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Part 3

The Raid
I am driving to work around 10:30pm, grateful it is my last night I will ever have to work contract security ever again. Tomorrow, I will be working full-time as a network security analyst for an ISP. I have my Sony PSP hooked up to my tape deck, Playlist 'Attack Beats' song : Voodoo People Remix by Pendulum - the bass from the speakers rattling my Cutlass.  Fixer is blowing up my phone with texts.  Bots working.  Bots not working. No Devil's Night.  Who cares. I scrapped the idea, but there is no scrapping Fixer's fixation when he is in the zone, wired in. I really do not care anyway. With my new job I was telling my wife we should buy a house in Dallas and really establish ourselves, get away from the in-laws. I will deal with Isaac and his cronies on MY terms, on a battlefield I control.
I rolled up to the Clinic, cirlcing around the building as is my usual route. Black van by the back entrance. Must be a cleaning crew, I think to myself. I pull up to the front, and meet the new guy Im supposed to be training to take over my shift. He is brand new, right out of training. We go through the sliding glass doors and I greet the second shift guard we are relieving.
"FREEZE!!"

The Arrest
Three FBI agents, two state police and a senior police officer stormed my flanks with guns raised at me - each barking different commands at once.  At first I found myself smiling, thrown into the Twilight Zone and not really sure if I was awake or dreaming.  This had to be a prank. They were not really FBI agents, right? If they were, then for which crime have they come to take me away? A million questions rolled through my mind.  Yeah, this was really happening.
"Where is the gun?" they shouted.
"What gun?" I shouted back, my hands spread on the granite guard desk.
"Where is the gun?" they shouted again.
"What gun?  This is a non-commissioned post!" I shouted back.
"The gun from the video!" Special Agent Lynd shouted.
"Which video?"  Yeah, I had alot of videos....
"The one from Myspace!" he yelled.
"Which Myspace?" Specifics would help.
Special Agent Lynd clarified the video in question, looking at his smartphone at a list of notes.  "Oh, THAT video," I explained, "That was a toy gun."
They holstered their weapons and cuffed me, sitting me in a chair, since I could hardly stand on my own legs.  The trainee was free to leave, and the second shift guard phoned my supervisor.
I could not think.  My thoughts were a raging torrent of colliding chaos.
"Is this about Ghost Exodus?  Or about the DoD?" I asked.  The only coherent rational idea I could muster was that Immortal had been telling me the truth.  Obviously asking questions is very VERY self incriminating.  Now I wish I had kept my mouth shut, but I knew no better then. I thought these were the good guys...  I had wanted to work cyber crimes in an FBI task force, so they were doing what I had envisioned myself doing.  But as time went on I would loathe myself for being so naive.
My wife was raided, and I was praying that they did not kick in my front door because that was right where my daughter liked to play. My supervisor had arrived on the scene in a rage storm, but he was not raging at me (thankfully).
"How dare you humiliate one of my officers like this?" he demanded, marching toward the agents. he rest of the shock troopers had been dismissed. They were only there as backup and extra fire power. Six shooters just to overwhelm little ol' me. The agents kept my supervisor back.  I requested the agents help me remove my uniform shirt and badge.  I felt like a dirty cop, sitting there in my uniform in a chair with my hands cuffed behind me.
"Is this about the DoD?" I asked again.
"Why don't you tell us what this is about." They answered. Self incrimination leads to open and closed cases. Just shut up, do not try to be helpful.  Just STFU.
I didn't, though.  I figured I would be helpful and I could just go home quicker. We can work this out.  Hahaha.  Kidding.

In the black van headed for the country jail, SA Lynd gave me 'the speech.'
"Don't talk, just listen," Lynd began while he steered the van into the night. Special Agent Ajeet Singh and Special Agent Howard sat on either side of me in the back seat.  "You can either tell us to fuck off and refuse to comply and get eleven years like the last guy did, or you can be compliant so we can get this over with as quickly as possible."
Does that mean I can go home? Was I being baited? Who just got eleven years?
I asked him about the unfortunate fellow. A blind phone phreaker.  A legend.  Matthew Weigman, aka 'little hacker'. Did I mention he is a legend.  Yeah, I did. I would be meeting up with little hacker soon enough. Eleven years, and only 19 years old...  greatest phone phreaker alive.
At the station I was photographed and then digitally fingerprinted into a computer running Windows NT, the login scribbled on a sticky note, pinned to the side of the old monitor.  Heh, my narcissism was creeping up on me.  Typical '.gov.'
Into the Interrogation Room I went.

Interrogation
There was irony in the good cop bad cop choreography, and that is with Lynd being the bad cop and Singh, who was, in fact, an honest and 'good' cop.  You can not group them all together by implying that just because they work for the same system they all share the same ideals and code of conduct. You have to be able to see past the badges and the masks, as it were - but also do not be naive, as they do have a job to perform and its not a pretty one.
I was juiced on ego and desperate to get home to my wife and child.
"We know what you did. The sooner you confess to what you did, the sooner we can move on."
Tactical interrogation:  we know everything, so confess everything.
Logical conclusion:  If that is the case, why do you have to ask to begin with?
Why?  Self incrimination. Self confession. Open and closed case.
Yeah, and I fell for it because I still thought they were the good guys. I told them my life story. No, I do not need an attorney, I am doing the right thing, I am complying.  See?  Can I go home now?
Yea, right.  Hahahaha.
My cellphone lay vibrating on the the wooden table between us. What I would give to be able to call my sweeper and declare myself to be 'Defcon Black', and ID security challenge code word for 'busted'. It was Fixer, blowing up my phone, probably telling me 'botnet down", "botnet up", "botnet down", ect, ect.  STFU fapping bastard...
The ringing phone brought up the question concerning all the hackers I know.  Ha.  All their names were in haxor right there, in my address book.  They would retrieve it from me either way, so I made a list.
"Tell us about the botnet video and the HVAC computer."
THAT is what this was all about?  Why didn't you say so? Of course, more self incrimination.
"Who acted with you on the Carrell Clinic intrusions?"
No, that was the one thing I would not do. I would not give up my men. They were family. I thought of Fixer and Splax0r sitting in prison, torn from their families and everyone they loved or knew. I would be free, but a snitch, and everyone would know it.  Death before dishonor.
"I acted alone," I said. They bought it.
They had the leader of the Electronic Tribulation Army.  A smile played about Lynd's lips. He knew me from somewhere.  Small world, really...
 
Back in 2008 one of my members named Punizzle was busted hacking into his high school - an unsanctioned intrustion.  He was young and did not get any time. e knew he would be arrested, but is AOL Instant Messenger was still online from his cellphone, which was in the hands of the FBI, and I felt they were trying to engage us to entrap or pull us into what Punizzle had done, pretending to be him.  This is a a common practice of the FBI, Lynd told me that much. So I made a YouTube video "ETA Member Arrested: in which I told the FBI that I did not condone their use of Punizzle's cellphone and that I was going to send an SMS flood (text message bomb) to his cellphone and knock it off the network, but even though it will not erase forensic evidence, it would lock up the phone and force them to pull out the battery to unfreeze it,  And I did.
"Remember Punizzle?" Lynd asked with a smirk.  "That was me you were talking to."
Oh.
Singh then asked me "What can you tell us about Anonymous?"
An interesting turn. I suspected an ongoing agenda here.
"Can you tell us if they are planning anything I should know about?"
It seemed they wanted alot more than just me.
"Nothing you don't already know," I told them.
I thought of Isaac Guest.  Of IHM.  My friends in the collective. The FBI and I already mentioned briefly the death threats, but I did not give them any names because I did not know how it all would play out. The raid team already lifted the chat logs from my apartment. That could not be helped. My hands were clean. Let me take the fall. Non one else need go down with me. I had hoped Fixer and Splax0r would choose to use their freedom gratefully.  I had just sacrificed my life for them.
Lynd then said "I have an idea. If you write the Judge a letter, explaining everything you did on the Carrell Clinic systems, there is a chance he will go easy on you."
More self-incrimination. My own statements against myself would soon bury me so deep in the system that I would likely never see the light of day.  But I wrote it.  I was so naive.
"This has to be the best letter I have ever seen!" Lynd exclaimed with enthusiasm.
Next, I was stripped of my clothing in front of other people and led to a small, cramped tank that smelled of piss and vomit, other inmates coming down from drugs, reeking of body stench and alcohol, and all I can think is, "Am I going to get raped?" Prison rape is so bad in America that it has become a kind of cliche or a sick joke that people who have never been to prison love to laugh about. I am not timid, and I know how to fight.  It is the Prison system that creates these hostile environments, charged with deprivation and years to be isolated from the affections of the opposite sex.
The first thing I did was search and establish a friendship.  But by the time I made that connection, I was extracted and led through a concrete labyrinth with many twists and turns and placed in solitary confinement in a Federal hold.

Solitary Confinement
I spent the next 48 hours in solitary confinement in the county jail.  I fell into some semblance of sleep on a concrete slab for a bed. The cell was filthy and musty, with a grimy shower in one dark corner and mold streaking the walls and ceiling.  There was no window.
Was it day or night?  I could not tell. You could only tell the time of day by the meager, disgusting meals served three times a day.  Food was so scarce I would save it all to eat at dinner.
Nightmares, confused with reality. Am I in this cell?  Or is this just a bad dream? I see myself at home, playing with my daughter - then I wake up in a cold sweat.  Confused.  I was just home, how did I wake up here?  I lost all sense of reality at night.  I would cry myself to sleep over and over again.

Arraignment Hearing
U.S. Marshalls came and took me to the Dallas Court House. This was to be a preliminary bond and detention hearing before Magistrate Sanderson. I met my federal public defender John M. Nicholson and the hearing commenced. The things that Special Agent Lynd was telling the Magistrate barely made any sense to me.
"... compromised computers belonging to the NASA and computers at Lovefield Airport used for the Dallas Police Department's Aviation Unit."  My screenshots were displayed on a projector for all to see.  The was patently false testimony.  He was displaying a screen capture of my XSS test on NASA.gov, but interpreting it as an actual intrusion.  And the DPD remote desktop image - also a misrepresentation.
"That's not true," I whispered to my attorney.  But, unfortunately, none of these Court room jesters knew how to interpret what they were seeing, so they just went along with it, uncontested. Little did I know that I would never even once have a chance to contest or counter it.
"... a fake ID document manufacturing kit was taken from his residence..."
I have never owned such a thing before.  But the FBI agent was being very specific. But with all this so called evidence they were bringing out of the wood works, some things they only verified with oral testimony alone. And this was admissible - I did not even know what a fake ID kit looked like, let alone owned one.
I was all over the media.  NBC.  MSNBC.  ABC.  You name it.  "Hospital Hacker." "Devil's Night." "...threatened to attack a hospital..." "...could have modified temperature controls..." "... adversely affecting the climate controls during Texas summer heat..."  "... risk of death..."
WTF??
It all switched over from what I had actually done to the wild theories they came up with that could have happened in a worse case scenario.  Though they never showed any proof of malicious intent.  This had become a thought crime - problem being that I never had any intentions of modifying temperature controls, so why was everyone crucifying me for something I had not done, and had no intention of doing, and there was no evidence that I wanted to?? Moreso, who was feeding all this information to the FBI, the courts, then releasing this slander to the media?  Hell, I did not even work at the hospital!
The answer revealed itself.  Why did this confidential witness feel the need to unmask his role in this case?  He would then go on to conduct interviews with various media platforms, podcast interviews, and would lecture about his role in helping the FBI crucify me at the Mississippi State University.  Either he was misinforming the FBI as to the true content of these images, or he simply did not know what a cross site script vulnerability test does. Of course, being accused of hacking NASA and Dallas Police Department carried alot of weight to keep me locked up, and Wesley had to know that deviations from the truth was causing things to get out of hand, since it was his job to be informed of such distinctions in his 'research' capacity - or perhaps he was milking this for the glory, basking in the spotlight at my expense.  His actions tell us much about his motivations.  Was his enthusiasm really for justice and concern for public safety?  Or was this more about self gain and to further his career?
You decide.
The media was telling a slew of contradicting stories, all bent on sensationalism and downright yellow journalism to boost ratings.
"Federal prosecutors charged McGraw with planning a massive Denial of Service attack on the HVAC system..."
"... installing malicious software on a couple of systems at a hospital in Texas..."
"... it would not be uncommon for temperatures to exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit..."
"...  the malicious software...  was a botnet and the hacker was planning a massive attack from all his controlled machines...
"Jesse McGraw faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a fine of $500,000..."

Twenty years just for a plan to do something, regardless of whether I had retracted my intentions or not.  It was Wesley McGrew who helped emphasize an image of me attacking the hospitals HVAC.  And with this image in mind, even my own members bought into the idea that I had attacked a hospital. And yet, all one really had to do was read my indictment.
I was never charged with putting a botnet on a hospital's HVAC system. let alone the HVAC system at the Carrell Clinic...
Let that truth, the facts, sink in...
"FBI arrests hacker for posing as a security guard who infiltrated Texas hospital days before Devil's Night attack..."
And so the brainwashing did sway the masses and the jury.  Even I had believed the hype.  But then again, I had forgotten that i had never installed a bot on the HVAC.  It was not until I pulled my mind away from the propaganda that I understood WHY the Justice Department kept running with these falsehoods.
John Nicholson gave me the evidence. I analyzed the HVAC's various logs and the page file.  No botnet.
Oh yea...  funny how that fact was forgotten.  I had pwnt so many boxes in my lifetime it was hard to recall any specific events, let alone the details of what I did.
Now the FBI admitted that the HVAC had been compromised before a time I had ever been contracted to work at the Clinic.  NASA also reported to the FBI handling my case that no breach had occurred.  Dallas PD had a documented attempted intrusion on one of its computers - but this had occurred locally, not remotely, and it did not fit with the FBI's speculations.
Whoever said that the Media is interested in reporting the facts?  I should sue.  It was plaguing my mind at the time.  Exposed to international public ridicule and contempt is not easy to deal with.
In connection with that prior breach was a keylogger that had captured everything I ever did on the HVAC.  The log is several inches thick. What it reveals is that I was using the HVAC for personal use, and the connection between the HVAC and the botnet pool is nonexistent.
It was all a hoax, an elaborate fabrication.
There is a sucker born every minute.
Not your media.  THEIR media.
Court room choreography.


Candina Heath was pressuring John Nicholson into advising me to take a deal that was on the table.  John is a good attoney, granted, he is not perfect. I wanted to go to trial, but Candina wanted me to become a snitch and hang Fixer and Splax0r out to dry. They suspected their involvement, but they did not know how to cement it without my testimony as evidence. I am facing 20 years max, scared to death; but I am not ready to go home early - in a body bag.  Forfeit all my gear, snitch them out, and in turn I would get an 8 year cap; meaning Judge Boyle would not sentence me above 8 years.
Hahahaha...  ORLY?
"I can get eight years on my own," I told John.  "Tell Candina she can shove it."
No deal.  Death Before Dishonor.
"You know what I think?  Fixer framed you," says the Cheif Forensics Investigator of the Public Defender's Office, Dan James. That was a suspicious thing for him to say.  Candina must be working him, I thought. Fixer is not made out of that kind of stuff.  I knew Dan was playing me.
Dan James was a very strange addition to my legal team. Being the Chief Forensic Investigator, he certainly didnt know shyt about forensics, or investigating for that matter.  
"There is no such thing as Certified Ethical Hacking, Mr McGraw.  I have been doing this for twelve years..."
"There is no such thing as a dos program called TS-Grinder.  No dos-prompt is going to say 'cracking successful'.  I think you photoshopped that image..."
"Once you install Windows, you can't go back and change the computer name to NSA.probe, Mr McGraw, you just can't..."
"I did exactly what you did in the botnet video like forty times, and you can't uninstall McAfee in the amount of time you did. You faked it, didn't you..."
"This log here shows a connection from NSA.probe listening to your computer.."
I had finally had enough!! I exploded.  "Where in the HELL did you get your credentials?  A damn cracker jack box or something? The NSA.probe is MY computer!  Got that?  ME! I don't know where you are getting your ideas from, but there is a BIG difference between you and me. You spent twelve years listening to lectures on hacking...  I spent eleven years actually doing the hacking, the exploring!"
We both had egos to fight against. But he really did seem like a misguided amateur, and I felt that such a performance would only sabotage my case, especially in open court.
He was amusing with a few of his incorrect assumptions.
"Do you own the domain, mcgrewsecurity.com?"
He had found IHM's dox in some of my notes and he called her, identifying who he was. She did not believe him.  He told me how she threatened to rape and kill him.  rofl.  A common response from a troll.  "Do you know who I am?" he had said.  "My name is on the Department of Justice's website, you dumbass!" He told me she straightened up rather quickly then but tried to change the direction of the conversation by declaring she wanted to sue me - for what she did not say.  Quickly after that telephone interview, 94chan closed its doors and vanished.

Protests
Jail life is nothing glamorous. I lived through a riot between rival gangs and under the threat that all the white inmates where going to be stabbed. I wrote my daughter a letter telling her how much I loved her and that I really was a good person. I have been jumped twice, boxed in, cornered, and attacked. I really do look harmless, and its better that people do not know what I am capable of, or else they would want to challenge me more. The two times I was attacked, I walked away the winner.  I was nicknamed 'the most dangerous man in Seagonville' and 'Hannibal', because I bit the living day lights out of the man who assaulted me.  Now I am just called 'Dangerous'.
But it is the prison guards who pose the biggest threat as they operate with immunity due to the 'blue wall of silence', meaning they can do whatever they want and still keep their jobs.
On Martin Luther King holiday, 2010, an Officer Mkneely and Officer Greenshaw decided to refuse dinner trays to five white inmates, one of them being a diabetic who was suffering from low blood sugar. We had been on a 24/7 lock down status for 4 days as a corporal punishment, and that meant we had not showered, exercised, or anything for ninety-six hours. Greenshaw hated all inmates and would treat them all with unbridled hostility.  He was an ice cold redneck and very much one to antagonize the inmates without excuse. Mkneely was a racist, and he and Greenshaw took out their indifference on us by refusing to feed five white inmates, and I was one of them. While Martin Luther King advocated equality, not indifference, during the heated verbal debate with Mkeely he told me he was not feeding me on account of the holiday, and that if I did not keep my mouth shut he would come in and beat me in the face - I sat on the floor with my hands behind my back and offered my face in exchange for him being fired.  "C'mon, big man," I would tease, hoping he would do it so I would never have to see him again.  Instead he came back later with a tray of food and said "what if I told you I spit in it?"
"Its all I got to eat," I replied, and ate it anyway.
The lock downs were getting so out of hand, I felt that someone had to do something. I had already led a protest against the 2010 census, and another for an old man that the medical staff had kept refusing to see, so I guess I became 'that' guy. But Seagonville prison guards did not know it was me, or else they would be reading me the Riot Act.
Lock down in a two man cell is miserable.  No showers, no recreation, no phones...  I antagonized the guards for days, projecting my voice and using different accents.  Finally I led a food strike, which ended in several people flooding the unit by plugging up the toilet with their towels. as water poured like a waterfall from the top tier...  They let us out immediately after that, and even apologized to us for the guard's misbehavior and for keeping us locked down and all. We have the right to be treated with respect and in a humane way. But they wont ever do this unless you fight for it.  We are not animals- hell, people treat their animals better than they treated us.

Witness Intimidation
It was all over the news. Even Kevin Poulsin from Wired.com wrote a piece on it, although he did not seem to be interested in anyone else's side of the story except that of the Justice Department's version of events, and Wesley McGrew's account.  Here is how this whole mess got started...
When I was arrested there was only four of us ETA members left now. There had been a massive increase in the site traffic, however, due to the attention we had received from the story on my bust. The overly eager and zealous of all went out in protest, trying to show their loyalty, though I had no clue who these people were, and they sure did not know me. From my understanding, none of these affiliations actually conducted any sort of cyber attack against Wesley, and if they had no evidence was given to support it. Wesley had visited the ETA website and forum regularly, even though their Terms of Service Agreement expressly stated that Wesley McGrew was not welcome there. However, acting in good faith, ETA decided to look past that and allow him to join the forum and IRC.  
It is also my understanding that ETA conducted a live interview with Wesley, who consented to it - his participation with anything to do with ETA was both willing and voluntary.  But even during this time the FBI was watching. even monitoring their emails, which bore no evidence of any kind what so ever against Wesley. I read the emails which the FBI had in evidence, as well as the hundreds of publicly available forum threads sent to me by my sister Jessica from both Wesley's security blog (public) and the ETA forum (also public viewing). So I had a pretty informed view regarding who said what and when it was said. Strangely enough, the evidence was proof of Free Speech and not worthy of any intimidation, which is consequently why Candina and my sentencing lawyer Todd Durden withheld such conflicting evidence. and relied solely upon oral testimony to brand me the guilty party.
Wesley mirrored threats from the ETA forums regularly, as if he was indirectly trying to provoke them by subjecting them to constant ridicule, criticism, and humiliation.  In an earlier post from 2009, XxxImmortalxxX accused Wesley of persistently stalking him as if Wesley was trying to find some dirt on him and others, yet none of this went beyond the scope of the first amendment.
DevNull would write me letters, telling me how some of the core members of ETA were bothering Wesley, and how things were reaching a breaking point. He would rely messages to Fixer for me, and those messages were to leave Wesley McGrew alone, because I was being threatened with Witness Intimidation over things I had absolutely no control over.  ETA and its affiliates were now acting completely on their own, and the more I warned Fixer the more he called me a conspiracy theorist, and how he had a right to freely express himself, that he was committing no crime. The latter was true, but the Feds have the first and final say on what people can and cannot do, first amendment or not, regardless of the Constitution,.  The longer I stayed in the system, the louder I screamed "I have rights!" and the more it seemed they only laughed and shake their heads and say "orly?'
So Fixer ignored me, and I lived under a new threat of getting an even longer prison sentence because Fixer would not keep his mouth shut. His rights versus my freedom.
Dev's letters had great evidential value, and that value only increased when I talked about those letters on the phone with him and Jessica, predating the FBI raids on them that were about to commence...

I worried sick over the idea of anybody getting raided in connection to this case because there would be no actual presumption of innocence when the feds were playing THIS dirty. My lawyer, John Nicholson, informed me during one of our meetings that the FBI were scheduled to raid Fixer and some others.  I saw this as a tactical approach from the prosecution to skip over me since I refused to snitch on Fixer, possibly to get him to snitch on me instead. Most people crack under pressure, but the threat of twenty years hanging over my head was not enough for me to crack. Fixer would snitch on me, and he eluded to this in an email to me in 2011 that he would been 'self preserving'.
I risked getting charged with Obstruction of Justice if I tipped him off that he would be getting raided. I did not have his address and I had to act fast. Getting only Obstruction of Justice would be a far better proverbial bullet than facing the guillotine...
I called Jessica and asked her to give a message to DevNull to post on ETA's website. "I need you to tell him its 'defcon black' for Fixer.  Say Fixer is now 'defcon black', and you need to put it where they can see it - where everyone can see it. This is very important.  There is nothing more important in life right now." I said.  I admit I was not exactly stealthy about it, I was desperate to convey the urgency of this warning.
Fixer received the warning and burned any paperwork he had that pertained to me and sold his computer on Craigslist.  Whew.  That was so close.
Then the raids commenced...
Jessica was accused of being the 'shadow leader' of the ETA by one of the raiding FBI agents, and that she was also 'Ghost Exodus', and something about her and I running a multi-million dollar scheme. WTF? Yet, the only thing that made it on paper was Obstruction of Justice for deleting an email. Yet never formally charged at all, no indictment, and the accusation was dropped a year later, but the seized property that was STOLEN by the FBI was never returned.
X0N was liberated of several thousand dollars of computer equipment over a mistaken identity because, as Special Agent Lynd admitted to me 'We thought he was Splax0r."
True to my intuition, Fixer basically gave the FBI the life story of the ETA, beginning with IMC, his work on the botnet, that now, the Lawton Oklahoma IP address found in my LogMeIn logs that had accessed the HVAC system was not him, but one of my remote desktops I had accommodated, etc...
You see, IP addresses originating from Lawton, OK and Evless, TX were found in my LogMeIn logs accessing Clinic computers. This is the reason why selective prosecution was merited, because Candina knew there were accomplices, and still pinned their activities on me.  Obviously, there is some bad blood here.  Splax0r propositioned my wife for sex after I had secured his freedom, and Fixer not only could not man up as I had done, but refused to even write me only letter in the entire half of a decade that I have been locked up.
But no actual evidence exists to establish Witness Intimidation for anyone, especially me.  John Nicholson told Wired.com "I haven't seen or heard anything that in my opinion amounts to an Obstruction of Justice. [as it related to the Witness Intimidation charges] for my client. But that is not for me to decide, and its not for the prosecutor to decide.  That is for the Judge to decide."
And Judge Boyle decided I was guilty because Candina covered up the evidence, relying solely on her own oral testimony to fabricate the link, and Todd Durden helped to withhold that evidence. In fact, before sentencing, Todd instructed me to admit to Candina's 'facts', that if I forgot them, it would only make it worse for me.  "Tell the Judge what she wants to hear, and maybe she'll go easy on you," he said.  Dev even mailed a notarized copy of the letters I mentioned, under penality of perjury to make sure the court knew that these letters existed, and that I was desperately trying to Wesley from Fixers' colorful free speech, but Todd exclaimed that the letters were self serving and he even accused me of fabricating them. They never made it into evidence. He threw them in the trash.  Never investigated, never verified.  Trash.  So at the sentencing, I lied by admitting that I had done everything, because I had no choice. I admitted to things I had not done because my attorney threatened that it was the only way to not get the book thrown at me. The book was thrown at me anyway.
"[Wesley McGrew] has gone out of his way to engage these ETA people," John Nicholson added in his interview with Wired.com.  "He talks about the case on his blog all the time.  It is my understanding that he taught aspects of this case in his class.  He communicated voluntarily with members of the ETA."
Its not like Wesley was minding his own business.
In the 29:1 Spring Issue of 2600 magazine, the Hackers Quarterly, Fixer writes in -"To whoever shal have reviewed the documents in the case of Jesse McGrw (Ghost Exodus), let it be known that a portion of the statements and claims made by the prosecutor are patently false. Allegations in regards to myself or my own actions, or the actions of McGraw werein it relates to myself, or are based on pure conjecture, or unsubstantiated evidence with no direct proof other than personal opinion and frivolous claims to back them up. In particular the prosecution and the court's sentencing of McGraw was heavily influenced, according to the  Judge's own admittance, by the acceptance of the assertions that McGraw was somehow orchestrating or conducting some sort of campaign against Wesley McGrew. The judge increased his sentence by several years based on these claims alone.  Otherwise, I would not be forced to release this information.
"Contrary to the court record, the only instructions I recieved from McGraw during this period was to 'leave McGrew alone because it could hurt my case". Futhermore, I put up a website (www.wesleymcgrew.com) on my own accord, as a direct response to my own interactions with McGrew (he went out of his way to communicate with me sometimes on a daily basis during this period). Many of these interactions had little or nothing to do with McGraw.
"McGrew hosted content I did not like on his site, and I hosted content he did not like on my website. I hosted some non-pornographic images - simple photoshops of his face in rather unflattering circumstances.  Not exactly what I would call a crime.  And I mailed him a dildo - sure, its tasteless, and perhaps uncalled for.  But hardly intimidating or threatening.  The allegations that the ETA as a group or its members were sending threatening emails or phone calls or anything of the sort is completely preposterous and no evidence has ever been entered to substantiate these claims.
"The first amendment guarantees and protects my freedom of speech under the United States Constitution. It guarantees me the right to express whatever opinion I may hve of somebody, whether it be on a website, printed paper, or orated.
"My domain was unceremoniously stripped from me bu GoDaddy, with no warning, no explanation, nor were my inquiries into this matter responded to by them.  I was not even given a refund. I would recommend anyone considering purchasing a domain from GoDaddy to consider alternative registrars, if you value your rights as a consumer. I suspect the FBI made the phone call, or something along those lines, and had it dropped.
"Contrary to what the FBI and the courts have accepted as fact, I was not instructed by Jesse McGraw to put that website up, nor was I ever instructed to harass anyone. And if exercising my own protected freedoms is somehow 'intimidating' to somebody, I would suggest that they learn how to cope with social issues and perhaps learn to not be so easily intimidated.
"Justice has been robbed from this case by a prosecutor's own personal agenda, poor judgement, and outright lies to achieve a legal 'slam dunk.' Sentencing should be handed down within reason, based on facts and prudence. In this case, the judge used the defendant as a soap box to 'send a message' to others in a manner that is indicating a personal bias against other known or unknown parties. The judge's own remarks admit that, in essence, she 'enhanced' the sentence that was handed to McGraw due to the perceived actions of others, adding several years to his time that he now has to serve. I do not believe somebody else should be punished because I choose to exercise my constitutionally protected right to expression, particularly when that person insisted that I refrain from doing so.
"In other words, a blatant and gross injustice has occurred. I believe that prosecutor C.S.Heath should be investigated fully in this matter and removed of license to practice law, as well as prosecuted for perjury and entering false evidence into a federal trial. The judge in this case is also equally complacent or incompetent for neglecting to check if these facts that I call into question. All parties involved in this mockery of justice should be ashamed of themselves. I believe that all invilved parties should be held accountable for what they have done here and penalized under any and all applicable state and federal laws.  At the very least, if none of the above is pursued, an appeal should certainly be accepted based on these facts and, I certainly hope, a retrial arranged.
"But, like very other American citizen, he deserves a fair trial and sentence that is proportionate to the crimes that he is being charged with, neither of which was the outcome in this case. After reviewing the known facts, the courts documents and the facts I know to be false as well as the facts I know to be true - it is, to say the least, on appalling and offensive mockery of justice to see false testimony and false evidence given, as well as outright lies and conjecture entered into the court record and accepted by a judge as factual and admissive."

Grand Jury Fruad Retaliation
Matt Simpson, aka PhanOp, (Phantom Operator) discovered a discrepancy with some of the indictments people had in our Jail unit at Seagonville.  Some indictments lacked any endorsement signature by a grand jury foreman, others had been rubber stamped "Grand Jury", while others, more importantly, were blatantly forged by a hand that was not the grand jury foreman at the time, "Lawerence Fury".
Lawerence's authentic endorsement was written in long hand, with prominent 'L's and 'F's.  The forgery was signed as 'L Fury' with distinctly different 'L's and 'F's.  Simpson hired an investigator and a hand writing analyst to prove his theory, and upon verification of these facts, PhanOp proceeded to challenge the validity of his indictment in court.  
An indictment is a true bill, like a check or a draft is a true bill, and thus if it lacks endorsement, the bill is void - but if the bill is endorsed by anyone other than the intended endorser, it is FRAUD.
These were fraudulent indictments that were forged by someone proporting to be Lawerence Fury himself.
PhanOp filed; the courts argued that such was only a 'technical irregularity' and not fatal to the indictment. Hmmm, easy cover up - if you do not know squat about Constitutional Due Process rights and protections, which was all knew, but the court basically said STFU.
Shortly after his filing and the courts self serving response, PhanOp was unceremoniously extracted from the unit and placed in Maximum Security Special Housing Unit for 90 days without a single paper trail of due process as to inform him why, which constituted illegal incarceration, and the prison officials deprived him of all his legal materials, attorney correspondence letters and of course the evidence he and his investigators uncovered that proves that the Dallas courts are actively engaging in forging indictments.
All of these materials were faxed to Candina's office.  Candina had arranged this by phoning the jail and instructing them to perform this highly criminal act.
Two individuals who I will not name was investigating this fraud, tracked down Lawerence Fury at his residence and asked him to verify his signature. Upon reviewing the forgeries, he exclaimed "That is not my signature."  The two individuals were later threatened with Obstruction of Justice by Candina.

Todd A. Durden and Sentencing
I ran John Nicholson off when he refused to review the documents Jessica had mailed him concerning Wesley's persistent obsession with my case that I had very questionable content in it that I figured would help our defense.  I was pleading guilty to the government's terms of what they said was the truth, and I felt he should have been contending those 'facts'. I yelled at him and threw the documents all over the floor in a rage.  John suggested I was bipolar and wanted me to submit to a psychological forensic evaluation.  "I don't have a fecking chemical imbalance in my brain that's causing me to be pissed off - I'm pissed because you're not doing shit about what the government is saying!" I had already tried to fire him but the courts forced me to keep him.
I submitted to the evaluation anyway.  Less than half-way through the interview, the doctor started packing away his things, saying "I don't see why Mr Nicholson feels the need to waste valuable tax dollars - I find nothing wrong with you."  Before John withdrew from my case, I threatened to expose him to the Media for being grossly apathetic to the evidence in my case, and that he was practically giving the case to the prosecution.  He withdrew under Seal.
And then my real nightmare began with the court appointed attorney Todd A. Durden. Todd wanted nothing to do with me or my case.  His ignorance of the evidence, the 'who's' and the 'what's' all made no difference to him.  He did not want to discuss facts with me, nor hear what I had to say.  Everything became coercion now and I fell into duress. No one wanted facts.  I even tried to explain to the probation officer Edith Foster, who was conducting my pre-sentence report investigation, how I never had attacked the Clinic's HVAC with botnets, nor did it have anything to do with botnets - you had only to look at the HVAC page file and keylogs -  I used the system for personal means. With that, my sentence was only enhanced, having lost that 4 point reduction for acceptance of responsibility. Like everyone else, Todd wanted me to play along, by his rules, I was working for him, not him working for me.
His only strategy was to send me off on another psychological evalution - all the way over to the Englewood Colorado Jail, and when I said I refused, he said "McGraw, you have no choice in the matter.  Let's get this straight, I don't work for you, I work for the courts, and there is nothing you can do about it."
Shackled, I boarded a decommissioned 747 from Oklahoma City.  We blew a tire right before take off, and they patched the bole and trafficed us to Las Vegas, over to Denver, Colorado where a prison bus ferried us to Englewood FDC. A month later, I was again declared competent, much to Todd's dismay.  However... the forensic psychologist mentioned that I suffered from narcissistic thought patterns - ROTFL! Yea, I am totally suffering from my own ego, so is Hollywood and anybody else who is proud of their own accomplishments.  *cough*
So Todd's only defense was that I am a narcissist, and it is no wonder that Judge Boyle did not want to hear any of it. With his only strategy foiled, he encouraged me by instruction "Tell the Judge what she wants to hear, and maybe she will go easy on you."
No defense, no fighting, just admit to it all.  I sure looked guilty as hell when all the exonerating evidence was either covered up or destroyed.
Candina choreographed the entire sentencing hearing.  Opening comments.  My grievous allocution speech of guilt, then an hour or so of re-watching all my YouTube videos we had already seen before, revamping on the misrepresented and fabricated evidence for her to emphasize how truly wicked and immoral I was, how I am on a warpath of destruction and then she explained how I viciously ordered the cyber attacks on Wesley McGrew, and how I ordered the ETA to dox him and conduct DDoS attacks against him, references to non-existant evidence was made countless times. Judge Boyle looked seriously bored to death. It was very late, we were the last people the Judge was to see that day.
Candina offered to show her non existent evidence, but Judge Boyle just wanted to get his over with, and waived the 'evidence' aside.  With my speech already out of the way, I had no way to defend myself after the fact.  Then...
Candina told the judge that I had installed the botnet on the HVAC. I told Todd to object to that immediately saying "I'm not even charged with that!  Object!"  But he ignored me, saying "We don't want to piss the judge off any more than she already is." And so he allowed a false statement to carry the weight of the image I was falsely painted with by Candina's crafty slip of false testimony that only I seemed to catch (and care.)
Then she lied about what my pastor had told the FBI during a phone interview, saying that I had infected my own church's computers with viruses, and how the pastor had to pay out of pocket remediation costs to fix the damage I created. He took the witness stand and testified that what she said was untrue.  Still, the image remained.  Judge Boyle said I was 'evil', and with 'an ill attempt to harm.'
Evil.
Nine years.  Three years supervised released.  Restitution $38,887.75, release date July 15, 2017.

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