Tom Anderson, the MySpace founder, hacked into Chase Bank at 14 and could access all account details and mortgages. He threatened to expose the data unless given continued access, then taught the method to 40 friends. The FBI launched one of its largest coordinated raids targeting all 40 people, but didn't charge the teenager.
Tom Anderson, AKA Tom from MySpace, age 14, hacks Chase Bank. All of the names, the bank accounts, the amounts in them. He could have wired as much money as he wanted out of it. He did not. He knew their mortgages. He knew everything. And he was basically the leader of a hacking crew. And his nickname was Lord Flathead. And so Lord Flathead gets root access and he leaves a message in the Chase Bank and he says, you need to let me keep my access or I will expose all this information. I will leak all this. Acknowledge that I won and give me full access. And he starts bragging about it. So he tells 40 of his friends, he shows them exactly how he He did it. And this is why the FBI conducted one of the biggest raids they've ever done. A simultaneous raid of 40 different people, all happening at 7 PM, all in one area. Because they didn't know who was the mastermind behind it, but they knew who all had seen it or was talking about it. And so they raid everybody, they steal his computer, they take all stuff, but they leave him alone because they're like, the guy's 14, what are we gonna do? We can't charge him. And so he gets off and he agrees, okay, I'm not gonna hack stuff anymore. That's his origin story.
