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31
The Trial

Jonathan Giannone, the Long Island carder Max and Chris had discovered as a teenager, was keeping a secret from everyone.

The same day Max had absorbed his competitors, Secret Service agents had arrested Giannone at his parents' house for selling some of Max's dumps to Brett Johnson, the Secret Service informant known as Gollumfun. Giannone was released on bail, but he told nobody about the bust. To him, it was just a bump in the road—how much trouble could he really get in for selling twenty-nine dumps?

The impression that he was facing a slap on the wrist was bolstered when the judge in South Carolina lifted his travel restrictions a month after his arrest. Giannone promptly flew into Oakland Airport on a card-ing run, and Tea picked him up and showed him around. They drove up and down the Pacific Coast Highway, and she bought him a pizza at Fat Slice on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue. She'd always found Giannone amusing—a boastful, curly-haired white kid with hip-hop sensibilities who'd once bragged that he'd beat up a member of the New York Jets at a local bar. Now, though, they had something in common: Chris had stopped talking to Giannone around the time of his arrest, while Tea, for her part, had been ordered to return to the Bay Area so she couldn't make any more trouble with Chris's relationships. Chris had exiled them both.

Chris called Tea while they were hanging out and was surprised to