Russian hackers accused of stealing millions - Cyber Hack: Evil Corp Ep1, BBC World Service podcast

You'd hear them

before you ever saw them. Engines howling somewhere

beyond the edge of Moscow. The first time I discovered

the drag racers, early in my career, covering Russia

more than 20 years ago, it felt like I'd stepped onto the set

of The Fast and the Furious. This was Moscow's underground

street racing scene, a wild mix of people buzzing around

in beat up but beloved Ladas and other

souped up old cars. By day, they blended in. By night they'd gather in

secret locations, tear down hundreds of metres of tarmac, before melting

back into the city before sunrise. But there emerged another, more

brazen kind of street racer in Moscow, the kind that doesn't wait until night.

Ones who speed through the city, under the sun,

right under the nose of the police. They're Moscow's super rich.

And they know no-one will stop them. Not because they're fast, but

because, some say, they're protected. One of them was thin with

coiffed blond hair, Maksim Yakubets. But Maksim wasn't driving Ladas. His ride of choice

was a Lamborghini wrapped in Day-Glo yellow and grey camouflage. Racing through Moscow not

for the thrills, but to show who owned the road

like nothing could touch him. Maksim wasn't afraid of being seen.

In fact, he was easy to find. He and his crew

regularly posted on social media. Videos of them racing through Moscow

in an array of flashy cars, posing with stacks of cash,

even playing with a pet lion cub. In 2017, Maksim had just turned 30

and he was about to get married. Again. But this wasn't

some quiet second chance. It was held at an exclusive

golf course north of Moscow. I walked it myself some years later

with the manager, who told me the price of renting the course for a day

was a cool quarter of $1 million. For this wedding,

there was no expense spared. Staff directed VIP guests to walk

over the perfectly manicured turf to a giant pavilion,

decked out like an imperial palace. Its white facade was brilliant against

the dark green forest backdrop. They climbed a wide set of steps

to a veranda overlooking the course. Servers in black ties circulated

under chandeliers. Inside a spectacular ballroom. Matching

peony bouquets the size of trees. But that was only half of the story.

After dinner, the lights dropped. Dancers emerged, lasers flared, and

Russian pop icons took to the stage. This shrine to tradition transforming

into a modern, dazzling dance floor. We called the wedding planner to find

out more about this extravagant affair. They didn't want to talk. We tracked

down others who worked at the wedding. We were told they'd signed NDAs,

non-disclosure agreements. They couldn't talk either. But the wedding planner left dozens

of images online. And if you flick

through them straight away, you can spot there's something off. Look closely. There's the bride

in her white strapless gown, looking thoughtfully

into the sunlit distance. Here's one in black

and white. Classy. She's seated at a vanity table, the long train

of her dress billowing behind her. Now she's gazing up at her groom

on the darkened dancefloor. Curiously, Maksim's face

is harder to make out. A dramatic drone shot filmed directly

above them shows the couple walking hand in hand

through tall trees. A wide shot catches the groom

in the distance as the lens focuses

on the father of the bride. One from the side

has Maksim's face in shadow as he and the bride sink a knife into

a cake that's as tall as they are. Why so shy, Maksim? Perhaps there's a hint

in the vanity licence plate on his neon Lamborghini. вор [vor].

That's Russian for thief. A joke, perhaps?

Or a blatant admission? Maksim Yakubets of Moscow, Russia, has been indicted in Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania, for his alleged role as the leader

of a cyber criminal gang. So perhaps that outlandish wedding is

more than a celebration of love. Maybe it's a brazen display

of stolen wealth. Maksim Yakubets is

a true 21st Century criminal who, with the stroke of a key

and the click of a mouse, committed cyber crimes

across the globe. He's earned his place

on the FBI's list of the world's

most wanted cyber criminals. So that might explain

his newfound bashfulness. We're pleased to announce a reward of

up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest and or conviction of

Russian cyber criminal Maksim Yakubets. That's the kind of money they put up

for war criminals and terrorists. Even some of North Korea's hackers. And if you've listened to the Lazarus

Heist, you know what they're capable of. Yakubets and the members

of his criminal network devised and implemented the kinds

of criminal schemes so audacious

and sophisticated that they would be difficult

to imagine if they were not real. For years now,

Maksim Yakubets has evaded arrest. But he isn't just hard to catch.

He's not meant to be caught. He's said to be living

under the kind of protection that most criminals

can only dream of. Protection, some say, that comes

with strings attached. Though others tell a different story. I'm looking for Maksim Yakubets.

I'm from the BBC. There is no Maksim Yakubets here. He hasn't been here for 15 years. I have to say, my heart was thumping.

As the BBC cyber correspondent, I've been trying to track down

Maksim Yakubets for years. And in 2021, I travelled to Moscow

in search of him, winding up

at his dad's front door. Look, Maksim is not here.

I'm his father. Viktor Yakubets.

In the flesh. Yep. Green t-shirt.

Blue jeans. Gold chain. Gold ring. Gold watch.

Bald head. How do you think

your son has become so rich? - Who said he was rich?

- How did he afford the $600,000 wedding? How much? Firstly,

this is slightly exaggerated. Only slightly? It'd take

the average Russian a lifetime, maybe more, to make anything

like that kind of money. You seem very upset by the US

and the UK's accusations. Of course I am upset. They created

a problem for the family. For many people who know us.

What was the purpose? But back then,

you were only on the trail of Maksim. That's right. And meeting his father

was the closest I got. But three years later, in October

of 2024, there was a twist. The British government accused some

of Maksim's own family. Including his father.

I was amazed. Viktor apparently part

of the criminal empire too. And not just

the father. Maksim's brother, cousins and his father

in law were all implicated. Many of them

were standing alongside Maksim at that Moscow wedding in tuxedos. Big brother Artem, bald as his dad. To his left, cousin Kirill, short

with a beard and wavy hair. Cousin Dmitri, taller,

with a little less facial hair. Those wedding photos now look less

like a family album,

more like a police lineup. They ran their operations out of the

back of an Italian restaurant in Moscow, in the back room, just

like you would see Tony Soprano do. They really viewed themselves

as the new mafioso. These are the blood ties said to bind

an alleged global hacking empire with thousands of victims

around the world, emptying bank accounts

and upending lives. Crimes that live up

to this criminal crew's chosen name. Evil Corp.

When you look at the Evil Corp group, they were really one of the

beginning godfathers, so to speak. I'm Joe Tidy,

the BBC's cyber correspondent. I spend my time chasing

the world's most dangerous hackers. And I'm Sarah Rainsford. I was Moscow correspondent

for the BBC until I was expelled. They claimed I was a security threat. We've teamed up because if

you want to understand cybercrime and you want to understand modern Russia,

you need to understand Evil Corp. They're not just part of cybercrime

history. They are that history. Accused of stealing

hundreds of millions of dollars and working for the Russian state. Cybercrime. State power

and a life lived beyond the law. This is Cyber Hack, season three. Evil Corp.

From the BBC World Service. Episode 1: Zeus. Thirty years ago, this screeching

handshake was how you got online. Slow and clunky,

but it still felt like the future. Lawrence Baldwin was

a network engineer working for a big American telecoms company. With this cumbersome

connection process, the security risks he's tasked with

managing at the time seemed minimal. His motto?

What could possibly go wrong? But Lawrence begins to see the landscape

shift as the new century rolls in and the broadband era begins.

The world's becoming more connected, and we all start spending more

of our lives online. You'd install a firewall

on your aDSL connection, and you know it would light up like a Christmas

tree in two seconds after connecting. And it's like, what the heck

are these guys trying to do? Each light on his firewall, that

Christmas tree, is a silent alarm. They're alerts that attackers

are testing the digital locks, trying to break in. But why? It really upset me

that I would see this activity and have ten years

of network analysis experience. And I was like, I have no idea

what the goal is even here. And that's what spawned

the pressure on me to basically ultimately try

to answer that question. Lawrence is seeing more

than mischief. He's seeing the first signs of an

emerging underworld. Criminals crawling

beneath the surface of the internet, looking for opportunities to steal

as much money as possible. And it hits a nerve. This is not

just technical, it's personal. I get very triggered by injustice. Something in him needs to act. I set out with my primary mission, driving what I do,

to disrupt cyber criminals. So Lawrence quits his job

and he starts a cyber security firm, myNetWatchman.

There's not a lot of people that would just, like, put

all their life's focus on something without having any concept on, like,

how am I going to pay the bills? Three decades on, Lawrence

has morphed from network engineer to cybersecurity legend. He's been called a dark hero

of the internet. He doesn't just prevent problems, he

infiltrates criminal organisations. I actually, in a way,

began thinking like a criminal. He almost never gives interviews,

and he's never spoken publicly about his part in the hunt

for Maksim Yakubets, until now. Summer, 2009. Lawrence is already the

guy banks call when hackers strike. He's got the FBI on speed dial. And he's about to find out what

happens when you mess with a god. He's on the trail of a group

of cyber criminals using a bit of malware code named

after the Greek god of thunder, Zeus. Malware is

malicious software that hackers use to gain control

of a computer. It's hidden behind those dodgy links

we're always told to be suspicious of. And Lawrence has discovered

they're using it to steal money from a string of victims across the

US, stretching from coast to coast. An auto body shop in Georgia.

A plastics company in Pennsylvania. A Native American tribe

in Washington state. Even an order

of Franciscan nuns in Chicago. - Nuns?

- Nuns. Lawrence's intro to

this investigation starts with a tip. A colleague's got hold of a sample of

the Zeus code, and he spots something. It looks like a reference to

a server or central computer, which the criminals use to chat

to each other. Within minutes, I start taking a look

at what's going on. Sure enough,

there is a server where messages

are pinging back and forth live. To get a closer look,

Lawrence applies a packet sniffer, a tool that network engineers use

to monitor online traffic. You're the cyber correspondent.

I'll let you explain packet sniffer. Well, if you think of a packet

sniffer like a nosy postal worker, they read every letter that passes

through the mail sorting facility. Whereas normal postal workers

just see envelopes and addresses, a packet sniffer will be able

to read everything

unless the letters are protected, written in some indecipherable code,

for example. And to Lawrence's surprise,

these hackers are pretty complacent. None of the messages he sees online

are encrypted. So not only could I see this server

within minutes, I could actually see the full transcript

of all of the chat communications. That's when

my Zeus nightmare began. As the criminals are talking,

Lawrence is watching. It's as if he's stepped, invisible, into the backroom office

of a cybercrime syndicate. Most of the messages he sees

are in Russian. Lawrence doesn't speak Russian, but there are a few words

and phrases he recognises, and he begins to make some sense

of what's going on. Much of what he sees appears

to be people talking back and forth. But they're also sharing lots

of names and numbers. And then he sees reams

of bank details. Lawrence feels his pulse rise. And then it was like,

almost like a panic, because I'm going to have to build

something that ingests this data and puts it into a format

that I can triage it myself. Lawrence begins his triage operation, processing all this data

that's flowing by in real time. Not to mention some basic translation

from Russian so that he

can better understand it all. Soon the conversations he's tapped

into start to make a lot more sense. Hey, I just did

the fraudulent transaction. I've moved $200,000 out

of the victim's bank account. And here's the victim's name. And

then here is where I sent the money to. And there would be a laundry list

of individuals' names and bank account numbers

and dollar amounts, essentially documenting the details

of the fraudulent transaction. Behind all the detail about victims,

names, addresses, bank account numbers, there are real people losing real

money. But the criminals are ghosts. Lawrence gets to know them only

by their online handles. Two of the more prominent members

of the group go by Aqua and Tank. Lawrence circles those two in red.

You'd think with all that info, he already has first hand testimony

of hackers stealing money. The likes of the FBI

would love to know more. Think again. Initially, I didn't say anything

because I knew it was pointless until I could much more understand

the breadth and scope of this. Pointless? Well, here's why. At this point in time, I had already spent many years trying

to be helpful with cybercrime cases, and I have to say, it was

an incredibly frustrating experience. I would see

a bad actor doing something, and I'd throw something over the wall

to law enforcement say, hey, I'm seeing this.

You might want to check it out. You know what would happen 99 times

out of 100? Nothing. You hear the laugh, but it's rueful. Lawrence is the kind of person

who needs to know what's going on, so he talks to his sources

in law enforcement. What is going on here?

Help me understand. And he learns a cold truth. Prosecuting cybercrime is

really hard. It's massively labour intensive. It is extremely expensive. And the reality is, step one, to be

able to really even get a case going is that you have to know the extent

of the fraud, and the aggregated loss has

to be staggering. Obscene amount. Like I'm not even talking millions,

potentially tens of millions. Officially, he says, American

authorities will take on cases where the losses are $50,000 or above. But $50,000 gets a piece

of paper written on, that then goes into a file somewhere,

probably never to be seen again. The reality is,

only cases of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions

are really ever going to get worked. It's not like the cops don't care,

they're just massively overwhelmed. And maybe those hackers

Lawrence is watching over, Aqua and Tank,

are all too aware of that. Perhaps they know that

as long as they keep their crimes on the more modest side,

they'll be left well alone. In turn, making easy money. But that still leaves a deluge

of victims. That gap between what the hackers can do

and what law enforcement can handle, is what provides the building blocks

for an emerging criminal empire. Every day, Lawrence Baldwin logs onto

his window into the hackers world, keeping tabs on the anonymous hackers

he's come to know as Aqua and Tank. He watches on as hundreds

of heists unfold in real time. And every day, he knows

no-one is coming to stop it, at least anytime soon. It was very stressful. The victims are piling up

and Lawrence starts looking them up. He finds they're mostly made up

of small businesses

which can't afford to lose a dime. He feels a duty to help them. I'm a small business myself, and

I didn't want to see them get hurt. It put me in a situation

where I felt a huge sense of obligation to do anything

and everything I could, as quickly as I could,

to try to mitigate the fraud. So he makes a decision.

If the cavalry isn't coming, he's going to have to ride solo. I was going to milk this intel

for everything it had to disrupt

what they were doing. And then in complete parallel

to that, use everything that I knew about the constraints

that law enforcement had and do everything I could

to make them successful. Step one. Warn people. The obvious shortcut is

to warn the banks directly

that their clients are being robbed. The banks, in some cases,

can put a stop on transfers. There's a dozen

or more large banks in the US, but there's 18,000 small banks. There's no way he has time to put in

that many calls. So I had no choice but to try

to contact the victims directly. I would just always be very calm. I would start the conversation with,

look, I'm going to apologise in advance. This is going to be

a very odd conversation. I am not going to be asking you

any questions at all. I'm only going to be giving you

information. Please don't hang up on me. This is what I believe has happened.

Obviously don't trust a word I'm saying, but you really need to get

on the horn with your bank ASAP. Try as he might, Lawrence just couldn't

keep up with all of Zeus's victims. Though some of them would hear the

bad news directly from their banks. We got a call from the bank and said,

are you aware that there's no funds

in this account? Leslee Richards ran

a family business, Lieber's Luggage, in Albuquerque, New Mexico,

with her husband, Frank. At Lieber's Luggage. We have thousands

of business cases, great gift ideas. The shop represented

a lifetime of work. Who started it and was it your side

of the family, Leslee? - No, Frank's side of the family.

- Oh, Frank's side. Right. I think his family in Cleveland

started the business in the 1930s. That's right.

I started the business in 1978. It was based on a business that a family

member in Cleveland, Ohio, was running. That led me to believe

I could be successful doing the same

in Albuquerque. Then in 2009, after

more than three decades in business, Leslee and Frank were told everything

they'd worked for had gone. What the. Huh?

Excuse me? How did that happen?

You know, just disbelief and horror because we had no idea

what had happened. And the bank clearly didn't have

any idea what had happened. Leslee and Frank lost more than

$12,000. It might sound a modest sum, but for her small family business,

it was devastating. One transaction that wiped out

our checking account. And that money then.

What was that for? That was for paying rent and buying

merchandise and paying our staff members and paying insurance and taxes

and health insurance. All of the things that on a day to day

basis, you need to run a business. We didn't have money in savings

that we could fall back on. This is the stuff of nightmares.

You're running a business, and suddenly you've got nothing. Broke.

With lots of people depending on you. For Leslee, she had

eight staff to pay, families to feed. Then there was Leslee's mother.

She'd been doing the company's books. She was mortified

that this was somehow her fault. Well, I mean, she was well

into her 70s at that point, doing us a favour, you know? But I think

she thought she was responsible in some way for some period of time. So all of those feelings,

the anger, the frustration, the fear. Well, I think we knew cybercrime

is a growing threat. You know, I think

it's the realities of the world is that there are people there

who don't have an ethical centre. And it's very sad

that that exists in the world. But I think for the history of

mankind, there have been good players and bad players, and those are

the bad players of our time, and it takes a lot of work

to protect against them. But that's precisely what

Lawrence Baldwin is trying to do. As he hears stories like Leslee

and Frank's again and again. Accounts emptied, businesses

blindsided, families shaken. And every call drives home a simple

truth. He can't fight Zeus alone. Enter Brian Krebs. I'm an independent

investigative reporter, and I write

the website krebsonsecurity.com. Did you know that Krebs is now

a verb? Did you know this? Uh, I have heard that. Yes. When you get Krebsed, it means that

Brian Krebs has found out everything

about you. And you're a cyber criminal, And suddenly the world knows your name

and your face and where you're from. In 2009, Brian was writing

for The Washington Post, and he was intrigued by

the sheer volume of cybercrime activity coming

out of Russia. So much so that he'd started learning

the language. Then an anonymous source reached out

with a tip. We started talking a lot. And yeah, I was very interested

because he'd figured out a way to eavesdrop on

their instant message conversations. The source? Of course, Lawrence Baldwin.

The dark hero of the internet is now teaming up with someone who

operates very much in the spotlight. Lawrence shares his secret link

to the hackers chat. I want it to be really careful

with this access, because it wasn't the whole point

of what I was doing was just to write

sensational stories. I wanted to make it very clear

to everybody running a small business that this is a very real threat

and it was pervasive. These guys were just going to town

on small businesses across America. Brian starts to live

his own Zeus nightmare. He too can't immediately figure out

who is running it behind the scenes. Is it Aqua or Tank or one

of the other handles he keeps seeing? I really wanted to talk to these guys

at that point, like I really wanted to interview them and do all that,

but I was just a fly on the wall. But the victims, on the other hand,

were in plain sight. It was part of my morning routine. I would get up and make some coffee

and just shuffle over to the computer and say, okay, uh, let's see

what kind of victims we have today. Brian also calls to warn

the companies he sees in the chat. His message, like Lawrence's,

contact your banks quickly to stop the money going out the door. Meanwhile, he learns two key things. Most small business owners had

no clue how exposed they were. also a lot of banks

had never encountered this before. You know, Zeus was a game changer. A game changer. Fitting for a piece

of malware named for the King of Gods. In the old myths, Zeus

rarely showed mortals his true form. He'd appear as a swan, a bull,

or even a shower of golden rain, slipping past defenses,

taking what he wanted. The malware worked the same way. It disguised itself

as something harmless an email attachment,

a link you thought you could trust. One click and Zeus takes his throne. Suddenly your

computer belongs to him. The malicious software

will open up a connection on your computer, a backdoor,

and connect to the bad guys, at which point they'll lose

their passwords. From there, Zeus puts the hackers in control. They can use your machine

as if it were their own, and you won't even know

what's happening until it's too late. It really did make

it almost a pointy, clicky exercise for the fraudsters to very quickly

impersonate the victim's bank. But even gods have limits,

and at times Zeus was too successful. Zeus infected tens, possibly hundreds

of thousands of computers at once. It created a flood of stolen data. If the FBI was overwhelmed by

the volume of cybercrime, hackers like Aqua

and Tank were equally snowed under with the sheer volume of data

they were gathering. It's basically a hugely overwhelming

problem for the miscreant, because trying to find the good stuff

inside of this massive stream of fire hose of compromised information

is not as easy as you would think. Joe, help us out.

Well, think about it. Not everything a victim is doing

on their hacked laptop is useful or worth anything

to criminals. Hackers don't care about online

shopping habits or Facebook chats. They are hunting for one thing: money.

Specifically, bank details. But if you say they're infecting

tens of thousands of computers, maybe hundreds of thousands, then how do

they find that needle in the haystack? Well, the solution to this problem

of too much information would give Tank, Aqua, and

their partners in crime their name, the Jabber Zeus crew.

Where did they get that from? Jabber is the messaging service

the hackers were using and through which

Lawrence was eavesdropping on them. And the Jabber Zeus crew's code

was programmed to watch for any infected computer logging

into a bank. When it did, the God spoke

to the criminals through Jabber. It would send them an instant message

and say, ding, got a live one here. But the Jabber Zeus crew

didn't work alone. They recruited accomplices. Something

Brian Krebs came to understand. The first story was about these guys

getting into the payroll accounts of a town in Kentucky called Bullitt. Bullitt is actually a county,

a local government district with a population

at the time of about 75,000. And it's right by Fort Knox,

the home of America's gold reserve. But the Jabber Zeus crew probably had

no idea about that. And even if they did, trying to rob

Fort Knox is certainly something

which would get the FBI's attention, something they'd

absolutely want to avoid. They were after a different prize. Zeus had infected the computer

of Bullitt's treasurer. That's the person who controls

the county's cash. Money coming in from taxes and

going out to pay county employees. In other words, they're the person

with the key to the vault. And the Jabber Zeus crew

is now working to get that key. They hacked the treasurer's computer

to log into the county's bank account. But they don't immediately empty it.

There's just too much money, and robbing a local government would

certainly trigger an investigation. So first they get into the account

and redirect any one time passcodes. Those extra security checks

to an email address they control. This was crucial.

Now they can get in any time. And they've gone from controlling

the treasurer's computer to controlling

the county's bank account. Next, they add a bunch of

fake employees to the county payroll. Though these people really exist

in other parts of the United States. These are people

they've likely recruited online, enticed by the promise of a payday

otherwise known as money mules, who would provide a key tool

for the Jabber Zeus crew. They would add these money mules,

these people to the payroll

of the companies that they'd hacked, and then they would send them a batch

of payroll payments to all the new fake employees, i.e.

the money mules. And those people would be asked

to withdraw the money in cash from their bank and then wire it

overseas to one or more people. The Jabber Zeus crew began paying

the fake Bullitt employees sums just under $10,000. It's a sum that

shows the hackers sophistication. Because they understood that over $10,000, the transaction gets

more scrutiny, more fraud controls. And by the way, there are limits to how

much money that you can wire overseas in one go to one person. So they're kind of chunking it down.

Death by a thousand cuts, really. Over the next week, the fraud rolled

on. Quiet. Invisible. Finally, someone in the Bullitt

County office noticed a number that just didn't add up.

They call the bank. And by the time the bank puts a stop

to it, more than $400,000 is gone. Bullitt is bewildered, one county

official tells the local paper. It's not like the old days

when the bank got robbed and the sheriff generated up a posse

and took off after the bad guys. No, it really isn't.

This is 21st Century crime. Today, even if there were a posse, they'd have

no idea where to look for the criminals. It looks like the bad guys

have vanished into the digital void. But Lawrence and Brian are still

on the trail. Brian tracks down a couple

of the fake employees and finds not hardened criminals,

but victims themselves. It was really heartbreaking

to tell these people, look, you're part of a scam. You know, they're going to cut you

loose at the end of the month. And if you participate in this, you're

breaking the law, blah, blah, blah. The fake employees, both women

under the age of 35, thought they were working for a company that

just needed help moving money abroad. Each of them received

almost $10,000 of Bullitt's money into their own bank accounts, and

were told to wire almost all of it, minus a commission, to Ukraine.

One woman began to wire the money and then thought it was suspicious

and stopped. The other went ahead.

Then she found herself on the hook for the money

when Bullitt's bank came calling. Brian writes it all up in his blog,

and the Washington Post hits publish. Soon the ripples reach all the way to

Russia and to Jabber Zeus hacker, Aqua. 'They describe the entire scheme.

The bastards.' Literally within an hour of when

he put the Bullitt County story out, we saw them chatting about it

in the chat server. 'They exposed the texts.

They laid out the entire scheme. I'm really pissed off.' How did he know? Tank's in on the chat too. - 'They were writing about us.'

- 'Yes.' - [****]

Tank later writes, - 'Now the entire USA knows about Zeus.' And then it was cool

because then I relayed that to him within minutes of when it happened

and it was like, oh my God, it's like we are so up

in their business right now. It's hilarious. Now, Lawrence and Brian

know these handles, Aqua and Tank, are definitely the ones pulling the

strings in these real world heists. They dig more,

and amid the hacking talk, they find chatter about lunch,

cars and holidays and buried in this seemingly mundane

gossip. There's an important detail. They're friends sharing some

of life's most intimate moments. - 'So what's going on over there?'

- 'She's giving birth. I will write later.'

- 'OK, new dad!' During this time,

Aqua and Tank both become dads and the pair are beaming

about their newborns. But Lawrence and Brian

aren't as alone as they think. Someone else has been eavesdropping

on the celebrations in the Jabber Zeus chat. And this revelation has gifted them

a massive clue. Because remember, every time a baby

is born, their name is registered. And so are the names of the parents. The baby talk is a lead.

It's a date and a time to chase. So while Aqua and Tank celebrate

new lives, halfway around the world, a much bigger cavalry than Lawrence

Baldwin and Brian Krebs is saddling up. Next time on Cyber Hack Evil Corp.

The FBI enters the scene. Thunder riding out to meet Thunder. Now we know exactly who he is. This has been episode one of six of

season three of Cyber Hack Evil Corp from the BBC World Service.

Cyber Hack Evil Corp is a BBC long form audio production

for the BBC World Service. It's presented by me, Joe Tidy.

And me, Sarah Rainsford. We'd like as many people as possible

to hear our stories, so please leave a rating and a review

and do tell others about Cyber Hack. It really does help. If you haven't already, don't forget

to check out the previous seasons of Cyber Hack,

the story of The Lazarus Heist. To ensure you never miss an episode,

follow or subscribe to Cyber Hack on BBC Sounds, or

if you're outside the UK, on BBC.com. Thanks for listening.