The REAL story about why I was loyal to my friend who went to prison, despite what the woke cancel horde claims.
The stories told on the internet rarely resemble real life.
KARLYN BORYSENKO
DEC 30, 2022
5
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Did you know that when you visit someone in prison, they have these fake backdrops for you to take photos in front of?
I know, because I’ve done it. Sometimes the pictures come out better than others.
I’m about to write the hardest chapter of
Surviving Keri Smith, my substack that documents the two-year smear campaign I’ve had to endure at the hands of a woman who is obsessed with destroying me because she’s convinced herself I’m her abusive mother.
And for that chapter, we need to talk about Aaron - my friend who went to prison.
The reason the chapter I’m working on is so difficult to write is because Keri’s online cancel horde doxed him and dragged him through the mud all over Twitter, all because we dated in college.
They went back 15 years into my past to find a story that they could smear me with, scouring all my past social media until they found just the right thing.
They tried to destroy the life he has now just to damage me.
That’s how fucked up this internet game is.
There is nothing I regret more in the three years that I’ve been in this game than what happened to Aaron at their hands. It is a guilt I will carry around for the rest of my life.
Let me tell you what: There is no greater red pill to swallow than to have a woke cancel mob spread false stories on the Internet about your life to cancel you.
You were there. You know what the truth is. And the way they frame everything has no resemblance to reality. The truth doesn’t matter to the mob.
And not only do they spread fake stories about you, but they also drag private people into it for no good reason.
So, what really happened?
Aaron and I met in college when I was 20-years-old. We dated and became pretty inseparable for a few years.
He was, and is to this day, one of the great loves of my life. I truly believe that Aaron and I are soul mates. We were meant to meet in this lifetime.
He changed my life in so many ways. When I met Aaron, I was shy and scared of doing anything new or unusual. But Aaron himself was unusual. A double major in math and computer science, he’s a literal genius. But he was also fun and exciting and uninhibited. I had never met anyone like him, a person who taught me how to experience the world in a completely different way than I had up until that point. He taught me to experience joy in a way I hadn’t felt before.
And because majoring in those two subjects at once wasn’t enough for him, Aaron was also an entrepreneur. He didn't even really need to be in college - he was making money hand over fist processing credit cards on the internet.
I met Aaron in 2001 when we were juniors. This was before there was such a thing as PayPal and he had written a program to process credit cards on the internet before such a thing existed. People could sign up, put a bit of code on their website, and that was that. Aaron processed their credit cards and sent payouts once a month.
He was making MOUNTAINS of money.
His payment tool was used on a lot of porn websites and Aaron and his friends also produced porn websites for extra money on top of this.
I wasn’t involved in any of this directly. I thought it was interesting and exciting, but Aaron and I never really talked about it because it wasn’t where he was focusing a lot of his energy and, when we were together, we just did normal college things.
He would take me out, drive me around Boston with his mustang with the top down blasting music and then go do normal activities like hang out at the South Street Dinner or the South Shore or drive out to see the school bus that Aaron and his friends bought that had been transformed into an RV.
Aaron also worked with his childhood best friend, Tim.
Tim also made porn websites and turned himself into a bit of a gay porn star.
Tim was one scandalous motherfucker, and everyone who knew Aaron always told him so. We all expected that Tim was going to be arrested one day.
And, of course, it was Tim who got Aaron in trouble with the sites that he was making and involved with.
I found out what happened when I received a handwritten letter from Aaron from prison explaining the situation.
Before we get into the story of what happened (which will be told by Aaron, not me), I want to make one thing very clear: I wasn’t involved in any of this.
The cancel horde online has tried to paint me as complicit, but the fact is that I didn’t even know what was happening until Aaron was already in jail because it all happened after we had graduated from college.
I moved home to Vermont. Aaron was traveling all over the world, and was settling down with his girlfriend in Sweeden. We weren’t even really talking when all this happened.
But I know enough about the people involved to believe every word of Aaron’s story.
I’ve retyped that letter here. You will learn Aaron’s story in his words, the exact way he told it to me.
One last thing before I share Aaron’s letter with you: You may have heard what the cancel mob has said about me at this point, and you may not have.
If you haven’t, you’ll be able to see what they did on
Surviving Keri Smith soon.
But here’s a TLDR for some of the most salient points I want people to take away.
To dispel the rumors started by the woke cancel mob of people harassing me:
- I’ve never hidden that I had a friend spend time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. I’m not ashamed of this and I do not regret staying loyal to a friend.
- The “child” involved in Aaron’s case was a 17-year-old who used a fake ID that said he was 18.
- Aaron pled guilty to crimes he didn’t commit because he was railroaded by the government to do so. He wanted to fight but his lawyers convinced him he had an 80% chance of losing because of jury selection, and losing would mean spending the rest of his life in prison.
- All of my friends and family knew about Aaron and knew that it was bogus that he was in prison. It’s never been a secret. The only people who have ever been outraged by this are people in a woke cancel mob who were more interested in a smear campaign than they were in the truth.
- Aaron and I weren’t in a relationship when he was in prison…but we played and bantered with each other and both of us enjoyed freaking my friends and family out with the idea that I may have a prison wedding. But that was never real - it was only to pass the time. I was dating other people and in other relationships the entire time he was in prison. I met, dated, and married my husband while Aaron was in prison.
- My prison nickname wasn’t Smalls. It was Special K.
I used to have all of Aaron’s handwritten letters to me, but I ended up burning them all 6 or 7 years ago in a ceremony (long story). However, I still had a digital archive of the original letter he sent me explaining how he ended up in prison because I had typed it up to send people who asked for his side of the story.
Note: I slightly edited the names of things when I originally retyped this, but other than that, it is as Aaron wrote it.
This is the letter, as Aaron wrote it to me, to explain what really happened in his words:
It really starts sometime in 2003. There was this guy named Justin Berry who ran a self-made porn site called MF.com, complete with billing, done by PayPal. One day he answers a "models wanted" ad from BPUSA.com, a longtime Nva
(Aaron's credit card processing company)merchant. He's some Hollywood big shot in non-porn, Dave S., who's 'branching out" or something. Nonetheless, a standup guy. I've partied with him in LA and Vegas a few times. They never settle a price for the modeling but he tells Justin how PayPal sucks/switch to Nva; so he goes to Nva, fills out the new merchant application, enters his credit card info and gets his Nva signup links to put on his site.
(Karlyn's Note: If it's not clear, this was a completely automated process...it's not like Aaron reviewed every application, just like PayPal doesn't).
The only problem is that, contrary to what's published on his website, and on the modeling application he submitted to Dave, and his credit card info, Justin is not 18, he's 17.
Apparently, he's also a heavy coke addict, and his primary objective in opening the site was to make enough money to feed his habit, which works well enough except that coke heads don't have the initiative to maintain a website.
Enter long-time "fan" of Justin's, Greg M. Greg strikes up an online business partnership turn love affair with Justin. As part of their business arrangement, Greg takes over management of the site so Justin can maintain his high uninterrupted with the laborious task of snapping dirty pictures of himself and posting them online.
From my perspective, I see one very pesky Mexican merchant - who later turned out to be from California hiding from the police in Mexico because of his extensive credit card fraud. His dad already has a place there because he's a fugitive as well!
Oh, actually we gotta talk about dad for a sec, not because he's part of the case so much, but because he's quite the "character." So Knute Berry has done time for a couple of con businesses he's operated. One day he gets busted for insurance fraud. They wanna put him away for seven years, but he works it down to a plea bargain for one year. Not good enough I guess, he flees to Mexico instead, and his son (Justin) follows shortly thereafter with legal problems of his own. A regular chip off the ol' block eh?
So when dad finds out about his son's little child pornography business, he's totally enthused! He goes out, procures prostitutes for his son, and films the movies - WTF! Like, seriously, imagine you're sitting in your room doing your 10th grade English homework and your dad comes in and says "Wanna get naked and film a porno movie for daddy?" Yeah. Exactly.
Anyway, so I see one very pesky merchant who constantly bombards my IM with "come on bro when am I getting paid!!!" just like, well, a coke fiend, switch out for a much preferable business-like professional. Of course anyone who's ever done any sort of dealing with customers (or perhaps in your case, like parents of students or something) knows the feeling of being kept in a constant state of "OMG I hate you all!" So maybe I should've been wary when his Greg person didn't harass me - as much. But since no one (or rather almost no one except for his father) knew about Justin's real age, including even his customers, that arrangement carried on for the next few months without incident until he turned 18 in June 2004.
Skip ahead to 2005. I may have been spared having been in Berlin and simply online at the wrong hours, but upon return Justin is out of dope money and goes back to the adult site business as a legal model.
Tim and Greg partner with him because it turns out that since Dec 2003 Tim has been doing the advertising for Greg's sites. And just by creepy coincidence, Greg knows Tim aka "Casey"
(Karlyn’s note: Casey was Tim's porn name) because Greg was a member of Tim's site once upon a time. The FBI uncovered a video from Feb 2004 having a conversation with his friend down in Florida about "that psychotic 17-year-old guy down in Mexico whose site he's been advertising for." Hmmmm...well he didn't exactly say MF.com, but like, either it's that or he's doing it for other people too, in which case if he was into knowingly advertising for so many child porn sites that he accidentally got hemmed up in the wrong one I don't feel too bad for him, ya know?
But remember now they're all old enough they can't help but be legal in their new site JustinsFriends.com - that is, until Justin meets another long-time "fan" of his: New York Times reporter Kurt Eichenwald.
Kurt has made a living writing books on corporate scandals, and has discovered a novel means to spend company money on his favorite personal hobby, adolescent boys. So he pays Justin and instructs him to go make dirty movies of underage boys - going to great lengths to hide the money trail, but oops, not great enough
- a plan which just gets all the parties ecstatic. Greg's day job is that of a manger at a Sonic fast-food restaurant, employing dozens of 14-17-year-old boys he dreams of getting his hands on, Justin's gonna make money, and Tim, well I dunno, he's just gonna be in on something scandalous.
So the setup goes: Justin befriends boys and buys them pot with Kurt's money (Kurt later testified that the money was supposed to be for toys. Toys?! Like that's better. "Hey little boy, show me your private parts and I'll give you a toy." Of course, he says this was his way of trying to get them out of the sexual abuse when he roused the line from reporter to good samaritan...before it started?), takes them back to Greg's house where he has hidden cameras in the bedrooms. He invites the boys to smoke up and watch porn on his TV and then "has to step out of the room and won't be back for 15 minutes - ehem-ehem." The hidden cameras record everything, Greg transfers to the computer, Justin uploads to the internet, Tim advertises, everyone uses Nva's billing links, and Kurt calls the FBI to "blow the whistle."
The rest of the summer is spent leveraging Kurt's media contacts to get Justin immunity from prosecution, not an easy task. In addition to Justin's forays into child sexual exploitation, he's a credit card fraudster, immigrant smuggler, infant abductor, rapist, drug user/dealer/trafficker, and amateur pimp, any of which might come to light if he goes under FBI scrutiny. He's gotta promise something bigger if they're to let him off (and Kurt needs a corporate scandal to write his book), so they report that this is "only the tip of the iceberg...Nva is the hub of several major child pornography rings."
Simultaneous to all this, on the evening of July 14th, 2005, Tim makes a slip about Justin's once being underage. I almost reached through the phone to kill him for being so stupid. If anyone should know how eagerly those people will exploit hosters/billers to peddle that stuff - and the consequences thereof - it's him. I cite the fiasco in Sept 2000 with the Mass Attorney General's office and the (kinda fun actually) little bit where I got to be all hollywood getaway in the mustang down Comm Ave with the psychotic (!) newsvan driver in pursuit. But other than that serious shit.
So I go to cancel all three of their accounts ASAP. Tim redacts his slip, swearing he's only just found out and begs to keep his merchant account, and that JustinsFriends.com can be "cleaned." I agree, kill that MF.com site and ban Greg and Justin. Greg swears that it was all Justin, but he's such a dummy, admits complicity in the whole ordeal - so he stays permabanned. FTP logs would later show that the site was in fact "cleaned" by Greg on that evening, but that shortly thereafter Tim went back and reuploaded the child porn. I guess he had a personal copy of it elsewhere or something. I dunno.
In September 2005 Tim and Greg are arrested. Although they claimed to have been having some kind of gay bitch fight since that night in July, there must have been some kind of secret reconciliation because on the night of the arrest Tim IMed Greg with "FBI has raided our server!!!"
In the meantime he IMs me with:
-Hey you aren't doing anything to my server are you?
-Uh, no.
-Are you sure?
-Yes
-Are you absolutely sure?
-Yes. WTF Tim?
-Nothing. Forget about it.
He's such a sketch ball. Not realizing that this Greg guy had also been arrested, nobody could figure out exactly what Tim had done. He wouldn't say, perhaps because even he wasn't sure which of his schemes had gone wrong and didn't want to inadvertently bring the wrong one to light.
As the investigation continued it became clear that Greg's story about "it was all Justin" was less than accurate. While Justin/Kurt were definitely in charge of things, Greg was more than happy to be a fully-informed partner in the crimes. He pleads guilty, and the judge gives him 150 years in prison (which, unless you're very optimistic about the longevity of a 40-year-old fat man, I think we can safely call that life). He requested an appeal, which was recently
(Note: this was in 2007)denied, so he's locked into that forever now - done.
But as far as Justin's sell to the FBI to get his hugely encompassing immunity about this being a "massive online child exploitation ring," he must've been referring only to Greg's stature because the ring stopped there. Even Justin's case against Tim was weak.
I conducted my own parallel investigation and came up with plenty on Tim with the Justin stuff, but it didn't matter because Tim was into enough of his own on the side to build an even bigger case against him. Apparently, he and Pat
(Karlyn's note: Pat was Tim's ex-boyfriend of many many years, some of which were when he was underage but I liken it to a 18-year-old guy dating a 16-year-old girl - Pat was always the more mature in the relationship in my eyes and his parents always knew what was going on) had decided to make lots of dirty movies together when he was 16, which Tim - no stranger to the law - kept secretly until Pat's 18th birthday for a new site they were building. He might've gotten away with it too, if for no other reason than the fact that Pat at 22 is the spitting image of Pat at 16, had he not done things like go to Australia with Pat at 16 (and only that time), takes pictures with the Kangaroos and then in the next photo, with some clothes/hair/pimples/everything, takes pictures of him buttfucking Pat - Pat's hand stamped "Sydney Aquarium" no less! Like, they got him better than OJ. And after spending half a million dollars of his parents' retirement money, the best defense his legal dream team could wiggle through evidence like that was Tim taking the stand in his own defense and saying "uh yeah, we wanted to create the 'illusion' that this occurred on the same trip when we took those other pictures in Australia, so we got our hair cut the same , dug out the same clothes, and I even went through the painstaking measures of digitally grafting in all the tiny details like the stamp on Pat's hand." On the prosecution's cross-examination, they asked him about his digital editing skills. Quickly sensing trouble ahead in that line of questioning (and rightly so) he answered that he himself hadn't been the one to do it. "Well who did it then?" they asked. "Ummm....I don't know."
And that was that. Tim I think is getting sentenced next month, but it's a rather moot point. His sentence will be 220 years, give or take a decade. It's a little higher because he gets an "obstruction of justice" penalty for making false statements under oath. But not like it matters, there's no such thing as federal parole or any other kind of early release. Time is time done in a cell. The only reduction possible is a maximum 15% off for good behavior. So only 187 years to do on 220.
(Karlyn's note: Tim actually ended up only being sentenced to like 16 years. He was released from prison a while ago).
That left me. Tim's departure was really a non-event. When I told people almost everyone responded something like "Eh, it was bound to happen sometime. So what'd they eventually get him for?" He sent me letter after letter all "I don't know what the fuck man. This is bullshit. I'll be outta here in no time." I decided that for his own good there could be no relationship between us without contrition on his behalf, so I wrote a single carefully-worded response and told him that I forgave him. The letters stopped coming after that.
It wasn't until one afternoon in Dec 2005 while reading the New York Times that I sensed there was anything more to it. "Nva, Inc and its principals are targets of an ongoing FBI investigation."
Ummm...what? What are you supposed to do when you read the news and - surprise! - you ARE the news! If you're me you just kinda sit there and go WTF! Eventually, I decided that if the FBI is investigating Nva and me, they might possibly have some questions to ask me, so the next morning I put on nice clothes and took the T to the FBI office downtown. It was a very awkward experience. They were like "Yes, can we help you?" I was like "Ummm well I was reading the NYT yesterday and it said you're investigating me? Uh...so...here I am." Absolutely clueless. I go home without having done more than given my name.
Johanna
(Aaron's girlfriend at the time)and I had a long-planned move to Stockholm with her family in January, but I wanted to squeeze in some touring around China and this kick ass dog-sledding course in Sweden just north of the Arctic circle in February (Cold!). Both of which are way past Johanna's adventure threshold so I had to do those without her and we met back up on Stockholm in March. She must've brought the curse of the America's with her because as soon as she arrives my cell phone starts blowing up "uh dude, something's seriously wrong with the Nva website." What was wrong? Why it was plastered with pictures of naked children! After a few frenzied "Aaron opens a serious can of whooop-ass" phone calls/faxes/emails I discover that a Nva merchant from 2002 (unrelated to all this) who claims they processed for months and tens of thousands of dollars without payment (umm, no) had sued Nva in absentia, won a default judgment, took control of the Nva domain name as part of the settlement and redirected it to his own server!
About this time I'm really starting to rethink these FUCKING PORN PEOPLE! Something like this really only could happen with porn people. So I switch the company to LC.net (that way "click here to pay" doesn't take you to naked toddlers), send a small fortune over to a hotshot lawyer in Boston who once I explained everything to him and was absolutely salivating at the chance to go after them, I headed up things on my own with the other end by calling the FBI to report the criminal offense, making sure to make excruciatingly clear that yes I own Nva, Nva currently has bad stuff on it, no it's not mine I don't have control, but it's very possible I could be getting control back again soon so don't trace the Nva site three months from now and come kick in my door all proud of yourself for following up on that tip you got.
There were about as responsive to that report as they had been the first time I went into their office, It occurred to me that at this point that maybe the FBI gets a lot of calls and doesn't bother to follow up on them - even if all it takes is "go to this website, see?" So I get everybody I could find to call/email/visit (you would've gotten to be a part of this too if you'd ever answer your cell phone). Maybe if all the whos in whoville shouted together We are here! we are here we are here! they'd hear me. Nothing.
Then one night in April, we get a call from our friend Jen in Boston. She just called to say that her friend Joe called her a few minutes ago to report that they were talking about me in Congress.
-Umm, what?? Congress as in the Congress of the United States of America, Congress?
-I dunno, that's just what he said and he thought you'd want to know."
:::dumbfoundedness:::
-...what are they saying?
-I dunno.
-You didn't ask?
I don't even remember how she responded. I was too busy reeling under multiple levers of WTFness. I call Joe on 3-way.
-Joe! What's going on??
-OK so we're just sitting here bored at work so I turn on C-SPAN and I was like "OMG are they talking about Aaron? And I wasn't even sure but then they mentioned Nva and your name again. And then after, they switched to an interview with that New York Times guy and he says "It's absolutely criminal that the president of Nva and all of its employees are still running around this country free." and I'm like "you asshole. You don't have any idea what you're talking about! I know Aaron and I happen to know for a fact that Nva has no employees and he's not even in the United States.”
-Umm..."
Dumbfounded again. I go searching online for this. Joe continues - with equal or possibly even more excitement - about how then he heard my ringtone and thought I was THERE in his office! (He really, really liked my ringtone). But it was his coworker and how he was like "OMG I love your phone my friend Aaron has this same exact phone!" I found the video online, sure enough there's Justin reading something someone else has clearly prepared for him, someone journalistic even, lambasting the FBI for failing to arrest exactly those he had told them to go arrest, how the FBI doesn't care about child abuse. And to think I had been having such a lovely, non-psychotic evening until then.
So it's a normal evening of "yum this is a great dinner Johanna" and "How 'bout a little TV before homework? Wanna watch Swedish TV or American TV? Oh wait, they're talking about ME on TV?! and what an awful guy I am." craziness but I figured it was OK since Justin doesn't run the FBI, and if he really kept up with it he could be fancy lawyer's second target.
My (defense) lawyer later got the official transcript and it goes on longer than the TV bit. After he speaks, various congressmen ask their questions (ever aware of their political positions - "we're against child abuse" is an easy one - take all the shots you can), most of its babble but there were a few little clues like one of them asks about Greg M, Justin reports that he's pled guilty but not yet been sentenced, and he responds "Ok. Good." Good? As in good, it's not finalized so we may yet influence it? Greg originally thought he was getting 34 years...but walked out of the courtroom with a surprise 150 years.
And then another part, responding to Justin's "threats" that if the FBI did not take action on the unarrested remainder of his hitlist he'd go to the state level for prosecutions and - ehem ehem - here's my NYT reporter friend who’s just itching to run a story under the headline "Rep. Joe Blow loves pedophiles," where the reps respond "oh no, we don't think that will be necessary." Because you'll make the phone call over to DOJ and say "hey remember us? the guys who control your funding...btw nail Aaron to the fucking wall"?
Or so was the theory of my attorneys, later confirmed by the FBI in our post-plea chats. Turns out Justin does run the FBI. A few weeks later they return a call to Arien looking to figure out where I am and how to get ahold of me. Why they didn't just return any of my calls to them I dunno. Guess it shows how discombobulated they are.
They want to ask me stuff about Tim's case and we do this whole little back-and-forth thing where they say they need to show me documents but since it's part of an ongoing investigation they can't just send me copies so they wanna do it in person. I ask if they have an office in Stockholm (well I mean, of course they have offices there, but no non-covert locations at least). They say no, they'll fly me to the US. I don't wanna miss too much school so I pick a Swedish holiday weekend and we decide on May 24th 2006 (my half birthday even! they're diabolical!!). I was sitting around talking to Johanna's mom about it all and she had the typical Euro-skeptic response: "OMG don't trust them for anything at all," and I was all "don't be such a silly conspiracy theorist, the FBI knows exactly what they're doing. I"ll be fine."
On the chosen day I get up at 3am (so 9pm the night before US east coast time) and begin my journey to Boston. On the layover in Frankfurt, I had this moment of reconsideration. Eyes burning with that I-got-two-hours-sleep feeling thinking to myself "You know what? Fuck all this. I'm tired. I wanna go home. I've been bending over backward to be helpful to these guys but they're seriously abusing my willingness to fulfill my good citizen duty. I ought to just buy a ticket back to Stockholm from here. Remind them that I have a life too and they can just call me with whatever questions they have. No don't be silly Aaron...it's just three days and now you're already underway. The only way back home from here is via Boston."
I had been given instructions to meet my FBI contract on the luggage side of customs - i.e. before crossing through - but there was no one there, so I walked up to one of the security guards and said "Hi..umm...this might sound like a funny question but do you know if there're any FBI agents here waiting for me? Maybe you could check on your little radio thing or something?" He thought I was nuts, so I decided I would just go through, get some much-needed Starbucks and give her a call. Just my luck though, I get my once-every-third welcome to America customs bullshit where they pick through EVERYTHING I have. They're flipping out because my only baggage is two totally empty suitcases (thanks to several years of Bushonomics, coming to the US is like coming to a third-world country. Everything is SO CHEAP! I was gonna stuff those suitcases with all the American goodies I could carry!)
Guess what I found out when the government handed over their evidence in my case - terabytes and terabytes of every little thing you ever did in life (you can't even sneeze without these guys watching it) going back to long before they opened any "investigation" (creepy). Since 2002 my passport has been flagged by the US authorities as "Suspected Narcotics Trafficker." Cute. So they're giving me the third degree, actually disassembling my suitcases into little pieces (!), and I'm like fuck you people I'm here on YOUR ticket.
They take me into this back room and slip something around my wrist, and I'm thinking "huh, what is that?" until I feel the same thing around my other wrist. HANDCUFFS? YOU WTF? And guys in suits and sunglasses wisk me through the airport to a bank of black sedans waiting at the door. Life's little surprises keep getting better and better.
Looking back on it, knowing that I had come specifically to meet and talk with them, wouldn't it make more sense to let me go there and talk freely and THEN arrest me? Would've saved them a trip out to the airport too. But they weren't interested in facts, only arrests.
This not being the first time I'm sitting face-to-face with law enforcement who've painted me as a bad guy with a brush meant for Tim (that whole Canada fiasco comes to mind) when they ask me if they can "interview" me, immediately I'm like "Yes! You people are so fucked up you have no clue what you're doing. I would love the opportunity to straighten you out."
Lemme tell you, once you've go the handcuffs on, "interview" is not an interview, "interview" is al Qaeda worthy interrogation. I mean there would be no way you could slip a fib past them. Not like quick thinking was even a possibility with no sleep and no caffeine and 10 hours in coach and a massively wrong time zone and you just got arrested by the freaking FBI!
To this day I remain proud of that statement and I'll point anyone to it. I didn't know the case, I didn't know what I was charged with or even that I had been charged, I hadn't seen any evidence with which one could say I crafted a story around and I answered every question under several hours of drilling. One year on it's still my defense.
I was having a "productive debate" with my lawyer about that. He said never talk to the police ever. I said that's advice for guilty people; his defense-attorney-ness has sunk too deeply into his mind. Just look, I pointed out, now I can point out to the jury all the things I just pointed out to you above. Yes, you're absolutely right, he said, but you've also just given them your entire defense for them to prep against.
Touche. So, never talk to the police ever.
I began to notice that it was getting very late in the workday and this whole handcuff situation had not yet been resolved. The good cop in my good cop/bad cop/bad cop /bad cop setup said sheepishly that I'd have to spend the night in jail. I was LIVID! If only I knew what truly would be in store for me...
I don't really want to describe what it was like being in jail those first few days. Lucky me, I inadvertently volunteered myself to go directly from the heights of freedom jetting around the planet that morning to the very deepest depths of incarceration that breaks even the most hardened criminals. When they brought me in- after all the line 'em up, strip 'em down treatment - they bark
"You want GP or PC?"
"huh?"
"GP or PC!"
"Ummm...I'm sorry I don't...I don't understand."
"Do you want to be with other people?"
"People? People I have no problem with. It's the criminals I don't want to be around"
They really thought I was being some kind of smart ass, so they threw me in "the hole" aka solitary confinement. It wasn't that bad though because unlike so many here I had support. A lot of people came to visit so it wouldn't be so lonely - even my parents came! I didn't have to explain to anybody that I was innocent, that I didn't know what was going on, that I didn't understand why they wouldn't let me go. They already knew.
I stayed there in Boston for a month until they flew me "con air" to Oklahoma (that trip is another whole letter in itself). I've flown plenty of long haul flights in Coach Class, but you just don't appreciate it until you've flown Cattle Class. there I stayed for only a few days until they flew me here to VA (because the charge is a "conspiracy" you have to go to where an actual crime took place - plus, as I found out later, a Boston jury would've acquitted me and they were well aware of that risk.)
The first time I went before a judge for bond (what I had always called "bail" but apparently they don't use that word anymore) I hadn't had a chance to really talk to my lawyers yet so the prosecution was able to go on and say whatever they wanted unchecked by the defense. The judge denied me bond based on the fear that I'm a threat to society. Me?
A few months later I went back to try again. My lawyers put the head FBI guy on the stand, the one who knows every little detail about me, and asked him "Are you aware of any evidence - any evidence whatsoever - to lead you to believe that Aaron is a threat to society in any way?" "Umm...Squirm...Grumble...No". HA!
Even the judge commented that in all his years he's never heard a government witness give such a clear and concise answer, and he set my bond at $70,000. That was, until the prosecution appealed the ruling to another judge who this time said I was a flight risk - because I could speak foreign languages. No sum of money in the world would reasonably assure my appearance in court. Bond denied. I would also like to point out at this time that the judge's wife is a high school french teacher. Does this mean that his wife is unsafe for any bond either?
Not only was I devastated that I would be forced to continue staying in the jail, but - for the lack of a better description - that ruling totally fucked me on my case. How am I supposed to prepare my complicated computer defense from jail? My lawyers couldn't do it. Computer "experts" charge $250/hr. I needed several thousand hours (you can do the math on that) and they're hardly as "expert" as they claim to be. All for the rather impossible task of proving NOT knowing. Err, how am I suppose to do that exactly? Like, here's me making a written statement "I do not know they had child pornography."? Strikes me as an odd thing to state right out of the blue.
Around February 2007 the judge finally acknowledged my predicament and gave me (unsatisfactory) reprieve; the US Marshals would escort me from the jail to the courthouse where I would have access to the computer evidence. Which would be perfect except I got about 100 hours of sporadic access to 2TB of data. Do that math, it requires you to maintain a 300MB/min rate of analysis. I can't even get the crappy government computer to copy the data off their hard drives at that rate sustainably, much less look at it all. But you take what you can get, ya know?
And I helped things along somewhat by using my precious hours writing little software agents to do the work for me overnight - Aaron Jr's I called them. Over the course of a few months of me doing my computer thing and my lawyers doing their own thing we had put together a really strong defense. I was satisfied with it, willing to (literally) bet my life on it, because - in following the normal mode of Fed operation - they had continued to stack as many conspiracies onto me as they could dream up until my would be minimum sentence was up into triple digits years like the others.
We were in court again just a week before trial. This is one of the many TV-formed legal misconceptions I've since been educated about. My mental image of trial was some guy, just off the street that morning and in the courtroom for the first time. The reality is the guy (or gal) has been spending his (her) days in a cell for already a year, and the judge, prosecutor and defense have all been in that room together many times before the jury showed up.
My two lawyers (I got an extra one because of the "rare degree of complexity" in this case), me, and three federal prosecutors (never to have their advantage taken from them they pulled down an extra from Washington...and then another still, just to really rub it in), all of us were nervous over the prospect of losing the case - my attorneys because their client's life is done if they lose, me because it's my life to lose, and them because they might be the ones to actually lose a fed case! with Washington breathing down their necks no less - and both sides were dealt a serious blow.
I had requested a "motion in limine" (li-ma-nee) that the prosecution be barred from mentioning scandalous stuff Tim has done. That is, if you're gonna prosecute me, talk about me. They fought that one ferociously, which tipped my lawyers that that was their core case: Tim.
The judge denied my motion - my side moved into panic mode.
(Karlyn's Note: Aaron doesn't mention this here, but this is the same judge that sentenced Greg to 150 years when he was expecting 34...same judge, same phone call from Congress.)
Then the judge asked how much time he needed to block off for this trial The United States answers first in the official government pompous "of course you're guilty there is no defense" way that the case will take two weeks. Then we answer that if the government needs two weeks, then we need two weeks to debunk them and two more weeks to introduce our own evidence (To put that in perspective, 99% of trials take only a few hours. I didn't know what I ever did to find myself at the center of the crazy storm but I think I need to accept this as a permanent trend).
That was the tip of the prosecution had likewise feared. This case wasn't going to be another Tim or Greg, I had actual evidence of my innocence - their side moved to panic mode. Within the hour my lawyers had it in their hands:
Plead to 10 years in exchange for protection from the threat of lifelong imprisonment.
The next three days were a fight. The lawyers came to the jail each day and each day I sent them back.
They had done a mock jury focus group thing to see what average citizens thought about the case. The results were interesting.
People under 30 acquit.
People with tech-savvy acquit.
People who have children currently in high school or college acquit.
The older, tech-ignorant and the religious right types convict, but not on the evidence, as apparently no jury ever does in the deliberating room, but on "he should have known Tim was a child pornographer" and is thus guilty of the conspiracy. Which was exactly the prosecution's case. I was no longer being tried as CEO of Nva; I was being tried as a plain citizen.
The lawyers got the list of the 210 potential jurors pulled here from Roanoke. Of them, 5 were candidates for acquittal (compare that with the demographics of Boston).
They were pushing me to sign. I would have none of it. I don't like getting railroaded. I'm more of a "give me liberty or give me death!" kind of guy. We eventually locked into this sort of mock cross-examination drill:
-And did you ever travel with Tim?
-Yes I did.
-And did Pat ever come along?
-Yes.
-And he was under 18 at that time?
-I believe so, 17 perhaps.
-And just so we're clear, Pat's parents were not present?
-That's correct.
-Did you ever stay overnight in a hotel on these trips?
-Yes.
-And Tim and Pat stayed in the same room?
-Yes.
-In the same bed.
-Yes.
(shocked gasps from the jury)
-And you know this because you would also stay in the room?
-Yes but...
-And you're trying to tell us in this courtroom today that you deny that Tim, the known pornographer, who is obviously having a sexual relationship with an underage boy - a homosexual relationship - that you deny you were given reason to suspect he was making his money from the sale of illicit child pornography?
-Yes but...
(the bailiff is now restraining some of the jurors who've started climbing over the barriers - guilty Guilty GUILTY!)
(Karlyn's note: As someone who was also on some of these trips when we were in college, and stayed in the same hotel room, it's important to note again that in my eyes, Tim and Pat's relationship was no different than a 19-year-old guy dating a 17-year-old girl. It's not like he was 40 or something. It's one of those things that if they weren't gay, you wouldn't bat an eye at it. Pat's parents were well aware of what was going on, and their relationship lasted until Pat was well into his 20s. And, yes, we ALL suspected that at some point Tim would be arrested....but not for this. Personally, I thought it would be some sort of fraud...but I digress.)
No need to proceed any further with the prosecution, the jury has stopped listening.
My lawyer is pointing out that to a jury, my "yes but it wasn't like that if you were there" sounds a lot like a criminal's excuse.
He says they've done amazing work on proving the "didn't know" in the federal system with a 99.8% conviction rate, based on his experience I have like a 20% chance of full acquittal.
But the downside risk is too great.
The judge has done everything he can to ensure that you have no appeal - you have no appeal - the outcome of this trial is forever - done - the minimum sentence is life - there is no parole - you will never step out into the world again - you will die in a prison cell - you like Russian Roulette? - well in your version all the chambers have bullets save one - wanna play?
But in Russian Roulette, you can get up and not play. I didn't have that option.
So there I was trapped in that little room. Silent. I'll never forget that feeling.
You were just out walking along and without expecting it suddenly fall right through the ice.
You don't feel the cold, only an unknown discomfort everywhere. Where's the way out? Pushing and banging your fists but it won't budge. Why won't it? Where's the way out? You can see right through to other side there. The seconds march you ahead. Something must give. Please, please give! I can't breathe. Why won't you let me go! It never does.
You resign yourself to your fate.
I inked my soul out onto the paper.
The plea is somewhat unusual I'm told. Normally in the federal system you plead to a wide range and then the judge sets the point, like "5 to life" usually becomes 10 years, or "20 to life" usually 30 years, etc...In fact the lawyers were all giddy that they could brag to their lawyer friends over this plea having for the first time in their combined century of experience levered the prosecution to agree to invoke a little-used law that locks in a range from which the judge may not deviate without striking down the plea entirely. It stops the judge from doing a repeat Greg on me (same judge - same phone call from Congress). My range is minimum 9 years to 11 years 3 months maximum. I've been here 14 months already and with good behavior (not that I'd be violating good behavior by anyone's definition but here "good behavior" is defined relative to other inmates - fights/riots/escapes kept to a moderate level - so I'm counting that as a sure thing) that leaves 6 years 6 months to 8 years 5 months to go :-(. The judge will decide where in that range I belong on August 14th at 9am.
This was the letter I (Karlyn) received right before Aaron was sentenced, which was the first time I heard about any of this. He spent 8.5 years in prison. He has never deviated from this version of events to me in private. I stood by him and will always have his back. I have no regrets.
And the internet outrage mob can go to hell for everything they did to my friend, who had already suffered enough when they came for him to get to me.
