Saunders, looking at that message, had faced a decision as well. For the first time, he was talking to the group’s best asset, a guy kept under such deep cover that he hadn’t even been referenced in the final chat session. He knew that once Vu had this IP address, the entire network would be exposed. Every activity on his computer was being logged now, but for a minute Saunders considered somehow terminating the conversation, either by logging out immediately or perhaps kicking the cord from his computer, giving a coded message to the man he knew only as “ADEG” to stay away.
But he didn’t. Instead, he gave the IP address to the FBI, and from that day forward IRC was for Saunders a medium of betrayal. Vu subpoenaed Time Warner’s subscriber records and soon found himself looking at the name of Bennie Lydell Glover for the first time. From there it was easy—but, had Glover walked away, as he’d intended to in January, it’s possible he might never have been caught.
Kali, too, had proved too greedy. The nameless release group he’d started in the wake of RNS was limited to a circle of his most trusted confidants, but that circle included Glover, whose seized computer contained login credentials for Kali’s home server. That gave Vu a second Time Warner IP address, and his subpoenas soon led him to a residential account in Granada Hills, California, registered to a subscriber under the name of Bilkish Cassim—Adil’s mom.
Finally, Vu picked up Edward Mohan, Matthew Chow, and Simon Tai. These were easy collars, as the three hadn’t taken even rudimentary steps to hide their identities. Chow in particular had been open about his involvement, and in his (admittedly unqualified) legal opinion, RNS wasn’t even breaking any laws. Vu had found him through his email address, which he’d shared with every member of the group: chow@mattchow.com.
But the overall damage was compartmentalized. APC had lost 18 people; RNS only lost six. Kali’s emphasis on anonymity had proven prescient, and his decision to spike the group had come just in the nick of time. He hadn’t saved himself, perhaps, but he’d saved the rank and file: the Tuesday rippers, the Japanese export-hunters, the British journalists, the Italian brothers “Incuboy,” the Swedish topsite operator “Tank,” the Okie farmer “KOSDK,” the Hawaiian aquarium keeper “Fish,” “Al_Capone,” “Havoc,” “Crash,” “Yeschat,” “Srilanka” . . . none of them were ever found.
The Justice Department’s statement of facts in Glover’s case made reference to the scope of the conspiracy. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jay Prabhu explained his position that RNS was a criminal organization, one that operated for the benefit of its members. He explained how the topsite economy provided members with in-kind benefits for sustained and deliberate copyright infringement—an arrangement that provided material rewards for breaking the law. He emphasized the way in which RNS was indeed a criminal conspiracy:
Rather than operating as a group of friends interested in music, it operated as a business, and, rather than money, that business was designed to get access for its members of every copyrighted work that ever existed.
In the sentencing guidelines, he made his point even more clearly:
RNS was the most pervasive and infamous Internet piracy group in history.
It sounded like flattery, but the numbers backed it up. RNS had leaked over 20,000 albums over the course of 11 years, numbers independently sourced to the FBI’s investigation, the RIAA’s internal tracking database, and the group’s own NFOs. During most of this reign of terror the group’s key asset was Glover, another point the FBI now well understood. His leaks had made their way through topsites across the globe, and from there to private trackers like Oink, and from there to public sources like the Pirate Bay and LimeWire and Kazaa. He was the primary source of contact for hundreds of millions of duplicated mp3 files—perhaps even billions—and, given Universal’s predominant position during this period, there was scarcely a person under the age of 30 who couldn’t trace music on their iPod back to him. He was the scourge of the industry, the hero to the underground, and the king of the Scene. He was the greatest music pirate of all time.
He got a job at Wal-Mart. Working in the distribution center wasn’t glamorous, and the company was stingy with benefits, but as always he volunteered himself for every available overtime shift. Things began to look bleak in the months before his arraignment. He had a mortgage. He had credit card debt. Karen was pregnant again. The economy was tanking in spectacular fashion.
But at least he had a job. In February 2009, the inevitable arrived, and the Entertainment Distribution Company declared bankruptcy. The Kings Mountain plant was shut down, hundreds of employees were laid off, and the compact disc production line was sold to buyers in Latin America. The workers filed for unemployment and faced an uncertain future amidst the worst economic crisis in modern American history. Glover, barred from interacting with his former colleagues, could only learn about the plant’s closing secondhand.
On September 9, 2009, Glover surrendered himself to the Feds at a courthouse in eastern Virginia and was indicted on a single felony count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. A month later he pleaded guilty. The decision to plead was a difficult one, but Glover thought his chances of acquittal were poor. Fourteen years after he’d signed it, Glover’s “No Theft Tolerated” agreement from PolyGram was now admitted as federal evidence. Dockery, who loved to talk, had told Vu everything. Glover’s computers and hard drives contained volumes of incriminating evidence. And so far the FBI’s conviction rate in Operation Fastlink was 100 percent. Hundreds of convictions had been obtained, mostly through plea bargains, and the maximum penalty for copyright infringement was five years in prison. The few who had tried to fight the charges had lost.
At his indictment in Virginia, Glover saw Adil Cassim for the first time. From the moment he lay eyes upon him, Glover was certain that this man was Kali. An unassuming presence, Cassim was clean shaven and wore his hair cropped short. He was dressed in a tasteful suit jacket and a quiet tie. He was stocky, and he packed a noticeable paunch. His skin was nearly as dark as Glover’s own.
Wal-Mart found out about the conviction and promptly fired Glover for cause. He was now a black unemployed convicted felon cut loose in the worst economy in seventy years. For the first time in his life he began to have serious financial worries. Money for Glover had always been a transitory asset, one you traded quickly for something with actual utility, like a hood scoop. Now jobless and facing a pile of legal bills, he began to rethink this profligacy. He needed cash badly, and although he knew that prison time was inevitable, he suspected he could minimize his term through cooperation. Facing a desperate situation, he agreed to testify against Cassim.
The FBI needed the help. Sure, Cassim fit Glover’s preexisting mental profile of what Kali should look like. He was South Asian. He smoked weed. He lived in California with his mom. Patrick Saunders independently corroborated these details, and noted further that he and Kali had celebrated several birthdays together online and were almost exactly the same age. Sure enough, the records showed that Cassim and Saunders had been born less than two weeks apart. Like many influential members of the Scene, both Saunders and Cassim belonged to the same matriculating class of 1997. (So did I.)