Gollumfun SAME_AS Brett Johnson
Jack identifies Brett Johnson as the person known online as Gollumfun.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 128 Details
“Brett, or Gollumfun”
Episode
15 November 2022 Official episode · Official transcript
black hat cybercrime dark web carding
Brett Johnson describes his progression from offline fraud into online scams, identity crime, carding, tax-refund fraud, and administration of the criminal forums Counterfeit Library and ShadowCrew.
Topics: Online criminal forums and marketplaces, Carding and stolen payment-card data, CVV1 validation weakness and ATM cash-out, Magstripe writers and blank payment cards, Money-mule networks, Identity fraud and counterfeit identity documents, Tax-refund fraud using deceased identities, Database dumps and the California State Death Index, Social engineering, Keyloggers, Criminal reputation and vouching systems, Clearnet marketplaces before Tor and Bitcoin
Links published on the Darknet Diaries episode page. Not LLM output.
No Sources heading on this episode page.
Qualified statements from this episode, not graph facts.
Gollumfun SAME_AS Brett Johnson
Jack identifies Brett Johnson as the person known online as Gollumfun.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 128 Details
“Brett, or Gollumfun”
Brett says that finding eBay led him into further online criminal activity and that he used eBay for scams and sales.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Brett Johnson EP 128 Details
“that’s when I find eBay, and then eBay leads into all this other stuff”
“I was selling it all on eBay”
Brett says he used PayPal to receive payments and later committed PayPal fraud.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Brett Johnson EP 128 Details
“PayPal really becomes popular”
“We were pretty big on fake driver’s licenses, eBay, PayPal fraud”
Brett used ICQ to communicate with criminal associates and operate online relationships.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Brett Johnson EP 128 Details
“We also start talking on ICQ”
“we always talked on Sunday night on ICQ”
Gollumfun USES Counterfeit Library
Brett used Counterfeit Library as a forum for communicating with other criminals, learning scams, and conducting criminal commerce.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Brett Johnson EP 128 Details
“I get on the forum”
“I was pretty much friends with the people who run Counterfeit Library”
Counterfeit Library USES Forum vouching and reputation system
Counterfeit Library added a vouching-based reputation feature to make transactions more trustworthy.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 128 Details
“Counterfeit Library added a reputation feature. Specifically you could vouch for someone”
Gollumfun USES social engineering
Brett explicitly characterizes himself as a social engineer and manipulator while deceiving his wife and victims.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Brett Johnson EP 128 Details
“I was the social engineer and I was a manipulator”
Brett describes himself as a carder and participated in the credit-card fraud activity centered on Counterfeit Library and ShadowCrew.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Brett Johnson EP 128 Details
“A good carder – and I term myself a good carder”
Gollumfun USES Tax-refund fraud
Brett says he filed fraudulent income-tax returns for dead people and cashed out the resulting funds.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Brett Johnson EP 128 Details
“I started filing income tax returns, fraudulent income tax returns, on dead people”
Gollumfun USES Database dumps
Brett used database dumps found on ShadowCrew to search for information useful in opening accounts under other people’s names.
Explicit Confidence 96% · Brett Johnson EP 128 Details
“I started looking through these to see if there’s anything useful for me in that data”
“Sometimes I’d find some data to be able to open accounts under other people’s names”
Gollumfun USES California State Death Index
Brett says he obtained access to the California State Death Index and researched ways to exploit its information.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Brett Johnson EP 128 Details
“I got was the California State Death Index. So, I had access to that”
Brett placed keyloggers on a computer to monitor his wife’s activity.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Brett Johnson EP 128 Details
“I had placed key-loggers on the computer”
ShadowCrew DEVELOPED_BY Seth Sanders
Brett says Seth Sanders built ShadowCrew as a site focused initially on fake IDs.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Brett Johnson EP 128 Details
“he goes off and builds ShadowCrew, okay? Just him. He builds ShadowCrew”
ShadowCrew OPERATED_BY Gollumfun
Brett became an administrator and later took over operation and ownership of ShadowCrew after Seth quit.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 128 Details
“Brett, or Gollumfun, was a moderator and admin of ShadowCrew”
“So, Brett took over shadowcrew.com”
ShadowCrew CONTAINS Database dumps
ShadowCrew hosted database dumps that users posted to the site.
Explicit Direction flagged Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 128 Details
“he started seeing people posting database dumps to the site”
Gollumfun USES ShadowCrew
Brett operated ShadowCrew as an online criminal marketplace and used it to coordinate carding and other criminal activity.
Explicit Confidence 98% · Jack Rhysider EP 128 Details
“Brett took over shadowcrew.com”
“ShadowCrew was a marketplace for illegal things”
Dmitry Golubov USES Counterfeit Library
Dmitry, using the name Script, attempted to sell stolen credit-card information through Counterfeit Library.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 128 Details
“This Dmitry guy who went by Script on the forum was trying to sell credit card stuff on Counterfeit Library”
CVV1 hack EXPLOITS CVV1 security-code implementation weakness
The CVV1 hack exploited banks that failed to implement or validate the card security code.
Explicit Confidence 99% · Jack Rhysider EP 128 Details
“there were some banks that didn’t implement that security code at all”
“This became known as the CVV1 hack”
Gollumfun USES Magstripe writer
Brett describes the carding operation’s use of magstripe writers to write stolen card data onto blank cards; the episode presents this as activity on the forums and by carders.
Derived Confidence 78% · Jack Rhysider EP 128 Details
“Counterfeit Library began exploding with chatter about how to get magstripe writers”
Gollumfun USES Blank credit cards
Brett describes carders writing stolen data onto blank credit cards for ATM cash-outs.
Derived Confidence 80% · Jack Rhysider EP 128 Details
“ways to write the data to the card”
“write them to blank cards, and then go to ATMs and cash out”
Gollumfun USES Money mules
The carding operation relied on money mules because the Ukrainian participants could not cash out the stolen card data themselves.
Explicit Confidence 90% · Brett Johnson EP 128 Details
“The Ukrainians simply could not put cash in pocket literally themselves, so they had to rely on money mules”
Gollumfun USES Forum vouching and reputation system
Brett participated in the forum’s seller-screening and reputation process, including reviewing whether sellers could operate on the site.
Explicit Confidence 90% · Jack Rhysider EP 128 Details
“all sellers had to be checked out by him before they could sell on the site”
Works mentioned in the transcript. Distinct from show-note sources.
Model gpt-5.6-luna · prompt 1.5.19 · schema 1.5.19 · 2026-09-13T07:48:36.939117+00:00