01 · THE STORY
The story, from the beginning
I was born in Philadelphia, and I have been in front of a computer for as long as I can remember. The first one was an IBM PS/1 my family brought home when I was five. By my teens I was taking networks and operating systems apart to see how they actually worked underneath, not how the manuals said they worked. C came first, then Python, and twenty years later those are still the two languages I reach for.
In 2004, at twenty, I moved to Sarasota, Florida. I have been based there ever since, and I work regularly in Orlando and across Central Florida.
The part of my story people ask about is the case. In the mid 2000s I was involved in one of the largest payment card breach investigations in American history, publicly known as Operation Get Rich or Die Tryin. When the United States Secret Service came, I cooperated fully, and investigators described the technical intelligence I provided as exceptionally valuable. I am not proud of how I got that education. I have also never pretended it happened to someone else.
Everything since has been about working on the right side of the same problems. Today I consult on digital forensics and cybersecurity cases for government contractors and law enforcement agencies, including work with the US Secret Service, the FBI, and British authorities.
“I owe a debt. Not to any court or any agency. To myself.”
FROM THE PROFILE HACKER TURNED HERO
Where it goes from here
The rest of this site keeps the details: the timeline in the record, what a working week actually looks like in the work, and the three companies I run in the companies.
See the record