Brian Levine

I'm Brian Levine.

At the time, I was a cybercrime prosecutor at the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section in Washington, D.C.

That's under the Department of Justice.

Yes, it's part of the Department of Justice.

I was also a national coordinator for all the computer hacking and IP prosecutors around the country, one of whom was Duncan Brown, who was an AUSA, Assistant U.S.

Attorney, in the Northern District of Ohio.

and was brought in by Duncan and Stacey to help on the case.

It was really challenging at this point because, at least at that time, the Department of Justice was very careful about the legal process that it issued.

And we had to justify what we were doing, which was very challenging because we would often get back what we would describe as nothing because everything was encrypted and I would have to go and make an explanation as to why this was beneficial.

to keep doing this kind of legal process.

And they would say, look, you're getting nothing.

Why are you wasting your time continuing this process?

And what we realized was these guys were so sophisticated that you just had to get all information you could all the time for as long as you could because you didn't know what was going to end up being helpful in the end.

It was all about breadcrumbs.

So we sent them, AOL, a search warrant for all of this data.

And they said, all right, this is a lot of information.

Come on in, and let's explain it to you as we give you that information.

So we came in.

I remember it was Stacy and Brian.

And it was unbelievable.