![]() He'll look at you, and eat you with this eyes.Įrez Liebermann: I felt that I was talking to a brick wall. I mean, when he looks at you, when you meet Erez first time, he doesn't know you. And you're making that joke?"īob McMillan: How did you feel about Erez and his people then at that point?ĭmitry Smilyanets: I thought he's going to eat me alive. ![]() And he's like, "Oh, Dmitry, is it the new style, walking without laces?" I'm like, "Did you really just make that joke? They took my laces from me. But when Dmitry went into the interrogation room, Erez's plan got off to a rocky start.ĭmitry Smilyanets: I go to the room and Erez made a joke about my laces.Įrez Liebermann: They came out without shoelaces and I had not known that they give them shoes that should have shoelaces, but didn't have them.ĭmitry Smilyanets: Prison guards took laces so I don't hang myself, like normal practice. Erez had to convince them that the only way out was to work with him. In order to do that he needed to persuade them that talking was in their best interest and that if they chose not to, Dmitry and Drinkman could find themselves behind bars for a long time. I'm Bob McMillan.Įrez Liebermann wanted to flip one of the two Russian hackers, Dmitry or Drinkman. Would he betray his best friend? Would his best friend betray him? His choice would change the course of his life, forever.įrom The Journal, This is Hack Me If You Can, the story of a Russian cyber criminal who went to the other side. I was like, "No way."īob McMillan: In that interrogation room, Dmitry would have to confront some hard questions. Probably, he told them everything about me."ĭmitry Smilyanets: That's what I thought. It's called prisoners dilemma, because who's going to talk first? I was like, "Drinkman just left there. He goes straight from interrogation room. And I look at him, "Vola, don't tell them anything." And he don't even look at me. And I was on the way to interrogation, and he was returning from interrogation. They were in jail together.ĭmitry Smilyanets: We saw each other in detention. His best friend and hacking partner, who he'd tried to warn, hadn't escaped either. Now it was finally time to meet him.ĭmitry was escorted from his cell to the interrogation room, but on the way, he got a surprise, Vladimir Drinkman. Erez had been chasing Dmitry for more than three years after the Heartland hack. And so we were talking how do we persuade someone to think through, forget cooperating against others, just working with us and admitting his own role and getting someone to come to the table for us? How do you get someone to believe something that sounds completely opposite of the way their legal system works?īob McMillan: When Erez arrived at the Dutch jail where Dmitry was being held, he went to the interrogation room, a room with bare walls and a table in the middle. And I knew that going in and I knew that was going to be just a massive hurdle. Maybe after conviction, they cooperate, but not before. So talking to an investigator and saying anything, not exactly a common thing. It was a tall order, least of all because this kind of bargaining didn't happen in Russia.Įrez Liebermann: They don't have cooperation credit in Russia. ![]() He wanted to convince Dmitry to flip, to cooperate, to tell the US government all the secrets of Russia's most sophisticated hacking group, to betray his friends and colleagues, in exchange for the chance of a lighter sentence. Let's get over here." And so within minutes of them telling me, hey, the bag's packed, I started seeking approval to fly to Amsterdam and get over there and start doing interviews.īob McMillan: Getting Dmitry into custody was one thing, but Erez Liebermann wanted something else. He was on his way to Amsterdam.Įrez Liebermann: I was told, "You're working the case. Meanwhile, for Erez Liebermann, the man who had been trying to get Dmitry, things had just turned around. He didn't know what the Americans knew about him. I still pray.īob McMillan: Dmitry didn't know what was going to happen to him next. That life will never be the same.īob McMillan: So you think you're going to never get out of jail?ĭmitry Smilyanets: Really, I opened my heart to God and I seek forgiveness and I prayed, without ceasing, so nonstop. What kind of thoughts were you having in the cell when they finally left you there?ĭmitry Smilyanets: That I (beep) up. It's already in your feed.īob McMillan: After his arrest in Amsterdam, Dmitry Smilyanets sat in a Dutch jail cell. If you haven't listened to episode one, start there. It's about a Russian hacker who stole millions of credit card numbers from American companies. This is the final episode of a three part series. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated. This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. ![]()
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