The Shawn Ryan Show
#255 Ryan Montgomery – Roblox & Minecraft: Hacker Exposes the Largest Online Video Games
20 Nov 2025
Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
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Ryan Montgomery. Sean Ryan. Welcome back to the show, man.
Thank you, man. I can't believe I am back in a good way.
What's it been, like two years? Three years. Has it been three years? Three years, yeah. Lots has happened.
Yeah, you got me thinking, is it two years? I think it's three. It's three.
Is it really?
Yeah.
Lots has happened since you came on here, man.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Ryan Montgomery face during his childhood?
And the, like, the next day I wake up and there's, like, 10 million views on this clip. And I'm like, what the heck? You know, like, I have all these journalist groups reaching out to me, all these media wanting to ask questions, all these different, you know, variety... Sorry. All of these various podcasters reaching out to me.
And I see in my comments, check your DMs, check your DMs from a guy named Sean Ryan. And, uh... I'm like... And I check my DMs, and I see Sean's in there, and I'm like, wow, this guy's got a big channel, and he wants to, you know, he wants to talk about this. So we started a conversation, and, you know, I wanted to get the story out there no matter what way it went out.
I didn't care if it went out from a left wing, right wing, in-between wing. It didn't matter. I just wanted the story out there. And, you know, I didn't know anything about politics. Still really don't. But I was... I just was very, very blown away by a small account blowing up the way that it blew up. So I reach out. I'm sorry. I start speaking with you.
We arrange a podcast, which, if you remember, Project Veritas was involved. Oh, I remember. So this is where I want to get into what happened with that. So you... So, actually, this is the way I really want to put it, is nobody had the balls to talk about this story. Because, and I proved that with the media. I showed them what needed to be out there.
There was, it was black and white how bad this website was. And I had evidence that you could not refute of all of the people involved. And they just ignored me. And you saw that one-minute clip and said, you know what, I'm gonna risk my whole channel, I'm gonna risk everything, just because I wanna get this kid that I don't even know, meaning me, I wanna get this kid's message out there.
And you have no idea how much I appreciate that, and how many kids that's actually helped, not just from me, from you. Without you, without obviously all the things that led up to you, none of that would have happened, you know? And I am beyond grateful for that, and it's opened up so many doors, which I'll obviously get into in this episode. beyond blessed, super grateful for it.
And, you know, one thing that's frustrating is, and I have a good and bad thing to say about Project Veritas and why I wanted to tie them into this story, is Project Veritas is the first journalist group to reach out to me that I was willing to, because they said, you know, we'll fly overnight, we'll be there the next day. So, they were in New York, I was in Florida.
And they said, you know, we'll come out and check out the database and we will investigate it. So, of course, I was like, yeah, come out, let's do it. You know, anybody who wants to run this story, let's go. This is right about the time James O'Keefe left or was fired, whatever happened there. That doesn't matter to me, to be honest with you.
They fly out to Florida, I hand them the data, and all of their journalists, all their reporters, the ones that I worked with directly, were passionate and wanted to work on this project. And they spent... days slash weeks slash months of their life on this project. So I can't say a single negative thing about the team that I worked with there.
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Chapter 3: How did Ryan Montgomery become involved in cybersecurity?
But yeah, I remember being extremely fearful. I was like, these people aren't trying to help you. They didn't help you the first time. There's 7,000 names on that list. And that was developed, a website was developed by a politician. They're trying to, every motherfucker on there is calling in favors, trying to get help. their name redacted from that list. I remember.
Do you remember? I was so scared of, because, you know, I took, as you said, it was a risk for me. I was scared my daughter was going to get kicked in. They were like, I don't have anything to worry about, but I don't want to lose all my electronics or end up getting charged with something that I go to trial for and all this stuff. And I'm calling you.
I'm calling you at, like, 11, 12 o'clock at night. You got Tim Parlatour helping me out. You got all these people, you know, telling me, like, yo, do this, do that. Like, make sure you don't do this, don't do that. Like, you helped me an absolute ton back, you know, because I was panicking, man.
I was panicking because I wanted the information out there, but I didn't know what to expect because technically what I did at that time was... was not legal. My intentions were obviously good. I would say it's more gray than black hat, but it was, you know, I obtained that information illegally. So I was scared. I was genuinely scared and it was very new territory to me.
I know now a lot more than I did. And as I said in the beginning, if I had to go to trial for this and I had to stand in front of 12 jurors or jury, like I have a hard time believing that People would say that I'm a criminal for taking down a predator organization, but I genuinely was scared at that time.
Well, it wound up being a wildly successful piece of content. I mean, with all the clips and the reels and the episode and the downloads, I mean, it's, it's, it's literally hundreds of millions of views. And then, and then your life just exploded into ways that I think you'd never imagined it would go into. Oh my gosh. I mean, I remember seeing you on all the big podcasts and I was just, dude,
Through all this shit and all the fame that you've amassed since we met, dude, I just want to say, man, I am so fucking proud of you. you have handled the fame and the notoriety like nobody I've ever seen, man. Like you have stayed true to yourself. You are not, you did not turn into a pompous asshole.
You are the same man that I met when nobody knew who the hell you were three years ago when we did that interview. And- It means the world to me, man. It really does. I just want to like say, like, you know, to, I want the world to know your character. That didn't turn into a massive amount of money for you, I don't think. You're not here to make money.
When people ask me about you or I'm talking about you, and I talk about you a lot, You know, one of the things I always say is, like, that guy does not give a fuck about anything but saving kids. He doesn't give a shit if you approach him with business ideas. Like, if that's your focus, he's not going to want to do it. Like, all that dude wants to do is save fucking kids.
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Chapter 4: How did Ryan Montgomery's drug use evolve from ecstasy to opioids?
And then the comedown of ecstasy sucked so bad that when somebody introduced me to opioids, the comedown, it made it way easier. And then I realized I liked the opioids better than I liked the ecstasy. And that's why I stopped going to the raves and all that stuff in Philly like we talked about. So all of that's happening.
And I'm failing drug tests for opiates and benzos and amphetamines because of other situations I'm going to get into. But this is all in a very... Because remember, my drug problems were 11...
Chapter 5: What experiences led Ryan to juvenile detention multiple times?
to 17. So, it wasn't that long, but a lot happened in that short period of time, if that makes sense. So, long story short on that, um... I'm on probation, she violates me, and I end up in the juvenile detention center time after time after time for all these different stupid, petty crimes, all revolving around drugs.
Nothing violent, nothing anything other than, you know, I'm not saying what I did was right, but, like, stealing stuff or having, like, I got... Self-harm.
It was all self-harm stuff.
Yeah, all stuff that I was doing to myself, but then the only thing that wasn't was actually a pretty crazy story that I'll tell you, which actually goes into another one with my dad. A guy who was a grown man who was married to a grown woman who was actually even twice his age,
was picking me and those kids up in the neighborhood at a very young age, 12, 13 years old, picking us up one, two o'clock in the morning.
I remember we had a ladder on the side of my bedroom window and he would pick us up and we'd get in his car, he would drive us to all these different cities in Pennsylvania and he would park at the end of the block and we would just go check all the door handles down the block for each car and see all the change, the GPSs, like back then GPSs were in everyone's cars.
And, you know, if they, like, go into their glove box and see if they had emergency gas money in there, and whatever they had that was worth something, we would take it, we'd give it to him, and then at one point he would, you know, he would sell the stuff.
So what I found out later about this guy, and I'm wrong for that, it was fueling a drug addiction at this time, because, you know, remember, at this age, I'm doing opioids are very expensive, and then that turned into heroin, and we've already talked about that story, so I'm trying to skip that. But...
The guy, the craziest part about this is, at one time, he tells me, hey, man, take home some of this stuff. So I took home a ton of the stolen merchandise.
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Chapter 6: What was the impact of Ryan's father's actions on his life?
And at one point, he had a revolver in his bedroom. And I was... Like, you know, I never had a gun before. Never shot a gun before at that time. And he gives me this revolver. There wasn't any bullets or anything, but he gave me the revolver. And I had this, and I had all of this stolen merchandise. And the next morning, it's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
You hear just knocking at the door like, wow, like it sounded like the SWAT team was at my house. The cops are at the door, guns out. My family, my mom, my stepdad at the time, is at the door and they see guns out. So it's like obviously serious. And they're like, where's the gun? Where's the gun? They know about the gun. And I didn't tell anyone about the gun.
So they go right up into my bedroom. They know exactly where this gun's at. They go right to grab all the stolen merchandise. I get charged with 110 counts of receiving stolen property. I get a weapons charge for the revolver, even though it had no bullets or whatever. I wasn't planning on using it, but I had it.
I find out this guy that's been picking us up every night was an informant for a completely different case. So this guy's committing crimes while he's an informant. with children. He's using children to rob cars to fuel his addiction while he's a police informant. And so him and his wife end up in the newspaper.
His name's Thomas James Gallagher, who actually just got arrested recently for unfortunately murdering an 18-year-old girl in a DUI situation. But yeah, so he did that later in life. But what he did to me was wrong too, but he was in the papers for that too. And it was called, like, Kitty Car Thieves or something was the title of the news article.
And whatever the case is, the guy has... He must have had some really bad luck because he ends up on the same block as my dad. And my dad is very different looking than I am. Like, we have similar eyes and, like, features, but my dad is, like, a six-foot gorilla, like, bald head, like... very different than me. And my dad finds out that it's TJ Gallagher on the block.
And he's talking about like, I know your son, blah, blah, blah. My dad punches him right in his jaw, breaks his jaw in the George W. Hill Correctional Facility. His jaw got wired shut. They transferred my dad to a state prison to get him away from this guy. And my dad was sticking up.
I mean, as much as my dad has gone, like I said the last time, has done drugs and has been in and out of jail and done some dumb things in my life, like, my dad cares about me. It's just drug addiction is tough. And I lost, you know,
my family to it i lost you know his most like my sister ariana she's my half sister but i call her my sister and my brother danny they their mother lauren which was my dad's like kind of basically his wife um and their parents she passed from an overdose you know semi recently and uh A lot of people have passed recently.
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Chapter 7: What are the key issues surrounding child exploitation and trafficking discussed in this episode?
Thank you. 99% of the people would take the poster boy route every single time. Got it. And I do have a question, though. You know, I mean, you're the first person that I've talked to about sex exploitation and child trafficking and that kind of stuff. Yeah. And then, you know, like I said, then it was Victor Marx and then, you know, Tim Tebow, Jared Hudson, Jim Caviezel.
Like, it's been, you've, after my discussion with you, it's turned into, I have to hit this every so often because it's the most important issue in the fucking world.
Wait till you see what I have to show you next. Why it's the most important issue.
I know. Not only what you already know. But what I want to ask is, and look... I don't want this to come across the wrong way. Saving a child is saving a child.
Chapter 8: How does Ryan Montgomery address the role of the U.S. in global child trafficking?
It doesn't matter if it's in Thailand, Peru, Ethiopia, Uganda. I don't care. It's a child. One thing, though, and I'm just curious as to why, if you know why. So many of these organizations operate out of Haiti, Philippines, Thailand, you know, Colombia, Peru, you know. third world countries, countries in poverty.
But every single, I believe it's every single time that I've breached this subject, the commonality, the one commonality is the US is the biggest consumer of kitty . We're the biggest problem in the world. The United States is the biggest problem in the world when it comes to sex trafficking and sex exploitation, correct?
Well, with the consumption of CSAM, like child sexual abuse material.
Why isn't all of the focus on the U.S. if that is the number one problem? If we are the number one consumer, the number one user.
I would love to tell you, bringing what Tim Tebow said in here, there's seven people working in C3. There's roughly 60 internet crimes against children locations in the entire country. The people that are making the most impact, I believe, are, you know, some of these organizations that are working with, you know, FBI, HSI. And it just needs to be better than that. We need to do better.
Why is it, though? Why are so many foundations going to Haiti, Thailand, all the places that I just mentioned, very little, if any, here in the U.S. It's just, is it the red tape? Is our federal government harboring this shit? Are they encouraging it? I mean, that was a rumor for a long time, especially with the southern border. It's a good question. You know, I mean, what is it? What is it?
I mean, we just saw one of the top guys at the Israeli like cyber fucking command or whatever, got caught luring in fucking kids to have sex with in a hotel room. I tweeted this out. Did we prosecute that individual? No, we packaged him up and fucking sent his happy ass back to Israel, No consequences whatsoever. What the fuck is that? What the fuck is going on?
Why are we packaging this guy up and handed him back to Netanyahu? Here you go. Here's your pedophile. Take care of him. We don't want him to get hurt. What is that? What is that? Where's the fucking justice for the kids, man? Where is it? Like what the fuck is going on in our country, man? And why aren't these organizations, why aren't they focused on the U.S.? It's the biggest problem.
So my guess, just based on my experience, my guess is there's not access to a lot of the information. So if there is a group being ran in the United States, and we, like, for example, if I get involved in it, it's going right to a federal agency. And at that point, it may not ever go public. So that is happening.
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