
A Coder Who Became a Crime Boss - Elof
https://www.wired.com/story/mastermind-excerpt/
======
iamben
Longer version of this story here (2016): [https://magazine.atavist.com/the-
mastermind](https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind) \-- fascinating story
and these articles captivated me. Have had them bookmarked for ages :-)

~~~
jamisteven
Incredible read indeed, someone needs to make a movie about this.

~~~
chmod775
So the inevitable factual errors in that movie will become mainstream opinion
until the truth falls into obscurity?

Happens every time Hollywood makes a movie about any topic that would be
better served by a documentary. It's never not infuriating.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Happens every time Hollywood makes a movie about any topic that would be
> better served by a documentary. It 's never not infuriating._

As if documentaries were accurate.

I wish there was a genre of movies that take it as core principle to not abuse
artistic license in service of making the plot flow.

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cryogenic_soul
For those who are interested in TrueCrypt history, here (it is in Russian)
[https://news.softodrom.ru/ap/b19702.shtml](https://news.softodrom.ru/ap/b19702.shtml)
([https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.softodrom.ru%2Fap%2Fb19702.shtml))
author did a small research and came to conclusion that TrueCrypt most likely
was created by a Czech guy named David Tesařík.

Update: IMHO this research is the most comprehensive one which I saw regarding
TrueCrypt authorship

~~~
rurban
His Wikipedia page explains that connection to David Tesarik:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux)

In short, Le Roux was the original author (under the name E4M) was later hired
by Hafner to write a commercial disc encryption system together with
Hollingworth who authored ScramDisc. Later Le Roux released E4M under its new
name TrueCrypt, and the commercial team (with Tesarik as its maintainer) sued
him.

~~~
cryogenic_soul
Thanks, I was not aware that Wikipedia mentions David Tesařík.

From what I can see in Wikipedia article, there is nothing about David
Tesařík's legal dispute with Le Roux, actually it says that Le Roux had a
dispute with SecurStar (a company which wanted to develop commercial disc
encryption system).

 _Team member David Tesařík stated that Le Roux informed the team that there
was a legal dispute between himself and SecurStar, and that he had received
legal advice not to comment on the case. Because of this, he was unable to
confirm or deny the legitimacy of TrueCrypt, keeping its development in
limbo.[13][14] A new version was released in June,[15] but with a different
digital signature and the developers now being referred to as "the TrueCrypt
Foundation". The project received funding, the source of which is equally
unclear._

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux)

Altogether, it is still unclear how much Le Roux participated in TrueCrypt
development (except E4M legacy), but it is clear that David Tesařík was one of
the main developers of TrueCrypt

------
world32
Am I the only one who found this to be very poorly written? Its like the
author keeps telling me how cool and mysterious this story is, why doesn't he
just tell me the story and I'll decide if its mysterious or not?

"Like a handful of random jigsaw-puzzle pieces, each one was incomprehensible
without an understanding of the larger picture."

He keeps going on about how unrelated these events are, and how mysterious it
is they are happening all over the world - well if you don't know whats going
on of course you will not know that two things are related?!

~~~
ivanhoe
Don't forget a full page about that Filipino garbageman, that ends in him
basically knowing nothing, seeing nothing and being completely irrelevant
character to the whole story...

~~~
world32
Oh man that part was ridiculous. Its like, you could spend a whole page
talking about some guy taking a dog for a walk and talking about how he bagged
up the dog poo and put it in a bin. Then say "little did I know this dog poo
was actually related to the murder of a journalist in Australia... The dog
belonged to an infamous hitman who hired a dog sitter to look after his dog
while he was in Australia on a job".

The whole thing sounds like it was written by a 15 year old.

------
candiodari
I hate that they put that list like that:

"Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable encryption.
African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping."

One of the things in this list is not like the other.

~~~
gpm
I propose a game, given a list, find a way that each item is not like the
others:

\- Kidnapping - It's the only action.

\- Explosives - It's the only thing that is illegal to make.

\- African Militias - It's the only one about using people.

\- Unbreakable Encryption - It's the only thing that is used by regular people
on a regular basis.

\- Missile Guidance Systems - It's the only thing that's not unique.

\- Private jets full of gold - It's the only thing most people would trade an
arm and a leg for.

~~~
thecatspaw
> Explosives - It's the only thing that is illegal to make.

doesnt the US restrict import/export of encryption over a certain keylength as
well?

~~~
gpm
Uh, I don't think so? Pretty sure they either gave up, decided it was
unconstitutional, or both.

Either way, "make", not "export". I'm almost certain it's illegal to export
missile guidance systems under ITAR.

~~~
jpdb
> Uh, I don't think so? Pretty sure they either gave up, decided it was
> unconstitutional, or both.

I think it's technically still a law that's on the books and the American
federal government did try to claim PGP was "munitions" at one point in the
90's, but the feds were skirted by PGP being printed in a book which is
protected by the 1st amendment.[0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_investigation)

------
presscast
Haha I was _sure_ this was going to be about PLR. Alright, story time.

Around 2007, when I was in undergrad, I started getting really interested in
cryptography. At the time TrueCrypt was a very popular project in crypto
circles, and I spent a lot of time hanging out on the TC forums, soaking up as
much information as I could.

As a journalism major, the extreme secrecy of crypto-geeks naturally piqued my
curiosity. I started digging into who ran TrueCrypt and its forums. After a
bit of googling and whois, I hit a brick wall in the form of LLCs in the
Cayman Islands. I therefore did what anybody in my position would do: I just
asked people on the TC forums what was going on.

Within _minutes_ , a very popular poster whose handle was `plr` reached out to
me, essentially saying "yeah... that _is_ weird! What do you know?". I told
him everything, which wasn't much, but he still seemed super interested. We
exchanged messages for a few weeks and followed up on a few leads. After a
while, plr stopped replying to me. I figured he got bored.

Years later (= 2016, I think), this came out:
[https://magazine.atavist.com/he-always-had-a-dark-
side](https://magazine.atavist.com/he-always-had-a-dark-side)

tl;dr: I was internet friends with Paul Le Roux.

~~~
iicc
Why not write to him.

~~~
presscast
He's not exactly the kind of person I want to be around.

------
beautifulfreak
Why did he do it? It must have been like a video game for him. He rarely
interacted with people directly. Most of his dealings were through employees.
The pharmacy business gave him a lot of money within its first 4 years (before
the FDA caught wind) so he had a lot of game fuel to play with. And his
criminal dealings seemed to occupy him every waking hour, just like a game
addiction. Maybe that's why he surrendered so easily, it's just another part
of the game, and it interests him.

~~~
GenerationRous
You're describing a cartoon character, not the psychology of a human being.

~~~
beautifulfreak
If you read the full story, you'll see that many investigators were perplexed
by his motivations and the sheer scale of his enterprises. His underlings
described their duties as being like something from a James Bond movie. It was
all so much larger than life, and erratic. So why did he do it? Not for money,
which he didn't seem to care about. If you think about it as playing for
rewards as in a video game, it makes a _lot_ more sense.
[https://magazine.atavist.com/the-
mastermind](https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind)

------
gumby
> ...this series of events ... each seemed like a kind of message from an
> adjacent reality that few of us experience directly.

This nailed it for me. By the description this was a combination of
sophistication and ad-hoc, all conducted in what is indeed a parallel world
(e.g. the confusion and corruption helps them where it would get in my way).

In a movie or novel everything lines up to make the storytelling crisper.
Which ultimately makes it implausible. This was quite gripping.

------
wikipost
Paul Le Roux, 46 (1972), born in Zimbabwe and raised in South Africa.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux)

------
trhow1111
I read a book called [Acid Alex][1] with a very similar story. Also born in
Zimbabwe, also moved to SA. Became a drug dealer.... - great book btw.

[1]: [https://www.amazon.com/Acid-Alex-Al-
Lovejoy/dp/1439249407](https://www.amazon.com/Acid-Alex-Al-
Lovejoy/dp/1439249407)

------
Cenk
Evan Ratliff (the article’s author) has a book on this subject coming out in
February:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JVBNCS7/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JVBNCS7/)

~~~
runjake
Right. This article is an excerpt from that book. Or that's what it says at
the top of the article, anyway.

------
lobster45
Interesting, the authors of TrueCrypt was always a mystery

------
gdfasfklshg4
> Pure methamphetamine manufactured in North Korea. Yachts built to outrun
> coast guards. Police protection and judges’ favor. Crates of military-grade
> weapons. Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable
> encryption. African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping. Torture. Murder.

What is unbreakable encryption doing in that list?

------
jordinl
I was expecting an article about Ross Ulbricht. Although this other story is
even more fascinating!

~~~
moomin
Pretty sure Paul La Roux regarded Ulbricht as a small-time, attention-
grabbing, useful idiot.

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foobar_
Reminds me of Ross Ulbricht.

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m0skit0
Definitely a true believer on free market!

