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THE TRIAL

The bailiff passed out pads and pencils to the twelve jurors, and the prosecutor began his opening statement, adopting a down-home, country tone.

“I love the Internet,” he said. “The Internet is a fascinating thing. It’s a place where we can entertain ourselves; we can get information; we can watch videos; we can play games; we can buy things. eBay is a great place, you can bid on things. If you can think about it, you can buy it on eBay.”

“But, ladies and gentlemen, there’s a side of the Internet that we don’t like to think about. There’s kind of a dark underbelly to the Internet, one where not trinkets or bobbles are bought, sold, and traded. There’s a part of the Internet where people’s lives are bought, sold, and traded. . . .”

“You are going to see that side of the Internet. And I suspect that you are never going to look at the Internet exactly the same way again.”

The trial lasted three days. The prosecutor disposed of Brett Johnson right out of the gate, acknowledging that Gollumfun was a liar and a thief who’d betrayed the trust of his Secret Service handlers. That was why the government wasn’t calling him to testify. The prosecution’s “star witness” would be the computer logs of Giannone’s chats with the informant. The record would speak for itself.

Giannone’s lawyer did his best to attack the logs. “Machines make mistakes.” He argued that because the stolen credit cards were never fraudulently used, there were no victims. He reminded the jurors that nobody died or suffered physical harm.

After one day of deliberation, the verdict came in: guilty. The first federal trial of the carding underground was over. The judge ordered Giannone taken into custody.

A week later, Giannone was summoned from his cell at the Lexington County Jail. He instantly recognized the Secret Service agents waiting by the sally port, two steel doors away from freedom; the two men had been Johnson’s handlers, and they’d testified at Giannone’s trial.