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In 2011 a British security contractor named Dave Smith was found dead.
He’d been drinking in a bar, then while walking outside was kidnapped, thrown into
a shallow grave and shot.
His bloodied body was then covered with earth, buried on the orders of his boss, a man known
to his associates as The Mastermind.
This was one of many assassinations carried out by hitmen working for one of the most
unusual and intelligent criminals in modern times.
That criminal is Paul Le Roux, a brilliant programmer who branched out from tech into
much darker territory.
He’s one of the men responsible for the USA’s drug crisis; he dealt in North Korean-made
methamphetamine; he sold military-grade weapons such as missiles, to very unsavory characters;
had yachts carrying fortunes of drugs and gold, as well as planes stacked with cash
and contraband.
And if you worked for him, well, existence was tenuous.
This is the story of a bona fide criminal mastermind, but one which differs from most
tales about sociopathic wrongdoers.
His activities spanned the globe and left trails of blood in their wake, but unlike
most murderous villains, he started out writing code and trolling people on forums.
In another life he might well have worked for Apple, but he eventually ended up seeding
the underworld with hardcore drugs weapons.
He’s been called the kid, whizz, who really, truly, broke bad; who makes Walter White look
like Mary Poppins; a nerd with an amazing aptitude for computer science, a kind of dangerous
genius befitting the role of any villain you might find in a James Bond movie.
As a kid he was loved and doted on; he was a good student with tons of talent, and as
an adult he became an entrepreneurial crime lord who had few scruples about taking out
his enemies or the people who worked most closely with him that he no longer trusted.
How did this happen?
How could such a brilliant young man with an ordinary life and acumen for creating complex
algorithms turn into something resembling a person who might fit the title of Dr. Evil?
Let’s start from the beginning.
Le Roux was born on December 24, 1972, but was soon given up for adoption in his hometown
of Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe.
Some sources say that his mother was a poor teenager and that there is no mention of his
father on his birth certificate, although in American journalist Evan Ratliff’s book
on Le Roux – called The Mastermind – it’s said his father was a South African named
Darroll Hornbuckle.
That father, says the book, would later meet his son and actually get involved with some
of the criminal activity.
As for his mother, some sources say she is actually married to a U.S. senator.
So much secrecy surrounds this guy it’s very hard to follow his story.
For example, some people even claim he was the creator of Bitcoin, the one and only Satoshi
Nakamoto.
This is very unlikely, but after hearing his tale, well, anything would seem possible.
What we know for sure is that Le Roux was adopted into a caring family.
They took him to another part of Zimbabwe and it’s said there he was loved, and with
his sister had a happy childhood.
His new parents named him Paul Calder Le Roux.
The family left Zimbabwe shortly after Robert Mugabe came to power and ended white minority
rule.
They went to South Africa where the father found a good job working for a mining company,
and this made them quite a wealthy family.
Le Roux has been described as a clever student, though the book about him says he looked down
on other students and called them dimwits.
He had little interest in socializing or sports, but had a fondness for playing video games.
His bios make him sound like quite a reclusive kid, and that apparently got worse after he
was arrested aged either 15 or 16 for selling pornography.
At this time though some of his talents were manifesting, and believing he didn’t need
school the young boy dropped out and started learning programming.
It’s said here he excelled and finished a one year course in just eight weeks.
At 17 he left South Africa and headed to the UK where he found a job as a programmer and
would meet his future wife.
We really don’t know that much about this time in his life and most of the information
we do know is from that book we mentioned, with the author relying mainly on unnamed
sources and police data to tell the story.
He writes that Le Roux spent some time in the US, but quickly went over to Australia
where he was granted citizenship.
So far, there was nothing too out of the ordinary about this man except he was obviously gifted
and fiercely independent.
We know some things about his character because of messages he posted on a Usenet newsgroup
in the 90s.
It was obvious he understood encryption at a highly technical level, but you can also
see that he trolled a lot of people and used racist language.
This was maybe his first sign of unpleasantness, but also a sign that one day he would become
what some people have called the world’s most notorious cyber-criminal.
The author of the book we mentioned, Evan Ratliff, says on his website that he spoke
to a person called Lulu, who gave him many details about Le Roux in the early years.
Indeed, it seems the young Le Roux was obsessed with code, but as Ratliff writes, his life
would turn out to resemble a cross between Bill Gates and a mafia Godfather.
His genius could be seen in those posts he made online in his early days, but at the
same time he seemed quite moronic regarding his cultural outlook.
He seemed to hate Australia and enjoy making his fellow countrymen mad.
Word for word he once wrote, “As I recall, the genetic effects of human inbreeding are
not as disastrous as those of breeding with animals.
A lesson Australians have never learned.”
He also made a few spelling mistakes in there, so one might wonder if all his talents were
in one basket.
He once wrote, “People like you should be rounded up, castrated, then shot.”
And that was a reply to someone who had gotten upset at him for saying all Asians had DNA
defects.
You get the picture; this young bright man had some very hateful opinions.
In 1997 he created something called “E4M—Encryption for the Masses.”
Ratliff writes, “Le Roux’s software allowed users to encrypt their entire hard drives—and
to conceal the existence of encrypted files, so that prying eyes wouldn’t even know they
were there.”
Remember, we have a loner of a kid, someone who has been arrested for pornography, and
someone who hides behind a computer and insults races.
Encryption you could say suited his personality.
After thousands of hours of programming and two years after he started E4M, he released
it to the public.
In his manifesto for his software he wrote, “The battle for privacy has long since been
lost in the real world.
As more and more human activity becomes computerized, governments are scrambling to preserve and
extend their powers.”
According to Le Roux, only strong encryption could save people from a government we shouldn’t
trust.
If big brother was watching, Le Roux was blowing smoke into his line of sight.
We know that he got divorced and we are told it was a tempestuous break-up.
He wasn’t really making much money from his genius, and after splitting up with his
wife he moved around a lot, to Hong Kong and then to the Netherlands where he met his second
wife and had a kid with her.
He started another company with a Dutch man, who later went on record saying Le Roux was
desperate to earn money for his wife and kid.
This partner said Le Roux told him he wanted to be rich, to have what he wanted in life,
but the partner said much of the time there was just something about Le Roux that made
him suspicious of him.
His words were, Le Roux came across as “disingenuous”.
He did say that he was exceptionally talented though, and when he had to learn a new programming
language to build an online casino website he did it fast.
The partner said, “In one week, he was better than most of the programmers I know that program
in that language.”
It was around this time that he found out he was actually adopted, and some people have
said this might have had something to do with how his character became somewhat aggressive
and misanthropic, how he edged towards a darker side of existence.
There are many cases of adopted kids being told the truth later in life and not taking
it well.
Still, he was a long way from killing his colleagues at this time.
But soon he got out of the encryption business and started his criminal career.
He created something of an online prescription-drug empire, known as RX Limited to the U.S. government.
He first did this with two Israeli brothers called Tomer and Boaz Taggart whom he had
met online.
Le Roux created a complex system which linked people eager to buy prescription drugs to
doctors and pharmacists, and no doubt many of you have seen such sites where you can
get your hands on prescription drugs easily.
Soon millions of people would start seeing the words, “Buy drugs online,” in their
inboxes.
At this point it’s said Le Roux’s appearance changed, and he became very fat and a little
imposing.
As a manager, though, some people said he could be very good to work with and always
listened to his employees.
One person wrote, “He was always buying gifts for people.
His representation of himself, as far as I am concerned, made him seem more legitimate.”
It’s said his RX business was at one point earning him five million dollars a month,
but you wouldn’t know it by looking at him as his preferred sartorial style was flip-flops
and shorts.
As a rich man he acquired a bunch of different names, and at various points he was called
John Bernard Bowlins, Benny, Alex, Johan William Smit and William Vaughn.
He also created a slew of shell companies and RX spawned a few other rogue online pharmacies.
Later Le Roux would be accused of being the man, or one of the main men, behind drug addiction
epidemics all over the world.
That wasn’t just the online stuff, though, but we’ll get around to his hardcore substance
business later.
It’s said what he was doing wasn’t exactly illegal, but operated in a gray area.
He made both the buyers and the people prescribing the drugs think everything was legitimate,
but what he’d really done was create a way for people to get their hands on drugs that
was much easier than doing it the traditional way.
Inboxes all over the globe were filled with spam emails from his dodgy online pharmacies.
He had call centers in Israel and also in the Philippines and business was booming.
At this point one of the managers working for Le Roux in Israel had the idea of starting
a similar business while also working for him.
The shorter story is that this guy was almost murdered by the man named Dave Smith, the
security boss for Le Roux.
But Le Roux wasn’t happy with just many, many millions, he wanted a lot more.
He bought land in Zimbabwe with a plan to give it back to the white farmers who Le Roux
said had it unfairly taken from them under the Mugabe government.
He also got into logging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but that didn’t last
long.
Still, he wanted more, and this tech wizard was now willing to get his hands dirty, or
should we say filthy.
His former associate would tell Ratliff, “The only way to do that was illegal.
He was living inside a movie, you could almost say.
He always had a dark side, it just developed more with money.”
At this point he moved to Manila, and from there with many staff and soldiers as security,
Le Roux entered into new businesses which included large drug shipments, arms trafficking
and a fair bit of money laundering.
He used Hong Kong as his financial hub, and there he had houses stuffed with gold bars,
silver and diamonds.
He had former elite Israeli, British and American soldiers making sure no one took any of that
from him.
He also had all those shell companies, and when he moved stuff around he used his own
boats or private planes.
It was difficult for anyone to track what he was doing because of course he was a master
of encryption.
Different names and passports also helped.
What is also interesting is that his encryption tech had been used to help Edward Snowden
release all those documents that unearthed a lot of U.S. military secrets.
The National Security Agency weren’t up to cracking that encryption.
The U.S. was no doubt interested in Le Roux, and it would later be found out that he was
behind an arms trade on a boat called the Captain Ufuk.
When the Philippine Coast Guard became suspicious of this ship they stopped it and on board
found crates full of SS1 assault rifles and other guns.
It’s thought the shipment was on its way to a terrorist organization.
La Plata Trading, one of Le Roux’s companies, had purchased that ship.
Arms dealing was one of his main activities, and Le Roux was also behind a shipment of
AK-47 assault rifles and light machine guns sent to Somali militias.
There are rumors that Le Roux intended to invade the Maldives with his own militia,
but that’s likely not the truth.
What most people think he was doing was creating a force to fight off Somali pirates who had
been causing havoc on the high seas.
It didn’t stop there; Le Roux was also said to have been involved with trying to ship
missile guidance systems to Iran.
We don’t know the full extent of his arms dealing activities, but let’s just say he
had his finger in a lot of dirty pies and he didn’t seem to have scruples regarding
whom he sold arms to.
Then back to the drugs, because Le Roux never gave up on them as a way to make money.
It’s said he was involved in plantations where the coca leaf was grown; that he had
several operations involving the cultivation and distribution of various drugs worldwide
including opium and cannabis, and with this and arms dealing and so much money and gold
around he needed a lot of protection.
One person who was his main hitman for a while, a former American drill sergeant and sniper
instructor was said to have done hits for Le Roux and also recruited other mercenaries
that had once been soldiers or defense contractors.
In terms of violence, he had the best working for him.
In terms of the death toll, that’s likely higher than he has admitted to.
And many people did go missing, with Le Roux giving the orders each time and on occasions
likely being there.
A man named Bruce Jones who was implicated in the Captain Ufuk arms shipment was put
into the witness protection program, but that didn’t save him.
He was assassinated in Manila on his way home from a shopping mall after he had grown confident
enough to go out in the streets again.
Le Roux was never convicted for the hit, but many think he was behind it.
Ratliff writes that Le Roux was becoming paranoid, and he was more than willing to take out anyone
who he thought might interrupt his business and lifestyle.
Even Jones’ lawyer, a man named Joe Frank Zuñiga, left his house one day and was never
seen again.
Another man, Mike Lontoc, who had worked for one of Le Roux’s shady companies met the
same fate.
He was shot in his car at an intersection in Manila after he stopped when he got a phone
call.
Four men got in front of the car and shot at the driver with Uzis and handguns.
Later Lontoc’s wife would say he had been involved in arms deals and couldn’t get
out of the business.
Le Roux was never convicted, but it’s said by some sources that the person behind it
was simply the “mastermind.”
Another man involved with that fatal shipment on the Captain Ufuk also went missing.
His name was Herbert Tan Tiu.
There was good reason for thinking all this was Le Roux’s work, because one of his hitmen
named Ronald Baricuatro was arrested and at his house police found a kill list.
He had been employed by Dave Smith, but denied killing Lontoc even though that’s what some
people thought.
Baricuatro did tell the cops, though, that he’d been hired to take out a journalist
that had gotten too close to the truth.
The long and short of it is, they all worked for one man… the mastermind.
Le Roux moved to Rio when things heated up and from there planned to do some drug shipments
via yacht to Ecuador.
One shipment didn’t work out, and a dead man was found on a washed up ship along with
120 million dollars’ worth of cocaine.
And it just gets murkier and murkier.
Le Roux admitted to ordering a hit on a woman named Noimie Edillor.
She was a real estate agent but had dealings with Le Roux and had told him she could pay
a bribe to get illegal goods through customs.
Apparently she didn’t go through with that, and so some of Le Roux’s hitmen pretended
to be looking for a house with her one day and then killed her at a place that was quiet.
Another woman was killed in a similar way.
Her name was Catherine Lee and Le Roux ordered her murder when a property deal with him went
sour.
He’d been ripped off three million bucks, and that was never going to be anything but
a death sentence for the people behind it.
Le Roux admitted to ordering the hit in court later, but was not convicted of the murder
because of an agreement he had made with the authorities.
The bodies had been piling up and Ratliff said that Le Roux had created a climate of
absolute fear.
While all this was going on Le Roux was still doing drug business with the Colombians and
elsewhere and the DEA were on to him.
They knew he was behind those online pharmacies and they also knew he was shipping large quantities
of ingredients used to make crystal methamphetamine.
Throw the words North Korea and Iran into the mix, and the Americans were prowling around
like caged tigers smelling blood not too far away.
They soon discovered a whole bunch of companies run by Le Roux, and with them lots of aliases
he had used.
Ratliff writes that the DEA compared this once hardworking tech nerd with Sinaloa cartel
head Joaquín “El Chápo” Guzman and Taliban-affiliated heroin trafficker Bashir Noorzai.
He also said that Le Roux just got greedy, that he should have left the online drug business
early and not branched out.
There was no need, he already had millions.
Criminal sociopaths, though, rarely hang up their gloves in their prime.
It was the prescription pill business they were planning to get him for, not all the
other crimes we have mentioned.
It’s not clear anyway exactly what the DEA knew at this point, but they knew enough to
make him a major target.
But when they tapped his phone in 2012 they discovered something else.
That was he, or at least his associates, had a warehouse in Hong Kong containing 24 tons
of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, in 960 bags labeled as sodium chloride- in Ratliff’s
words, “enough to create an explosive ten times bigger than the one used in the Oklahoma
City bombing.”
Around this time Le Roux and his operatives were moving millions of dollars of gold around,
likely knowing they were about to find themselves in deep water.
Millions more dollars were being shifted around, and all the while some of the drug business
was still going on.
He was walking on thin ice, while trying to protect his vast fortune.
The master coder was now trying to encrypt his very existence, but tangible goods aren’t
as easy to hide as data.
Le Roux was arrested by Liberian police in an operation which included DEA agents posing
as Colombian cartel members.
He’d gone over to Liberia for a meeting with this fake cartel member to sort out a
deal involving a large shipment of methamphetamine.
Then he got stung.
He was handed over to the DEA after the police in Liberia refused to take a bribe.
But Le Roux subsequently agreed to work with the DEA, and so no one actually knew he had
been arrested.
This is what he said, according to Ratliff who was interviewed by Vice magazine, “I'll
cooperate.
I don't want to spend the rest of my life in prison.
What do you want to know?”
Life went on as normal.
He carried on doing his deals with criminals which led to lots of DEA stings.
Many of Le Roux’s associates went down after that.
Some of those arrested were what are called mercenaries and most of those were former
soldiers who had been enforcers for Le Roux, with the most notable of them being nicknamed
Rambo.
According to Ratliff, there were scores of these mercenaries all over the world working
for Le Roux.
Ratliff said they liked the money, but they more than likely loved the thrill of the job.
In 2014 Le Roux pleaded guilty to trafficking methamphetamine, selling technology to Iran,
ordering or participating in seven murders, and also fraud along with bribery.
Since he had helped the DEA arrest many of his associates the U.S. government agreed
to keep his family safe.
He is still awaiting sentencing as we write this, and he might actually get out of prison
at a reasonably young age.
He actually got off the murders because of his cooperation with the DEA in bringing down
killers and other criminals.
What Ratliff likes to point out a lot, too, is that while Le Roux was involved in so much
depravity, blood-spilling, deals with guerillas and mafias, he did most of his work through
his laptop.
He kept his head down and arranged for things to happen with his machine, a machine nobody
including the NSA, FBI, you name it, could crack.
And that’s the story of perhaps the world’s most notorious cyber-criminal, a man who in
some ways defied what we think of as a master villain.
A nerd with a nefarious nature, a brilliant mind bent on wickedness and hate, and a story
we guess that has not yet fully been told.
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ones like Paul Le Roux.
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