry into crime?”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He didn't want you to eat any of his food. So, you know, there was no such thing as me and Denise going upstairs to eat. If he found out me and Denise was taking a bath, we were allowed to bath and bathe in two inches of water, one time a week, because he didn't want to have to pay the water bill. Rules. If you couldn't have the TV on when he went to bed at night, you had to have the television, the volume you could watch it, but without volume. Because if he heard it, he would get up in the middle of the night and he would kick the power breaker, turn off all the power on you. This is my family, right? So my mom, she used to leave me and they sit home for days, man. For days, she'd go out and, you know, party.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Her clothes in the trunk of the car, and she leaves my dad, and I don't get to see my dad again for, I think, five, six years, something like that. My mom, like I said, she used to bring men home in front of my dad. He'd sit there and cry and begg her not to do it. She'd do it anyway. When she leaves him, she kept up that. So we were living at my grandparents' house. My grandfather, he had converted the house he had raised the house up and built apartments underneath of it. So me and my sister and my mom lived in one of the apartments underneath, and that whole side of the family was just nuts, was nuts. My granddad, Paul, he would... This is a man that”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was an LPN. She had a very good nurse, but she didn't want to work was a lot of it. So with her, it was easier for her to commit fraud. And when I say commit fraud, it was against businesses, against people. I remember at one point she's buying over-the-counter capsules and emptying the capsules out and putting some other crap in there and selling it at a speed. And people are buying it. She did anything she could for money. And of course, I get involved with that. What happens is we were in Panama City at that point, and my mom leaves my dad. And the way she left my dad, my great-grandfather had died. My mom tells all three of us, hey, we're going, I'm taking the kids and we're going back to Eastern Kentucky to attend the funeral. Well, that was her leaving. Me and Denise didn't know she didn't pack any of our clothes at all.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She knew she was always this person that if she went too far, she knew it and she would always try to divert that into something else. All right. So she knew at that point she went too far. So what does she do? She gets up crying, goes to the bathroom, and pretends to slit her wrists so that my dad Ray will respond to that, not respond to what she's just done to him. That was my mom in a nutshell, and she had a history of doing this kind of stuff. Motivations as far as fraud with her, I think with her it was...”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember I was sleeping in the bed. We had a single wide bed. My dad slept on the sofa. I woke up one night and there was some sort of ruckus in the living room. So I wake up and I walk into the living room and my mom has a knife to my dad's throat. And basically you're not going to steal my son from me. My mom was this individual that when she knew she went so far, like I said, she was always this person that tested, well, can I do this to you and you'll still come back?”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where you can't take it anymore. And the first instance, I was, I guess I was seven or eight. My sister Denise is a year younger than I am. My dad actually files for divorce, files for divorce at that point. My mom kind of goes crazy. My dad, I was with my dad. My sister was with my mother because that's that eastern Kentucky mentality. You know, men stay with men, women stay with women. He was filing for divorce me and my dad we were living in an apartment. My mom was living with her grandparents and with her parents bouncing back and forth between the two.”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back then I didn't view it as exciting now. It becomes exciting when I start being involved into cybercrime, all right? But back then it was simply a means to an end was all it was. So you take a 10-year-old kid. And the way I get involved in crime is, like I said, my mom was the fraudster. My dad was, my dad was a good guy. He just forgot he was this good guy. You know, he was always, he always had these principles, but his issue was, is he loved my mom so much he was scared of her leaving. So if she wanted to do something, commit crime, cheat on him, whatever, he would pretty much just put up with it. The one instant. So, I mean, this woman used to bring men home in front of him. Tell him that, hey, I'm leaving you. I don't love you anymore. I want you to die blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This was my mom. There were two instances where the man...”
2022-03-27 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #272 – Brett Johnson: US Most Wanted Cybercriminal · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source