Brian Levine

It just made us think we had the right people.

But for quite a bit of time at that point, we're like, all right, we think we know who the three people are, but we just don't because they're encrypting everything.

We don't really have enough evidence to extradite them or to indict them.

The reason we had to talk to the DAG, if I remember correctly, was this was the first time in the history of the Department of Justice that we did a wiretap on a server.

Previously, wiretaps were invented because of phones.

You would listen to the mafia talk to each other.

You'd listen to the narcos talk to each other.

And they're like, wait, this is a computer.

Why would you even do a wiretap?

And there were arguments that we didn't even have to, but we wanted to have belt and suspenders.

We didn't want to make any mistakes here.

And because we were getting contemporaneous electronic traffic through the server, we wanted to have a wiretap.

But this confused a lot of people in the Department of Justice who didn't quite get it.

You said that, you know, normally the bad guy only has to be right once and that was sort of flipped around.

But that's potentially to identify them.

Remember that when, in order for us to indict them, extradite them, and then if they want to go to trial, which these cyber criminals almost always do,

we had to be able to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

And these cases are a lot harder to do that with than with a standard case because you've got to remember you're dealing with a jury.

So ultimately, it's not like you're going to be able to go to trial on one mistake.

You're going to have to build a body of evidence.