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Detective Rich takes us into the world of online gaming where a shadowy, vindictive prank known as “swatting” leads to ruined lives and even murder.

Special Guest

Detective Rich

Detective Rich has spent his 30 years in law enforcement to pursuing, apprehending and prosecuting child predators.  As an active Cyber Crimes Detective he also educates law enforcement, parents, and students on responsible digital activity by using cutting edge, investigative techniques. He is a decorated veteran of law enforcement, and served 23 years as a member of his agency’s SWAT team.

Read Transcript

Paul: [00:00:00] Hey, Small Town Fam, this is Paul Holes. Make sure you subscribe to The Briefing Room with Detectives Dan and Dave. Season 2 is out now. Subscribe now. And thanks.

911 Dispatcher: [00:00:18] Hello?

Blake: [00:00:18] I shot my dad.

911 Dispatcher: [00:00:21] You shot your dad? Where are you at?

Blake: [00:00:23] My house.

911 Dispatcher: [00:00:25] Okay. And is he still breathing?

Blake: [00:00:27] No, he is dead.

Yeardley: [00:00:29] I’m Yeardley.

Zibby: [00:00:30] And I’m Zibby and we’re fascinated by true crime.

Yeardley: [00:00:33] So, we invited our friends, Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby: [00:00:37] To sit down with us and share their most interesting cases.

Dan: [00:00:41] I’m Dan.

Dave: [00:00:42] And I’m Dave. We’re identical twins and we’re detectives in small town USA.

Dan: [00:00:46] Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse.

Dave: [00:00:49] Dan investigates violent crimes. And together we’ve worked on hundreds of cases including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse, and child abuse.

Dan: [00:00:58] Names, places, and certain details including relationships have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families.

Dave: [00:01:07] Though, we realize that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we hope you’ll join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved out of respect for what they’ve been through. Thank you.

Yeardley: [00:01:31] Today on Small Town Dicks, we have the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan.

Dan: [00:01:36] Always a pleasure,

Yeardley: [00:01:37] [laughs] Detective Dave.

Dave: [00:01:38] Good morning, team.

Yeardley: [00:01:40] We are so pleased to have a new special guest, retired Detective Rich. How are you, sir?

Rich: [00:01:47] I’m good.

Yeardley: [00:01:47] Thank you so much for joining us today and for our listeners, Rich is actually joining us by Skype today, so it’ll sound a little bit different than what we usually have when our guests are in the room with us. So Rich, tell us how this case came to you.

Rich: [00:02:06] Well, I’ve been in cybercrimes for the last 22 years and I’m also a SWAT operator, and I’ve been a SWAT sniper for the last 20 years. This happened a couple of years ago. We received a call to our 911 dispatch and the call was, “I just shot my mom. I’m going to kill my dad. I have weapons.” And the dispatcher just went on trying to convince the kid to drop his weapons and try to save his dad, but he was having none of that. In the meantime, while the dispatch was going on, we got paged out SWAT and we had a react team already that was in the area in patrol. So, we had a standby and we’re standing by and standing by, and standing by and I’m like, “Oh, man, this don’t sound right.” So, after about two hours of surrounding and calling out the house, we made entry into the house and there was nobody there. So, what had happened is the dad came home and we were like, “Where is your son? We got a call that somebody got shot in your house.” He’s like, “No, no, no. He calls his son and his son says, “I think I know what happened. We were just swatted.”

Zibby: [00:03:12] What is being swatted mean?

Rich: [00:03:14] The term swatting is a common occurrence, unfortunately, with the gaming culture. What happens is that there could be four or five people in one gaming crew in this particular point, it was [beep] the name of the gaming crew. They go against other gaming crews, and if they don’t like you or if you say something that’s inappropriate that they don’t like, they will send you a message and they will say SWAT inbound. Now, what that means is these gaming crews are also hackers and if they don’t like you, they will then go to a place called [beep] forums. This is a feed that hackers use to get information or to figure out how to hack your phone number.

Zibby: [00:04:04] Oh, my God.

Rich: [00:04:05] Yeah. There is a script that was written by another hacker who worked for Comcast. He puts out the codes and the numbers you call to port someone’s phone number to make the phone call look like it’s coming from your number, but it’s actually coming from hacker’s number.

Zibby: [00:04:22] I had no idea.

Yeardley: [00:04:23] This sounds highly illegal. How is that information from the Comcast guy? How has that not been removed?

Rich: [00:04:30] It hasn’t and it’s social engineering. These hackers then go on the Darknet and they will port into your home number and they will make the call to the non-emergency dispatch number of the police and they will say what you’re about to hear in this recording.

Blake: [00:04:49] Hello? I shot my dad.

911 Dispatcher: [00:04:51] You shot your dad? Where are you at?

Blake: [00:04:56] House.

911 Dispatcher [00:04:57] You’re where?

Blake: [00:04:58] My house.

911 Dispatcher: [00:05:00] What’s your address? [beep] Okay. Is he still breathing?

Blake: [00:05:06] No, he is dead.

911 Dispatcher: [00:05:10] You said he’s not breathing at all?

Blake: [00:05:10] No.

911 Dispatcher: [00:05:10] Okay, hang on 1 second. How long ago was this?

Blake: [00:05:18] Five minutes ago.

911 Dispatcher: [00:05:21] He’s what?

Blake: [00:05:21] Five minutes ago.

911 Dispatcher: [00:05:24] Five minutes ago?

Blake: [00:05:24] Yeah.

911 Operators [00:05:27] Where’s the gun right now?

Blake: [00:05:28] It’s in myhand?

911 Dispatcher: [00:05:31] Can you put it down?

Blake: [00:05:33] I don’t know. I’m going to kill myself.

911 Dispatcher: [00:05:33] We want to try to help you here, okay? What is your name?

Blake: [00:05:30] [beep].

911 Dispatcher: [00:05:45] [beep]How do you spell it?

Blake: [00:05:48] [beep]. What is your phone number?

911 Dispatcher: [00:05:52] Okay. You’re sure your dad’s not breathing?

Blake: [00:05:54] Yeah, he’s dead.

911 Dispatcher: [00:05:55] Okay. Where did you shoot him at?

Blake: [00:05:59] In the living room, he’s right next to me.

911 Dispatcher: [00:06:01] He’s in the living room?

Blake: [00:06:00] He’s right next to me?

911 Dispatcher [00:06:05] He’s right next to you. Okay. You’re sure though his chest isn’t moving up and down, so we could try to help him?

Blake: [00:06:10] No.

911 Dispatcher: [00:06:10] Okay. Are you just you and him that are there?

Blake: [00:06:13] Yeah.

911 Dispatcher: [00:06:16] No one else is home?

Blake: [00:06:18] No.

911 Dispatcher: [00:06:20] Okay. Why did you do that?

Blake: [00:06:22] I don’t know. I took some pills from [unintelligible [00:06:26].

911 Dispatcher: [00:06:30] You took pills or he took pills?

Blake: [00:06:31] I took pills.

911 Dispatcher: [00:06:35] Okay. Okay, just stay with me, okay? We want to help you. How many pills did you take?

Blake: [00:06:41] Three or four.

911 Dispatcher: [00:06:43] Three or four? Do you know what kind of pills.

Blake: [00:06:46] They were blue in color and they’re really big.

911 Dispatcher: [00:06:50] Okay. Do you know what they’re for?

Blake: [00:06:55] No. I just took them to kill myself.

911 Dispatcher: [00:06:58] Okay. Can you put the weapon down?

Blake: [00:07:02] I don’t know if I want to.

911 Dispatcher: [00:07:05] You don’t know if you want to. What kind of weapon is it? What kind of gun?

Blake: [00:07:08] It’s a pistol.

911 Dispatcher: [00:07:10] A pistol? Okay. I’m just staying with you. Okay? We want to get help to you, okay? Because we don’t want you to hurt yourself. We want to help . Okay. You’re sure his chest is not moving up and down, he’s not breathing, correct?

Blake: [00:07:27] Yeah.

911 Dispatcher: [00:07:29] Have you had anything to drink today?

Blake: [00:07:32] No.

911 Dispatcher: [00:07:33] Nothing to drink. Okay. I just want to check on any interactions with those meds. Okay.

Blake: [00:07:41] I’m going to hang up now.

911 Dispatcher: [00:07:44] No, I would like you to stay with me. Okay.

Blake: [00:07:46] I’m going to kill myself.

911 Dispatcher: [00:07:49] No, no.

Blake: [00:07:53] [laughs] Rest in peace.

Dave: [00:07:56] You know what? The information that he’s sharing, what that would generate as a patrol response and then the ensuing SWAT response, that’s hugely serious. I mean, the people behind that, it is so easy for us to have a bad situation where somebody gets shot because they’re just not understanding. They’re not at a house where there’s a dispute or something happening, and then all of a sudden, they’re getting challenged with guns pointed at them by police officers outside. And one wrong move and boom, you’re dead.

Rich: [00:08:26] They’re done. Imagine what that dispatcher is going through.

Dave: [00:08:29] Yeah.

Rich: [00:08:30] Imagine their first responders blowing red lights, going through stop signs with their sirens, and they’re going to T-bone someone.

Dave: [00:08:37] Yeah.

Yeardley: [00:08:37] And he laughs at the end. It absolutely knocks the wind out of you.

Rich: [00:08:42] Yeah. So evil. Just so evil.

Zibby: [00:08:45] It’s evil. It is so dark.

Yeardley: [00:08:46] So what’s your recourse for something like this? If the swatting crime is being committed virtually and possibly from another part of the world?

Rich: [00:08:56] So, when the dad came and we explained to them what happened, he goes, let me call my son. So, the son said it’s [beep] for sure because they already told me SWAT inbound. So, I got the Twitter handle of the guy who runs [beep]. He has a code name of [beep] God.

Yeardley: [00:09:15] Okay. What’s [beep] God’s given name?

Rich: [00:09:17] Blake. So, I went on [beep] God’s Twitter account, and there was the 911 call posted by [beep] God.

Zibby: [00:09:24] You’re kidding.

Yeardley: [00:09:25] Wow.

Rich: [00:09:26] Now the only way someone’s going to get that recording is if A, you are your dispatch, and B, you are recording the call yourself, and you did it. Then came the second post. “What’s wrong? FBI. Can’t you find li’l ol’ me?” So, he threw the gauntlet out.

Dave: [00:09:43] We like a good challenge.

[laughter]

Rich: [00:09:45] Yes, he threw down the challenge. So, I had to accept. [laughs] So, shortly after the swatting, the dad gets a text from one of the crew and says, “You must type reply to this text message and tell your son to say sorry or else we’re going to make your life hell.” He didn’t do it. And sure enough, they put all his information out there and he started getting notifications from Chase, other banking institutions, and all these magazine subscriptions, and they just unleashed holy hell on this guy’s credit.

Yeardley: [00:10:24] On the kid or his dad?

Rich: [00:10:25] The dad.

Yeardley: [00:10:26] Okay.

Rich: [00:10:27] So, not only we’re working a swatting case, now we’re working an identity theft.

Dave: [00:10:31] This crew basically getting a beat down from this other crew on a game?

Rich: [00:10:35] Yep, absolutely. And they think it’s funny. They just think it’s funny. It’s horrible because there’re so many resources that are expended, not only with our investigative time. Roads got to be shut down. People are evacuated from their houses before we even make contact. This guy says he has a rifle. We can have people living in the area. So, before we make entry into that house or do a surrounding call out, we have to make sure everybody’s gone. So, it’s a horrible, horrible burden. That’s so dangerous when people do that.

Yeardley: [00:11:05] Horrible.

Rich: [00:11:17] So, now I start getting my subpoenas. I start leading back to [beep] God. Where is he? Who is he? What does the Darknet say about him or her? Finally, I identified who he was through these IPs. So, he had YouTube. That’s where he posted the recording. Then I saw it in Twitter. So, now I had YouTube, I had Twitter. Then I found out what his gamer tag was on Call of Duty. So, I started doing subpoenas and search warrants to all these different social medias. I took a spreadsheet and I saw exactly the dates that he was on using this stuff. The IPs were matching. And then there were a couple of times when I saw this IP from [beep]. So, I did a subpoena on that and I found out who it was. His name was Blake and that he had a brother and they were both into swatting.

Yeardley: [00:12:05] Oh.

Rich: [00:12:06] Yeah. So, then I talked to my bosses, and at first, they were like, “Well, just have [beep] Metro take care of it, and why should you have to go out there?” I said, “Do you realize how intricate this investigation is? I cannot depend on this other agency.” And they did not have a cybercrimes unit. So, my bosses say, “Okay, you take your team out there.” So, it was me and my forensic guy. I then drafted a search warrant, which was an affidavit of probable cause. I sent it to [beep] I dealt with somebody there. They then go get the search warrant based on my affidavit that’s signed by a judge, and they go get their affidavit. So, we fly out there, we get the search warrant, and we’re on search warrant day. So, it’s 05:30 in the morning because we always want to hit them early.

[00:12:51] So, we’re in a park and because of weapons and things like that, SWAT was there. So, I’m debriefing everybody. What the thing is? Well, lo and behold, right when we get there, I get a call from one of the bosses, and he said, “Hey, there are three other law enforcement jurisdictions down here working the same case you are.”

Yeardley: [00:13:12] What?

Zibby: [00:13:12] Whoa.

Yeardley: [00:13:13] So, this one hacker that you’ve identified as being responsible for your swatting case is also under investigation for more cybercrimes that he’s been committing essentially all over the country.

Rich: [00:13:26] Yeah. So, we’re debriefing, and the commander of the SWAT team gave his final digs and he goes, “Let’s go get these Cheeto-eating mofos.

[laughter]

Rich: [00:13:36] We’re all laughing, right? So, we come to the scene, they do a surrounding call out.

Yeardley: [00:13:43] What’s a surrounding call out?

Rich: [00:13:46] So some SWAT teams have different philosophies. In my department, if we can’t make contact inside, we have a react team that’s all they do is they train on breaking into houses and making sure it’s safe and backfilling and things like that. Other departments have something called surround and call out. Well, they’ll surround the whole house and they’ll use a loudspeaker and have the people come out of the house. So, as we’re doing surround and call out, [beep] electric is arriving on scene as well. The crew comes up to us and says, “What are you guys doing?” And they’re like, “Well, we’re hitting that house on a search warrant right now.” He goes, “Well, we’re going to shut off the electricity on that house.” And we’re like, “For what?” He goes, “We got an order saying that these people are moving tomorrow and they want to shut their electric off.”

Yeardley: [00:14:32] Oh.

Zibby: [00:14:32] Oh, my God.

Rich: [00:14:35] What had happened was [beep] God took responsibility three days earlier that he is the one who DDoSed [beep] and shut them down. And he was bragging about it. Gaming like PlayStation servers, they were DDoSed and shut down. [beep] God claimed responsibility for it, but actually it was [beep] squad who did it. Now, [beep] squad hacked the electric department’s account on [beep] God and said that they were going to do a shut off at his house. [laughs] Imagine how dangerous. What if there was somebody on life support or hospice in that house and they needed their medication and now they couldn’t get it because their electricity was shut off? I mean, it’s just so horrible that they don’t care who they affect.

Yeardley: [00:15:24] And rich. What is DDoSing exactly?

Rich: [00:15:27] DDoSing is where you get a group of computers that hits the server all at the same time and shuts down the server.

Yeardley: [00:15:33] Oh, my God, this is so bad and sophisticated.

Rich: [00:15:37] It is. It is.

Zibby: [00:15:38] So [beep] squad is another gaming crew that wanted to punish [beep] God for taking credit for DDoSing [beep] and their plan was to shut off their electricity.

Rich: [00:15:49] Yep. So, we stopped that from happening. And then Blake came out, his brother came out, parents came out and we searched the house. As were doing a search of the house, went into Blake’s room and guess what was next to his computer on the floor?

Dave: [00:16:04] Cheetos.

Rich: [00:16:05] A bag of Cheetos.

[laughter]

Dan: [00:16:07] I knew that was coming back.

[laughter]

Zibby: [00:16:11] I’m curious what [beep] God and his family were like when they came out of the house, presumably with their hands up. Did they seem surprised or scared? or–

Rich: [00:16:21] Well, this was one of three times he was swatted. This was the third time his house has been swatted.

Yeardley: [00:16:28] Been swatted by another group of gamers?

Rich: [00:16:30] Yep.

Yeardley: [00:16:31] So the kid thought this was simply another gamer swatting and therefore he didn’t seem particularly surprised.

Rich: [00:16:37] Exactly.

Yeardley: [00:16:38] Oh, wow.

Rich: [00:16:39] Yeah.

Yeardley: [00:16:40] So when you say, “No, no. This is the real deal.” What is his reaction to that? What was his affect?

Rich: [00:16:47] So, we sit down, and the FBI wanted to be part of the interview. And I’m like, “Hey, I gave you every opportunity to take this case and be part of it for the last six months. And now that we’re in here, and now that we’ve got the bad guy, now you want to come and help us?”

Dan: [00:17:02] I’ve worked bank robberies, and the FBI, they advise Miranda quite differently than we do. And every time that I’ve seen the FBI Mirandized somebody, I’m like, “I would not say a word to them.”

Zibby: [00:17:16] Why?

Yeardley: [00:17:17] How is it different?

Dan: [00:17:18] They basically say, “You should have a lawyer here.” And I don’t know the exact word track that they use, but I’ve heard their Miranda rights and it’s quite different.

Zibby: [00:17:25] But the Miranda rights, it’s the same script, but you’re talking about they emphasize something different.

Dan: [00:17:31] They have some more verbiage that they add to it and it’s quite different than what we do. And I think it’s also because if you lie to the FBI, that is a crime. You can lie to the police all you want.

Dave: [00:17:42] Yeah. And they send out target letters to people that are targets of investigations, which basically says, “Hey, we’re looking at you. You might want to get an attorney. We’ll be in touch,” which I can’t imagine on our level being like, “Hey, buddy, [Yeardley laughs] we’re coming for you.”

Yeardley: [00:17:56] Right.

Zibby: [00:17:56] So that adds to the irritation that now the FBI wants to sit there and talk because its sort of like excuse the expression, but it’s like a cockblock in a way.

Dave: [00:18:07] Well, all the heavy lifting has been done for them.

Yeardley: [00:18:08] By the local.

Dave: [00:18:10] Yeah. Rich is the lead on this. He knows how he wants to attack this interview and which direction he wants to take it. And then interviewing as a team is complicated unless you are absolutely on the same page and know what elements you want to hit and cover. So, it’s really frustrating when you have somebody kind of chiming in on your interview.

Rich: [00:18:29] Yeah. So, I called my bosses. I said, “Look, it’s the FBI. You have to let him in.” I said, “No, I don’t.” I said, “I’ll let them in the interview, but they can interview him after I’m done.” And my bosses were like, “Yeah, okay. That sounds fair.” Because I already have my case file ready to go. I have several documents printed out ready for Blake to sign. Do you remember this? Did you do this? Yes. Okay. Sign here. Did you do this? Yes. Sign here. It’s part of the process that I already have this worked out in my head. And when I record the interrogation, I’m not only recording the Miranda him signing it, I’m also recording him agreeing and understanding that he knows it. It’s all on a recording. So, every time for the last 10 years that I’ve been doing this, I have my iPad out and I’m typing away, and a lot of times they just forget about the recording. But I tell them initially, “I’m recording. I just want you to understand it. Do you understand that?” Yes. And then they forget that I’m recording because I’m just typing on my iPad. [Yeardley laughs].

Zibby: [00:19:28] How does this all go down? How do you bust [beep] God?

Rich: [00:19:31] So, we were there, it’s crowded, and there was an 18-year-old Blake, and his brother, who was 16-year-old. So, here’s the problem with the FBI. There is no way that the FBI is going to execute search warrants on a teenager and arrest them.

Zibby: [00:19:44] Why?

Yeardley: [00:19:44] Why not?

Rich: [00:19:45] Unless it’s like national security, then they’ll do it. I don’t know if you guys had any different experience, but in my experience, they would never issue a search warrant on a teenager’s home because they don’t get charged with a federal crime if they’re teenagers.

Dave: [00:19:57] Yeah. They would refer it to local law enforcement and we would handle it.

Rich: [00:20:01] Yeah. So, you have these highly technical cases and now they expect local law enforcement to have it when they don’t have anybody trained in these technology crimes. So, it just goes by the wayside you have all this leakage and information. Leakage meaning that they post things that they do prior to doing it.

Yeardley: [00:20:19] Who posts?

Dave: [00:20:20] The FBI does.

Yeardley: [00:20:21] Oh.

Rich: [00:20:21] So, I have a whole class that I just released identifying and intercepting the school shooter through cyber investigations, and this is when I’m going to be teaching resource officers across the country for the next year. So, it’s so important that local law enforcement knows that there are protocols, and we have the ability with the tools that we have to get to the suspect faster than it would normally take through exit and circumstance and things like that.

Zibby: [00:20:46] Wow, that makes so much sense. And yet I’ve really never considered how crucial it would be for law enforcement everywhere to understand and integrate cyber skills in order to combat and prevent cybercrimes. Like, these are the times that we’re in.

Rich: [00:21:01] Yeah. I’m one of the NASRO trainers that teaches technology crimes and this is all these guys deal with every day is cyberbullying, sexting, and sextortion.

Yeardley: [00:21:10] What’s NASRO?

Dave: [00:21:11] That’s the National Association of School Resource Officers.

Yeardley: [00:21:15] Aha.

Rich: [00:21:15] Yeah. So, we train them and show them how to do the work. I used to give everybody flash drives with go-bys on it because they have no reference. So, I give them old subpoenas, search warrants, exit circumstance, consent, preservation. I used to give them a flash drive. So, now what I do is I have a hidden page on my website and they put in the code and they get all the go-bys whenever they need it. So, it’s a great resource.

Yeardley: [00:21:39] And a go-by is the protocol of how to proceed with this investigation.

Rich: [00:21:44] Yeah, the go-by is a sample of a search warrant. So, all they have to do is change the names and change the condition and change the narrative. But what they’re asking for from these companies is all the same.

Dave: [00:21:56] I went with one of those, the first Facebook search warrant and first Google Microsoft search warrant I ever wrote was based one of these, basically a template. And I was like, “Oh, let’s not reinvent the wheel.” This guy already did it. It’s successful. I’m going to use all that language and then just tailor it to my cases, invaluable for investigators.

Dan: [00:22:15] And the language is so specific, unless you know what you’re doing, you’re going to miss a lot of things because the way some case law has gone now, when you write for a computer, if you think of a computer as a hotel, you got to write for each specific room. You don’t get free access to the entire hotel now, so this language that is included in these go-bys typically will give you access to the entire hotel.

Yeardley: [00:22:39] Fascinating.

Dave: [00:22:52] Rich, you touched on your work on sextortion cases too. Before I was promoted to sergeant, I investigated sex crimes and child abuse. I think about the children in these cases who have no idea who is lurking on the other end of these unknown friend requests. These kids don’t know that they’re dealing with predators.

Rich: [00:23:11] By The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Statistics, the average Internet predator has 250 victims in their lifetime.

Yeardley: [00:23:18] Oh.

Zibby: [00:23:19] What?

Rich: [00:23:19] Yep.

Dave: [00:23:20] We think about it in terms of, say we have one of these Facebook guys that he just shotguns a bunch of messages out, he’s phishing, and a child replies, and then they start a conversation. The guys that I was writing search warrants on, I would just ask for one- or two-month snapshot of their activity. And they’re talking to 20, 30, 40 people at a time.

Yeardley: [00:23:40] Oh, my God. Minors?

Rich: [00:23:43] Yep.

Yeardley: [00:23:43] Fuck. So, how does this interview with Blake go? And do you also interview his brother?

Rich: [00:23:49] Well, I really thought his brother was maybe the mastermind because his brother was a lot smarter than him, but he was the catalyst for sure.

Zibby: [00:23:56] I see and so Blake and his brother were in on a lot of this together. Was Blake denying it?

Rich: [00:24:01] No, he was very pompous and, “So what? It’s me. You can’t touch me.” Well, he doesn’t realize that there’s numerous computer fraud, wire fraud, things that he has done in that county. So, then I come to bat and I ask him, “Who’s this and who’s that? Do you know them?” “Yes, I know them. Blah, blah, blah.” Do you know [beep]? “Yeah, that guy’s a jerk. But my brother’s the one who had a problem with him,”

[laughter]

Rich: [00:24:25] So, he’s connecting all the dots. He’s not saying that not there.

Yeardley: [00:24:29] So, he considers himself this vigilante.

Rich: [00:24:31] Exactly. So, he’s stepping all over himself. In my head, I was like, “Well, all right, how am I going to push this over the top?” And I was like, “How often do you talk to these guys?” Well, “I talk to them every day. We game together and blah, blah”. I said, “So would you be willing to have a conversation on Skype with your crew who did this?” And Blake is like, “What do you mean?” I said, “I would like you to get on Skype when these guys are on, and I’m going to record everything that’s going on that’s going to help yourself out if you agree to cooperate with this investigation.” Because we had the mastermind of the swatting. Now, we needed the mastermind of who was doing all the identity theft. There were four of them when they’re ready to swat someone, they have four guys in a Skype channel.

[00:25:14] One person is doing the talking to the dispatch, the other person is data mining and feeding that information to the person making a phone call while the other person is now going on the Darknet and getting all the information on the victim to get ready to do wire fraud. So, here are four people in one room targeting this person. So, they all have a job to do.

Zibby: [00:25:38] They’re an organized gang.

Rich: [00:25:41] Absolutely. It’s almost like Ocean’s Eleven, right?

Zibby: [00:25:43] Yeah, exactly.

Rich: [00:25:44] So, I talked to his dad and his mom, and I said, “Look, the only way he’s going to help himself out of this is if he cooperates.” Blake’s telling me he had nothing to do with the fraud and parents says, “Well, you need to help yourself out, Blake.” So, we went on Skype. I called my bosses. I said, “Hey, we’re going to do an overhear now, you have to understand about overhears.” Overhears is when the police record a conversation with somebody that you’re having it with. Now, there are one party consent states and then there are two party consent states, meaning that you have to have a court order in order to record in a two-party consent state.

Dave: [00:26:19] —or you have to let them know,

Rich: [00:26:19] Hey. By the way, we’re recording this.

Yeardley: [00:26:19] Ah-ah.

Rich: [00:26:23] So, both the other state and my state were two party consent states. So, I called my state’s attorney. I said, “Can we do something called an emergency exception” if there’s death or great bodily harm that may be happening right now, you can record an emergency exception, but within 48 hours, you have to get an overhear order signed by a judge after the fact. So, we didn’t record when we are first on Skype. I’m just making notes to myself as to what’s happening now. So, we get on Skype, two of Blake’s crew members are on there and he’s on there. While they’re on there, they want to swat an FBI agent.

Yeardley: [00:27:02] [gasps]

Zibby: [00:27:03] Stop it.

Dave: [00:27:02] And Blake just handed him the [crosstalk]

Yeardley: [00:27:05] Oh, my God. So, you have so caught them red handed.

Rich: [00:27:11] Yes. So now, oh, my God, they want to do this to an FBI guy. So, I heard him call my state’s attorney again. He said, “Recording.” So, we started recording, and they go, “Okay, he lives here, he lives there. And you hear him typing on Skype.” And I have a tablet of paper that I write in big words to tell Blake what to say on the recording. And I said, “Ask them who did the financials.” They call it the financials. Who did the financials? So, Blake wasn’t asking that question. So, I wrote it again and circled it, and I said, you need to ask this question, because now I’m thinking he’s involved in it.

Zibby: [00:27:48] Yeah.

Rich: [00:27:49] So, he asked the question, and the one guy says, “What are you talking about, Blake? You were on the call. You know who did the financials-

[laughter]

Rich: [00:27:58] -and bam, he was done.

Yeardley: [00:28:00] So you’ve got him. Blake, aka [beep] God, is undeniably responsible for committing this identity theft, ruining this poor father’s credit, and wreaking havoc across his entire financial world, as well as swatting this hacker kid in your state. My God. So, what now?

Rich: [00:28:18] He wasn’t arrested. We didn’t arrest him on the scene, so we’re going to just follow up with a complaint and warrant in extradition because it’s so murky, especially in a judge’s eyes, we have to be really concise that this connects to him. Even though he says all this stuff. What if we get the confession thrown out for some technicality? We still want to have evidence based on what we found in his computers. So, we took everything, took all their computers, and the state’s attorney would not charge until we had all the forensics done. So, it took about a good eight months before my guys were done.

Yeardley: [00:28:52] But Blake could just find another phone or iPad or computer and start again.

Rich: [00:28:57] And That’s what he did.

Yeardley: [00:28:58] That is so dark.

Rich: [00:29:00] When my computer forensic examiners tore those computers up, Blake was responsible for over 10 swattings with different gamer crews, and he recorded his sessions, which was fantastic evidence for us. His screen name was there in that Skype session, and we were able to put together these cases from all over the United States. But even when we sent the information to the FBI or to these jurisdictions that were swatted, ah. screw it, we don’t understand that stuff. So, we’re not even going to charge it?

Yeardley: [00:29:29] Huh, no

Zibby: [00:29:00] No, no.

Rich: [00:29:32] And I’m like, “Really? All the resources these guys cost you and you’re not going to charge it even in [beep] county?” he had a dead bank confession, and the AUSA was not going to arrest an 18-year-old, and he got away with it federally.  He got away with it.

Zibby: [00:29:48] So, you’re saying the reasons are in part because the people getting this information don’t understand it and therefore aren’t computing the consequences of cybercrimes, but also because he’s a teenager?

Rich: [00:29:59] Yeah. And the reason why his state’s attorney didn’t want to press charges is because his state’s attorney didn’t understand all the technical crap. So, they decided not to do anything.

Zibby: [00:30:09] Yep. This is a problem.

Rich: [00:30:09] It is a problem.

Yeardley: [00:30:11] So, he doesn’t pay for his crimes at all?

Rich: [00:30:13] Well, yeah. So now that we caught all the evidence, of course we charged him with felony disorderly conduct, attempting to making a terrorist threat to law enforcement. So, we charged Blake with that and he got extradited to my state.

Zibby: [00:30:26] Did he ever do any time?

Rich: [00:30:27] Two years’ probation.

Yeardley: [00:30:29] What?

Rich: [00:30:30] Granted, he had to pay probably $250,000 in attorney fees, but again, who pays for that? The parent, the parent pays.

Dave: [00:30:37] Yeah. The win out of this is he just got charged with a felony, so by law, he cannot own a firearm.

Zibby: [00:30:43] But his weapon is technology.

Dan: [00:30:45] It is, but you try to look at, did I get a win out of this? And yes, you also made an example out of him where these hackers also start to figure out, “Well, we have to be perfect to not get caught. If we make a mistake, we got guys like Detective Rich here. He’ll find them.”

Zibby: [00:31:03] Yeah, but it’s not good enough. I know you guys feel the same way, but these folks are behind closed doors, out of sight, and totally weaponized with their technology. It’s such unchartered territory for law enforcement, really, all the way up the chain of command. So how do we even begin to combat something that has no real consequences?

Rich: [00:31:21] Not only do I have to fight to get the bad guy, I have to fight my own prosecutors to do the right thing. I mean, how many times have you guys had a great case, but because a prosecutor didn’t understand it, they question what you did. I’ve been doing this stuff for 25 years. I’ve arrested over 300 predators and when I get a millennial who’s now a state’s attorney trying to tell me how to do my job that I entrap this guy, I’m like, “You have no idea. I follow this. I create the training. And I have never been to trial on any of my predator cases. So, you’re going to tell me how I’m going to run my investigation.”

Zibby: [00:31:58] You should see the twins are nodding in tandem as you’re speaking.

Dave: [00:32:01] We talk about this guy’s consequence, which is two years’ probation. The frustration we have is exactly what he’s saying. You package together all the work you’ve done and all the resources that you’ve tied up into one person or one group, and in the end, the hit they get is what they get from the court. And whether or not that feels like justice to you doesn’t really matter to the greater population. But for you, you’re like, “I did what I could.” We all want the biggest hit for each case that we get, but there comes a point where you kind of have to let it go and be like, “You know what? I did my part” onto the next one.

Rich: [00:32:37] After this case, I actually wrote the swatting law in my state, where I wanted to make sure people are held responsible for that emergency response. So, now if it’s a kid who does it and we catch them, the parents are responsible for up to $50,000 to repay that city. And if it’s an adult, they are responsible to pay up to $50,000 for that incident response.

Zibby: [00:33:02] Can you explain what your thinking is around that? Why hold the parent responsible? What is the logic there for you?

Rich: [00:33:02] So, here’s the thing. The parent is responsible for that kid’s technology. When you have hundreds of thousands of parents that don’t want to watch their kids, and they will just feed the dragon, keep that kid up in their room, “You want this mic? You want this service? Yeah, I’ll pay for it. You just stay up there and get out of my hair.” Well, when you do that, you’ll get what you get, and all the way up until the kid is 18, that parent is responsible for what’s happening.

Yeardley: [00:33:34] So in this case, Blake’s parents had to pay up.

Rich: [00:33:34] Yeah.

Yeardley: [00:33:38] What is the parent’s reaction when they realize their son is this cyber terrorist basically?

Rich: [00:33:44] A lot of parents suffered from a disease called the NMK Syndrome, not my kid. “My boy would never do that. He’s got such a bright future. He would never, they do that to him. And if he did this, he’s just getting back at what they did to us.” So, again, when you have parents feeding that dragon, you should see the equipment we took out of these two boys’ room. Snowball mics, high level headsets, three terabytes of storage, and 18 gigabytes of RAM. They give them everything to do their dirty deeds, but if you’re not controlling your kid, you get what you get. They have no accountability.

Yeardley: [00:34:24] So, even when you present irrefutable evidence that their son is this hacker and has over 10 swatting incidences attributed to him, are the parents still in denial? At what point do they go, “Oh, shit?”

Rich: [00:34:42] Their come to Jesus moment is when the person on the speaker said, “You should know, you were there.” And that ended it for everybody. So, when the parents just raised their hands and they’re like, “All right, how are we going to save his ass now?”

Dave: [00:34:53] It’s a pretty sobering moment, I’m sure.

Zibby: [00:34:56] What do you tell people like us? I’m not law enforcement and I’m not a hacker, and I don’t understand the interwebs very well. I know how to sign on to my Instagram and my Facebook and see what my friends are up to. Is there anything you could tell us about protecting ourselves or be wary of or don’t do this, emphatically, do not do this?

Rich: [00:35:16] Yeah. If you’re a parent and you have kids, you are responsible for that kid’s technology. There is no such thing as privacy for children. And parents have this false connection that, “Oh, I can’t look in the phone. That’s theirs.” Are you kidding me? Wouldn’t you want to know if your kid is smoking weed or doing heroin? Guess where it’s at? It’s in the phone. Wouldn’t you want to know if they’re going to meet this teacher for sex? Guess where it’s at? It’s in the phone. And if you are not checking that kid’s messages, the pictures, their social networks, you are responsible for everything that kid does. I don’t care if nana, nonna, grandma, grandpa, tia, tiu, give them that brand new iPhone X for their birthday. They don’t own it. As a parent, you allow them to have it. And this is what parents need to understand that they are in control of that technology.

[00:36:07] And for a kid to say, “You can’t see it, it’s mine,” bullshit. “I don’t care what you think. I pay the bills. I don’t care who bought you that phone. I am responsible for you until you’re 18.” When I go into schools across the country, do an exercise, I tell them all this, and they’re like, “What? Get out of here.” So, let me give you an example, all right? Everybody, look down at your shoes. I have all the kids look down at their shoes, and very loudly, I say, “You don’t even own the shoes that you’re wearing.”

[laughter]

Rich: [00:36:32] And just to make them understand that nothing they have is private to them when it comes to their parent or their guardian. And parents fool themselves and they say, “I would never buy my 10-year-old a cell phone. They only have an iPad.” And I look at them like, “Really?”

[00:36:49] You don’t realize that who needs phone service anymore? That any app you can put on a phone, you can put on an iPad. So, this is how I educate the community. And I show parents that, “Look, predators don’t happen somewhere else. It happens here. And when you allow your child to have this device with no controls and no checking, that’s a known fact that the frontal cortex of their brains are not developed enough to handle what goes on in social networks. So, you are risking your child’s life. And they don’t realize that you have to be 13 years of age or older to have a social network.”

Yeardley: [00:37:21] Oh, to be on Facebook or something.

Rich: [00:37:24] Facebook, Instagram, snapchat. Yeah, it’s the rule worldwide. So, then why do I have fourth and fifth graders having a Snapchat and an Instagram when they’re only nine or ten years old? So, here’s what happens when the kid goes to the parent, “I want a Snapchat, everybody else has one. I’m the only one who doesn’t have them.” The parents cave without realizing what the rules are. And let’s face it, our kids are not the best mathematicians in the world, right? If they are born in 2010, 2011, they know that they have to be 13.

[00:37:52] So, like, “Oh, I’ll just round up. I’m not going to sit there and count. I’ll round up to 2000.” So, they make their date of birth 2000. How old are they now? They’re 18. So, who do you think they’re talking to? 18-year-old and above. So, now I have this little 10-year-old who’s talking to 30-year-olds. What do you think is going to happen? And when the parent allows their children to charge their devices in their rooms at night, that’s when they’re victimized. Of all my predator cases, of all my sextortion cases that I’ve ever investigated, the common denominator was twofold.

[00:38:23] One, the parents allowed their child to charge their devices in their rooms at night. And two, that child was texted, you owe me one pic. In every sextortion case, you owe me one pic was texted by that person.

Dave: [00:38:37] These are all my predator cases. You imagine the playground, these guys go, oh, my God. There’s an endless supply of juveniles who believe anything I say and will send completely inappropriate stuff, thinking it’ll never come back to me. And then, boom, the guy owns them.

Rich: [00:38:54] Right.

Zibby: [00:39:04] You say it’s a rule that you have to be 13 or above to have a social media profile, but you’re saying rule, not law. It feels like an unenforced rule and it doesn’t sound like it’s an actual law. So, are these just rules that the social media companies put out?

Rich: [00:39:23] Yeah.

Dave: [00:39:26] They can’t confirm IDs. There’s no IDs to be checking, like at TSA.

Dan: [00:39:29] And parents need to also understand that there are some apps out there that disguise basically these vaults for their children to hide photos. Dave touches on that when he does trainings with parents.

Dave: [00:39:41] Well, the voice track he just gave, I’m going, Man, I say that in all my presentations, too. Parents be nosy. It is your property. These kids get so empowered and entitled that they will ask during my presentation, “Well, you know what? That’s my phone.” And I go, “It’s their house. They own every item inside that house including your ass.” They own everything. And so, parents can be held responsible in our state for failing to supervise their children. I hope we get a law like you wrote, because that’s huge. We want to make parents be accountable. Parents don’t get the consequences. It’s the not-my-kid syndrome, exactly.

Zibby: [00:40:24] Well, and also, I know I’m not a parent, but I have friends who are parents. I’m around parents all the time. Parents are exhausted by being parents. So, I can see where a parent wants to turn off at a certain point in the day or in a certain period of time in a child’s life. It’s very easy to go, well, I don’t understand that over there. But that’s a generational thing. Kids these days, they get technology. I don’t. I just feel like this message is so crucial. And if you are a parent, it’s important to educate yourself on what your children have access to now.

Rich: [00:41:01] What I do in my classes is I show parents what the dangers are, how kids are getting involved, and if something, God forbid, happens to their kid, I show them what evidence they need to collect in order for us to do an investigation. And then at the end, I show them how monitoring software works.

Yeardley: [00:41:20] Rich, let me ask you a follow-up question to Zibby’s question, because you’ve done a great job outlining how the parents can protect their children. But what about the rest of us, just regular grownups? What can we do to protect ourselves?

Rich: [00:41:34] Well, my police department had to buy me and my whole family LifeLock for the rest of our lives. So, having LifeLock is a fantastic way to know any time somebody is trying to mess with you online. It even monitors the Darknet and the Tor Browser if your information is being sent anywhere.

Dave: [00:41:48] So, they buy you LifeLock. It’s informational workman’s comp that you just got.

Rich: [00:41:53] Absolutely.

Zibby: [00:41:54] Rich, has the swatting situation ever led to any actual fatalities or injuries?

Rich: [00:41:59] They had one in New Jersey last summer and the guy got shot by a sniper. He came out to his porch and they said, “Let me see your hands, and let me see your hands.” And he put his hands in back of him. They shot him. And this was a result of a swatting case.

Yeardley: [00:42:12] Oh, Jeez.

Zibby: [00:42:12] Oh my God.

Dave: [00:42:14] How do you think that sniper feels?

Dan: [00:42:15] The guy who pulled the trigger.

Yeardley: [00:42:19 Who pulled the trigger on an innocent person?

Dan: [00:42:20] Absolutely. I mean, his life has changed too. I can’t imagine having to feel that guilt.

Yeardley: [00:42:25] That’s well said.

Zibby: [00:42:26] This cyberworld of ours really feels like the Wild Wild West. And my mind just keeps going to the men and women in law enforcement who really don’t have a protocol yet for handling cybercrimes.

Rich: [00:42:40] When I go out and I teach parents and kids and I’ll get parents call me back, says, “Hey, I called the police. And you know what they told me? If they’re going to take a report, they’re going to have to arrest my daughter too.” So, law enforcement all over the country is behind times. What they do is because they’ve had no training on how to take a cybercrimes report, they will say stuff like, “Lady, we don’t handle that here. Call the FBI, or we can’t handle we’re too busy right now. Call in about 8 hours when they get off a shift.” So again, they don’t understand technology. So, what I’ve done over this past year is I created a 15-minute training to show patrol officers how to take a cybercrime report. And when you get the training, I also attach a laminated piece of protocol, we call it the protocol sheet to show them what questions to ask, what to grab, how to put a phone in airplane mode. And that goes along with the training.

[00:43:31] And as I go to all these conferences, I show chiefs and I show cybercrime detectives that, “Hey, I have this training if you want it, we put this protocol sheet with it just to train your guys how to take a cybercrime report.” And that’s one of the biggest hurdles. Imagine how many cases that are out there that they were shut down by the responding patrol officer because they don’t understand the nature of the crime.

Yeardley: [00:43:55] You’ll never make any progress if you don’t actually start to learn the rules. Right? You got to start somewhere.

Rich: [00:44:01] Yeah. It’s so crazy. Like, I was in Washington teaching resource officers how to teach internet safety programs, and luckily, I had a judge there and a couple of prosecutors in my class. So, I had about 26 people. Its laboratory based. I had a judge come to me on the break and it’s so crazy that in that whole state, they don’t do subpoenas. Like, “What do you mean you don’t do subpoenas?” No, “We just write search warrants on everything.” I was like, “Well, that’s just a waste of time.” There’re some things that you can do search warrants on to get messages and things like that, but they’ve never done subpoenas. I said, “When it comes to technology, you need to do subpoenas to get stuff faster.” Every state has a different prosecutorial process and I get it. But the judge came to me. She goes, “Rich, after parkland in Florida of the shooting, we had copycat cases of kids doing the same thing in my jurisdiction in my county. They went through psyche veils. But how do I truly know that these kids are safe to go back?”

Yeardley: [00:45:02] When you say copycat, are you or is the judge talking about kids in her jurisdiction who may have been in the planning stages of doing something similarly horrific like shooting up their school? Is that–

Rich: [00:45:16] Yes. And I’m like, here’s the deal judge. When you order a parent or their defense attorney to hand over that kid’s cell phone and their computer before you pass judgment, once you do a forensic examination on that cell phone or their computer, there you will see their deepest, darkest secrets. There you will know, when you have a forensic exam done on those computers and cell phones, to see what they’re typing, to see what their intentions are, to see how bad they are and want to hurt other people that they go to school with, then that’ll be your answer. She says, “Son of a bitch, I never even thought about that.” I’m like, “So, you need to set up someone who could do computer forensic exams in your county. That when you order a kid, that’s the only true way you’re going to know if that kid is safe to go back to school.”

Dave: [00:46:02] That’s brilliant. You get the court order. “Hey, before I bless this, we’re going to do a little deep dive on what you’re up to.”

Rich: [00:46:10] Absolutely.

Dave: [00:46:13] And then we can say with the best of our ability, okay. We checked them out and I’m not too concerned.

Yeardley: [00:46:18] I thought subpoena was compelling people to come and testify or be deposed. Is that not, right?

Dave: [00:46:24] There’re two types of subpoenas. So, you can get documentation also. So, say, “I get a cyber tip from The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children about a child porn guy who’s uploading all kinds of child porn. They grab his IP address, and then we subpoena that IP address and figure out what address is attached to that IP address. And that’s how we start finding residences. I see, so you can subpoena for documentation and information. You can also subpoena people.

Rich: [00:46:53] Yeah. There’s something called the Electronics Communications Privacy Act, ECPA that as ICAC members, these are our rules of what we need to play by. So, for a preservation where we can save all the stuff on account, we have to follow that up with a subpoena search warrant or court order. And, if we do a subpoena, we can get this information. If we do a search warrant signed by judge, we can get this type of information. That’s like our playbook getting digital evidence from internet service providers.

Dave: [00:47:19] What’s frustrating to me is at some point there was a shift with these electronic service providers like Google, Yahoo. There used to be a little checkbox like, “Please do not notify the user of this legal process.” Now their default is, “We are going to notify the user of this legal process unless you have a judge sign an order justifying why we won’t notify.” So, you’re tipping this user when you serve a legal process unless you get a judge convinced, “Yeah, this is going to absolutely jeopardize this investigation.”

Yeardley: [00:47:52] Because they’ll just dump everything.

Dave: [00:47:54] Exactly. I’m just asking for information. I’m not asking for all the content. But the shift has gone to what we can’t violate this person’s right to all this and we’re so heavy on defendants that we’ve ignored the exigency and what would really help our investigation is we got to gather all this information and we’re checking boxes, but help us out a little bit and do the right thing.

Zibby: [00:48:18] This has been utterly eye opening.

Yeardley: [00:48:21] Rich, would you kindly tell our listeners how they can access more of your knowledge around everything that we discussed today?

Rich: [00:48:27] If anybody wants school training, they just need to go to besureconsulting.com. I created a program– where instead of arresting or expelling kids and ruining their lives, I created a program called juvenilejusticeonline.org, juvenilejusticeonline.org, where not only do we give kids consequences for the things they do online and in real person, but we also give their parents consequences too.

[00:48:57] So instead of ruining their lives with arrest, fingerprinting, and photographing, they will do consequences such as apology letters, self-esteem counseling. We have them watch a video and take a 10-question test. We have them do hours of community service, write research papers in order to show them what they did is wrong and how they can learn by their mistakes. We launched this at the end of 2016 and currently we have over 1500 people across the nation using juvenile justice online to give kids a chance because they do make mistakes.

Yeardley: [00:49:26] Wow.

Zibby: [00:49:27] Excellent.

Yeardley: [00:49:28] That’s incredible. Thank you.

[00:49:37]. Small Town Dicks is produced by Zibby Allen and Yeardley Smith and coproduced by Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby: [00:49:43] This episode was edited by Logan Heftel, Yeardley Smith, and Zibby Allen.

Yeardley: [00:49:48] Music for the show was composed by John Forrest, our associate producer is Erin Gaynor and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

Zibby: [00:49:58] If you like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, head on over to smalltowndicks.com and become our pal on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from our Small Town Fam, so hit us up.

Yeardley: [00:50:12] Yeah. And also, we have a YouTube channel where you can see trailers for past and forthcoming episodes.

Zibby: [00:50:17] That’s right. If you choose to subscribe, you’ll be supporting our podcast. That way we can keep going to small towns across the country and bringing you the finest in rare, true crime cases, told, as always, by the detectives who investigated them. Thanks for listening Small Town Fam.

Yeardley: [00:50:34] Nobody’s better than you.

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