quantumfoam posted:

Recently finished reading a non-fiction book about a internet criminal kingpin that reads like a bizzare scifi/milscifi book series given the various schemes and plans the internet kingpin had going on. But it was all real apparently, and why I'm cross-posting this recap-review to a few book barn threads.

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A guy who created the online infrastructure and billing system for a unlicensed U.S. pill-mill (that he also created) made so much money he started hiring mercenaries to supply/guard/stay in the dozens+ of safe-houses he had filled up with gold bars and weapons. This escalated into the guy branching out into arms smuggling and of course drug smuggling along with lowest-bidder hit squads being sent out if the sums in the monthly (encrypted) budget expenditure (Excel spreadsheet) reports he required didn't add up. Toss in a stab at a legitimate business but make it a fishery specializing in rare fish stocks that was based in Somalia. Yes, Somalia (something about the decades of war + boat pirating allowing the depleted fish stocks along the Somalian coast to rebound and a fishery there being a fish-goldmine).
Did I also mention that the guy gave his mercenary teams detailed load-outs of what weapons and gear they should bring on each mission, and where he thought they should setup defensive positions like he was playing Jagged Alliance 2? Or that he was the brains and funding behind two major open-source disk encryption projects that were NSA resistant. Or that the sex addiction documented throughout the book was really a scheme for getting Anchor Babies in every non-extradition treaty nation or limited extradition treaty nation in case he had to flee and needed that extra leverage to resist getting extradited to the U.S.A.?
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Well, all that stuff is true and real. Book is The mastermind : drugs, empire, murder, betrayal by Evan Ratliff.
And the two open-source disk encryption projects, in case anyone cares, were E4M and TrueCrypt.