The Last Decrypted

very special episode of Decrypted. It's actually our last episode after what has been three or four years, I think three years and three months and over episodes, which qualifies us for syndication. I believe that one of the old uh F channels, if they still do that anymore. UM, But this is our last episode of Decrypted to make

way for something new and exciting. Yeah, that's right. So after three amazing years, we're gonna be winding down the show to make room for a new show UM led by our executive producer Sean Wyn and I think we'll be announcing more details on that show next spring. And our listeners should say subscribed to this feed to get updates. Absolutely.

I mean, we have gotten so much positive feedback from our listeners over the years where we just have so much gratitude how they have stayed with us in these turbulent times for technology, and there is exciting stuff ahead. Yeah, definitely, Yeah, I just want to say thank you. You know, it's been um, such an amazing three years. I've loved going to conferences and just meeting new friends and then being like, oh, you know, I listened to the grypt did when I

think back to and those first episodes we did. The first episode was about fab dot com. It was a kind of dot com disaster story, but it felt like an outlier then. And you can really chart the evolution of the show and see really the evolution of the industry and how how bad things have gotten for tech, how public perception and media perception has changed, right, And

we've covered all those stories over the years. You just I've been looking back at our back catalog and you know, so many of the episodes we've covered have been about that shift in perception on the industry. So if we go back and look at or listen to some of those early episodes, uh, do they hold up hockey? I think I've a little I think it a little too scared to listen to those first few ones. I feel like we were learning. We were That's a very gentle

way to put it. Um. But yeah, I mean I've I've loved all the episodes that we've done, all the stories we've done. I've learned so much through the process. And yeah, it is with a little bit of a bitter sweetness that we say goodbye to our listeners. So when long running sitcoms wrapped up, they often did the greatest hits episode and they revisited some of the earlier episodes. Should we do that now? Yeah? I think so. Let's

do it. Okay, So let me play you a clip from a relatively recent episode and see if you remember it. There's a kind of an intensity that comes along with it. You feel kind of a little more alert, a little stronger, a little more in the present. Uh. And there's also a little bit of a buzz that can be too much. Kind of sounds like you're explaining in adrenaline rational most

it's very much like that sticey smiling bread. Yes. Well, first of all, the giveaway is that very distinct Australian accent or sorry New Zealand accent from the one and only Olivia Carville. And this is the amazing episode about the plasma injection startup, right, the company that was trying

to make people feel younger. That's right. Um. So when we ran this episode, the FDA had just sent out a statement telling consumers that transfusions of blood from younger people is not proven to make you healthier, and even noted that it could be dangerous. And so Ambrosia, the blood transfusion startup, had closed. But have you followed the

story over the last few months. I have not, but I have to say, from Olivia Kerville's amazing work on the article and on the podcast, that company, I'm gonna I'm gonna guess it was not going anywhere so amazingly publicly. A publication called one zero reported last month that Ambrosia resumed their blood transfusion service despite the letter or the statement from the f D. A. So the blood is

coming from Donor's sixteen. They're charging eight thousand dollars for one leader transfusions and twelve thousand dollars for two leader transfusions. If you could excuse me for a second, I'm gonna go sign up right now. A few thousand dollars rolling around, and you know the end of the year is making you feel a little old, all right. A reporter who worked on the original episode, Olivia Carvil, emailed the company

for comment. The CEO, Jesse Karmazine, I think that's how you pronounce his name, who's still running The company confirmed that Ambrosia this is the blood transfusion startup, is in fact up and running again. He wrote, quote, I've consulted with a number of lawyers who are experts and f D regulations and feel confident I have a legal right to continue offering this treatment. Please note the announcement did not mention ambrosia, and furthermore, it contains no requirements on companies.

I should just say here, Bloomberg and Bloomberg decrypted bloomber tect does not condone or doors the use of plasma injections. Okay, so let's move on to the next one. We know that the title has to be tilted. We know that we have to exclude the facts because if we say anything good about the opponent, then people are like, oh, you're liberals, your closet liberals. So there is no room to be objective, there is no room to deliver quality. The market has always responded, Now give me garbage, give

me outrage, give me you know, a click fait. Do you recognize that brand? That's our freak News episode. That's right, Yes, sir, that's right. Um. So Sarah and I went to go meet this young in net news entrepreneur named Cyrus Musumi who built this huge business around hyperpartisan, misleading content off of Facebook. And Facebook crackdown on sites like his right after the elections. And I keep coming back to this episode because it turned out to be just phase one

of Facebook's battle to clean itself up. Facebook has gone so much further now, um, and I mean, looking at Facebook today, it feels like a totally new sight to me. Something tells me, though, that our fake news purveyors doing just fine. So I reached out to Cyrus the other day to see how he's doing. Um. If you remember when we ran our episode, he had already shut down his hyperpartisan conservative website Mr conservative dot com, but kept the site's Facebook page up and running and shifted his

focus to this hyperpartisan liberal site called truth Examiner. So the update is, last year, Facebook deleted the Facebook pages of Mr Conservative and truth Examine are as part of a purge of site he owns um and a Facebook spooks person told BuzzFeed that Facebook deleted the pages because their administrators were using fake accounts and violating Facebook span policies. I wrote to Cyrus a few days ago and he told me, quote, Facebook destroyed five million dollars of my

assets and fictitiously claimed I was a robot. But he also said he's figured out a way to quote ghost in. Those were his words and quote, I will be participating in the next election. I wish them the best of luck in hunting me. Why do I feel like it about two decades we're going to see Cyrus as like

the chairman of a campaign. So yeah, I mean, I think that's just further proof that Facebook is continuing to crack down on all this toxic content that we've all become so disgusted with, although of course Cyrus determines to keep testing. Are just not going to give up, right, Okay,

so let's move on. In the next episode, I sat there paying with your kids, and every day I want to get to church, and uh, you know, I started seeing conn Edison trucks parked out from in front of my building, people hiding in vans with paperwork peeking at me. This is about we don't know what Pool is doing, but you know something's not right, but nobody could tell me specifically what it was. These little girls, I cannot allow them to go on to force to care. He said, Okay,

well you're maasing these crimes. We have to charge you with these climes. Ah. So have you heard that I was a gaunter. I was dead, you know, I was done. Surrid to see you nodding, Hockey. I believe that is

your very special friend, Sabu. Yeah, that's right. So this is the episode about the former anonymous hacker Hector Monsiger, about how he stumbled into this world of hacking as a kid, how he ended up leading these very high profile attacks, then got caught in secretly cooperated with FBI, and how he was now trying to rebuild his life after all that. I remember he had started a cybersecurity

business and was consulting. How how's he doing that? So he was um he started working for a cybersecurity consultancy UM back then the founder of that company was the only person who would give him a chance because he was a convicted felon. So I caught up with him just this morning. We spoke for about half an hour. He left that consultancy just another month, and now he's

kind of at a crossroads. You know, he's trying to figure out if he wants to strike out on his own and start, um, just go the consultant route, or if he wants to work for a different company. Now. I mean, he's built up so much more experience, so as a result, he's had a ton of offers, um, and he just kind of needs to decide what he wants to do next. Maybe he can go and find the d n C servers in Ukraine that Donald Trump has been so interestingly, he's also kind of built out

this like career as a speaker. Um. He's given twenty plus speeches this year, um to talk about his life and the lessons he learned having gone through everything. Was that our only two part episode? That's right? Yeah, yeah, it was probably the most ambitious story that we've tackled. If you have not listened to that two part episode, you should go back. It's a great one. Please do. Okay,

let's go into the next one. We are tired, We are really tired because it's a sixteen months that we fight every day to found the two to try to to understand what he's happened there. We tried to involve all journalists in Italy, but the nine people sent of the media and the journalists in Italy they don't want to talk about this story so familiar. Okay, I'm gonna

have to confess it doesn't. But I was cheating. I had to do some some fast googling, and um, that is the excellent story and podcast that are cybersecurity reporter Jordan Robertson did about the African country of Mauritania. That's right. Um, so it was based on this wild story he tracked down and involved this shady cyber weapons dealer from India who promised to sell the government of Mauritania software to spy on his own citizens. Right, so sort of the

seed the underbelly of the cyber security world. And now remind me because there was a very sympathetic character, a bodyguard I think, who went there and was imprisoned. Right. So, this shady cyber weapons dealer from India was supposed to meet with Mauritanian officials and ahead of that meeting. Had hired this bodyguard from Italy to go ahead and set up that meeting. The cyber weapons dealer ended up never showing up, but the bodyguard went right, That's what happened.

He was already there, UM, And because the cyber weapons dealer never showed up, the Mauritanian government took him held in hostage in a prison for more than a year. His name was Christian Provision. So about half a year after we ran our story, UM, Mauritania finally released Christian the bodyguard. UM and Jordan and I got to talk to Christian over the phone, and we ran in a

bridge version of that interview on our show. But it was really hard to edit it, you know, because it was clear from the conversation that he's still so traumatized by what he went through, and he was really struggling to form even just basic sentences and stay on topic. So how's he doing now? So I asked Jordan to reach out to Christian's brother, Maurzio. That's the guy you heard from UM in that clip that we just played, And unfortunately it sounds like Christian isn't doing very well.

He tried to see the man who sent him to Mauritania and Italy's courts, but that went nowhere. He's no longer together with his girlfriend, who can paigned for him to be released. He lives with his parents, and his mother still has trouble sleeping after all these years. So let me read you what Christian's brother more reads your wrote to Jordan's I told him to forget the story. We live in Italy and there is no justice for people like us. But I can understand how my brother

feels inside his heart. I believe in God, and I'm sure these people cannot escape him. Maybe they can escape Italian justice, but not him. Wow, we'll be right back, Okay, so let's move on to the next clip. So his first question, UM was he said, UM, so we've noticed that you've been doing some government related searches. And I didn't say anything to that. And then he said did anybody tell you to do that? And I said, I'm not going to answer that question. And then he said,

well you're terminated effective immediately. Um and then long awkward pause, and then he said do you have anything to say? And I said, um, I have some personal litems. My desk ashould grab and then he has card to get that stuff and then out of the building. How did you feel after that? Were you said? Did you cry? Were you angry? I was? I was angry, like my my heart was pounding. Um, mainly angry. Where were you angry? That was unfair? Like you can't terminate? What's a blower

like that? I see no adding bread? Right? A couple of clues here. First, the malifluous voice of our long lost friend Adam Sicariano, who is now a reporter at the New York Times. And the whistle blower. This is Rothenberg Ventures, the guy who blew the whistle on what was a sort of ongoing and profitably get party at a high profile venture capital firm. Right. Um, so the clip you just heard that is Francisco Reordan. He worked for Rothenburg Ventures, that capital venture capital firm you just

talked about. While he was there, he found some improprieties that he ended up reporting secretly to the SEC and he spoke publicly about that for the very first time on our show. And then things didn't go that well. If I heard a call for Rothenburg Ventures, that's right.

So when our story ran in twenty seventeen, the SEC's investigation was still ongoing, but in August last year, the SEC formally charged Mike Rothenburg with misappropriating seven million dollars that his firm raised from investors, and then the SEC and Rothenberg reached a settlement that involved Rothenburg stepping away from his firm UH and being banned from the investment advisory business, but they hadn't decided on a financial penalty yet with the settlement, and over the summer, after a

deeper audit, the SEC came back and claimed that Rothenberg misappropriated a lot more money than was initially thought, more than eighteen million dollars, including three million dollars of which Mike Rothenberg allegedly transferred to himself and with interest in also civil penalties that SEC is demanding Rothenberg pay a total of about thirty million and penalties, and Rothenberg is

now fighting that. So the case has continued. You know, I was on the phone with Francisco the other day and he said he was a little stressed and frustrated that the case is still ongoing after all these years. Um, he's still waiting for that sense of closure. But if you remember when we ran our original episode. Francisco worried that coming out to the world as a whistleblower would just brand him as the big troublemaker, right and scare potential employers away. Um. When I talked to him the

other day, he said, that hasn't really transpired in reality. Um, he stayed in the tech industry. He's working for a new company as a web developer, and he's doing really well. Good for him. Okay, let's go onto the next one. You're doing great. Zone four. I can see the red that's from d This is the hardestful way to go nice, is he smiling? Yeah? I had hoped to never listen to that again. Okay, so this is going to take some explanation. But somehow, several years ago, you got really

into fitness trackers and fitness gatchets. You decided you were going to rank them all, and then you had somehow convinced me to strap a was a move it or move I haven't used it since. And we that was a workout session where animals had a heart attack. Well, I tried to remember. I tried to get you to do it in a conference room downstairs, went to the gym and it's funny because that thing is still in my bag. I've never I haven't in my gym bag,

and I haven't used it since. It's funny. Yeah, I remember you asking me for a link for it and like buying it in front of me. I'm disappointed though, that you didn't use it, never used it. So I bought my own two after that story, and I continued using it. Um. I just used it the other day. UM. It's been pretty great now. As I recall, in addition to reviewing all these fitness gadgets, you also to sort of find a control group. You you hired an actual

human personal trainer, right, that's right. So they do was to compare these gadgets to having a human personal trainer and see which one was better. Whatever happened to her, So she's still around. UM, I talked to her the other day. She's doing really well. At the time of our story, she was transitioning to launch her own company running outdoor fitness classes called Public Recreation. They've now raised one point three million dollars in seed funding and they're

about to roll out a new app. So now, several years later, what's your verdict, person or gadget I still think it's person Actually, um, you know, I would never be able to afford a trainer like her. I mean she at the time she charged more than a hundred dollars per hour. But uh yeah, like you, like we talked about in the episode, the robotrainer just doesn't quite motivate you in the way that a real human can. Are you a fan of peloton I actually am. Yeah, we had one in um our old apartment. UM. I

got really into it. I think the classes are pretty great, but once again, probably too expensive for me to pay for on my own. So, Brad, there's so many more episodes that we could go through, but that would take forever. Um. And we're gonna be posting links to the episodes we just talked about in our show notes. I want to zoom out a little bit and speak a little bit more broadly about this moment that we're in in the

history of the tech industry. I'm still relatively new to tech cover, but you've been covering text since then nineties, right, that's right, Thank you, ACKI get any of their Um. Yeah, and I've seen a number of media cycles, um. And during the ninety nineties, you know, there was a lot of hagiographic coverage. People were very enthusiastic of the tech companies whose fortunes seemed to be soaring right along with

their stock prices. And then things got tempered a little bit during the dot com bust and it seemed like things were falling apart um and the coverage turn negative.

And then slowly but surely things that became more upbeat with the I p o s of Google and Facebook, and and then these incredible startups like uber um, you know, lift, Airbnb um now more recently with we work in jewel Um, the election in two sixteen, introducing concepts like fake news into the ecosystem, you know, skepticism, hard scrutiny is really returned,

I'd say more so than the dot com bust. So it really does feel like a different moment now compared to three and a half years ago when we first launched this show. Certainly, I mean, I think tech now is almost equated with you know, fairly or not. Industry is like tobacco or petroleum, you know, or maybe financial services. These are the status quo establishments that kind of govern our lives. And I think the media now probably quite

rightfully is bringing some very tough scrutiny to bear. Yeah, it's been a really fun time and really great time to be a technology journalist. And it's been it's it's all coincided with the rise of podcasts, which is it's made it so fascinating to just explore this new medium. It's actually one of the reasons why we're retiring Decrypted. We're not giving up podcasting. We've decided next year to just go a little bit deeper into a couple of

stories that we're passionate about. So we'll be announcing more details on that next spring. Yes, and I can't wait to get started. Well, for everyone who listened to the very end, thank you so much once again for listening to the show all these years, and please stay subscribed to this feed because we'll be announcing the team's new show here next year. You can continue to reach out to me on Twitter at Akito seven. Brad You're at Bradstone,

Is that right? Derpted's executive producer is Sean When this very last episode was mixed by Ethan Brooks. Francesca Levie is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. Have a great holiday and you'll be hearing from US next year,