CEO Jonathan Manzi SIM Swaps His Competitor

Check out this story where the CEO named Jonathan Manzi SIM swapped his competitor!

This is eCrimeBytes.com S 2 Ep 2-1: CEO Jonathan Manzi SIM Swaps His Competitor – Act 1: Meet The Players!

Sources:

Chapters:

0:00 Intro
6:41 Meet The Players
11:16 Meet Jonathan Manzi

Transcript:

00:00:10:00 – 00:00:37:11
Keith
Hey, everybody. Welcome to eCrimeBytes season two episode two. This one is a fun one. It has a twist. It is a CEO Jonathan Manzi SIM swaps his competitor and so we got a twist on a few things. We got the SIM swap that we’ve covered in season one, but we’re going to combine it in the commercial world with a CEO that does it.

00:00:37:11 – 00:00:55:21
Keith
So with that, let’s go ahead and get into our case details to let you know what’s coming at you. So in this case, we’re going to have four acts, okay. And you’re going to find out what the names are as they come. Because if I give you the names now, there’s going to be some spoilers. So we have four acts coming at you.

00:00:55:22 – 00:01:15:04
Keith
So they’re going to be four segments in this episode. So also in this episode, the technology, it’s going to be pretty basic. We’re going to be talking about things that pretty much anybody that’s been on the Internet has used. We’re going to talk about Google Mail. We’re going to talk about Google Drive, we’re going to talk about Dropbox.

00:01:15:04 – 00:01:35:13
Keith
And that probably less known than maybe the Google Drive. But Dropbox is just a basically a competitor to Google Drive. It lets you put files on their service. And cell phones, mobile phones, and that’s it. Want to tell us about the crimes Seth?

00:01:35:16 – 00:01:36:10
Seth
Yes, I do.

00:01:36:10 – 00:01:58:14
Seth
so the crime here, the primary issue here is your SIM swapping. So we were just talking about this before we went live. Just to reiterate, we talked about this in other cases, it’s not actually the actual fact or acts of, you know, swapping out somebody’s sim. It is really taking over somebody’s account in an unauthorized manner so we can get into a little bit more about that.

00:01:58:16 – 00:02:11:12
Seth
Other parts of the crime are unauthorized access of protected computers. That’s really a direct reference to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that was violated here and then harassing competitors, customers, which is also against the law.

00:02:11:12 – 00:02:27:03
Keith
Yep. And the criminal in this case is an individual. His name is Jonathan Manzi. He is the CEO of Ink Labs. And we’ll talk a little more about those that company and another company here in a minute.

00:02:27:03 – 00:02:49:29
Seth
Okay. So our victim primarily it was a company called WEPA W E P A. They are main, a key competitor of Ink Labs. And then specifically and it’s arguable whether he’s a victim or part of the problem here was an employee of both companies, Troy Pepper. And you’ll see a lot of references to him in the court documents as TP, but it’s clearly Troy Pepper.

00:02:50:00 – 00:02:53:08
Seth
We’re not giving anything away by telling you that.

00:02:53:11 – 00:02:57:09
Keith
Yeah, And I’m curious. So when I researched this, Seth,

00:02:57:09 – 00:03:15:08
Keith
I really debated. I was like, is a Wepa or is it Wepa? And I was like, I got to go Wepa on this one just because it just feels like the most grammatically correct. But then you said Wepa, and I’m just as happy to use either. Which one do you want to do you think it’s Wepa?

00:03:15:10 – 00:03:22:26
Seth
I don’t know why you think it’s Wepa. I would think it would be Wepa with an I or two Es. But, and I’m an English major. But that’s the only thing I can stand on with that.

00:03:23:02 – 00:03:31:14
Keith
I’ll go with the Wepa. I’ll go with Wepa, because I had to force myself to say Wepa. So I’ll just go Wepa because I’ll just be easier for him.

00:03:31:16 – 00:03:32:27
Seth
All right, let’s go with Wepa.

00:03:32:27 – 00:04:07:08
Keith
All right so why this case? Okay. A CEO sim swapping. I ask you, why not this case Seth. I thought also the defense in this the basically it’s an offensive defense defense here was a very, very interesting strategy. And we got actually a whole little part of what Jonathan Manzi said about this crime after he committed it and was caught and so forth.

00:04:07:08 – 00:04:18:21
Keith
So do stick around all the way to the end because we have what he says about this. That is the focus of the last act of this episode that we’re bringing you.

00:04:18:24 – 00:04:27:13
Seth
Yeah, it could also be called this. When does indignation turn it to being a douche? So we’ll have that at the end section for

00:04:27:13 – 00:04:28:00
Seth
All right.

00:04:28:00 – 00:04:53:01
Keith
And so I want to put a big caveat upfront. I did my best on this one. This case had a lot of documents that were sealed, and I tried to use records in the cases to give you these episodes. I try to give you the jokes and everything. It’s all on 100% real information. We’re not we never try to make anything up.

00:04:53:03 – 00:05:21:00
Keith
We look at the court documents. I try not to even go look at news and let news influence what we say about these cases. I try to very much stick to the court documents. That being said, when the court documents are sealed, I can only give you chunks of cases and I can’t sometimes round out the whole picture as well, unless I tell you unless I go into the news or we just leave the news part out and we leave whole chunks out.

00:05:21:00 – 00:05:44:20
Keith
So do know that we probably missing some people in here or not people, but missing some points in here that we just don’t know about because a lot of stuff was sealed. But the stuff that was available to the public, the stuff that I was able to research, was just incredibly, incredibly juicy. And to sit back because this this case is incredibly interesting.

00:05:44:23 – 00:05:51:08
Keith
And I did not point out at the top of this episode, Seth, that I even wore this shirt for my brother today. It’s my golden girl shirt.

00:05:51:08 – 00:05:56:10
Keith
He gave it to me for Christmas. There we go.

00:05:56:13 – 00:06:05:09
Seth
My wife is a huge, huge fan. She’s actually been on the look out for the Golden Girls Lego set. So I tip my hat to you, sir. Fantastic. Sure.

00:06:05:12 – 00:06:29:04
Keith
Awesome. Well my brother’s a huge fan, too. And, you know, I wouldn’t say I am as big as a fan as my brother, but I like the Golden Girls, too. He gave me this. We were driving across a turnpike in one of the Midwest states and from like, across one of the service plaza, I had a guy yell out nice shirt, man, like a trucker guy, like, from all the way across the service plaza.

00:06:29:04 – 00:06:35:17
Keith
I was like, man making friends just on the turnpike, just based upon this shirt alone. It was awesome.

00:06:35:19 – 00:06:38:16
Seth
Game recognizes game very, very well done.

00:06:38:18 – 00:07:06:05
Keith
Yep. All right, so act one this is our first part here. It’s going to be meet the players. We get to introduce you to the people that you need to know in order to understand what happened here. And as you may have gotten a feel in season two, I’m trying to spend more time pulling out the evidence from the defense standpoint.

00:07:06:08 – 00:07:28:23
Keith
So you’re going to see us kind of switch views every now and then, kind of like we did in episode one, where we give you the government’s viewpoint and then we’ll switch views just kind of unknowingly and give you a little bit of the defense standpoint that gives you the whole case. And that’s why we have we literally have the publication from Jonathan Manzi at the end that we will read to you.

00:07:28:23 – 00:07:34:10
Keith
And it’s just even if I cut it down, it’s just it’s literature that you have to hear.

00:07:34:10 – 00:07:40:25
Keith
So the very first person you need to know is Troy Pepper. Now, you could argue that Troy

00:07:40:25 – 00:07:45:01
Keith
was the well, he was the reason this all happened, meaning he was

00:07:45:01 – 00:07:53:28
Keith
the focus, I guess. But you could also argue that Troy is a victim because of what happens to him later on down the line.

00:07:53:28 – 00:08:24:11
Keith
But to begin with, Troy Pepper, way back in the day, worked for Wepa and Wepa was a kiosk printing company, their most known, they’re most well known for kiosks at universities. Now, if you look at me, you’re like, How long has it been since that guy has been in the university? It’s been a while, at least. When I got my Ph.D., it was a virtual, so I didn’t even, you know, spend time in a physical university since the nineties.

00:08:24:13 – 00:08:28:14
Keith
These kiosks, from what I read, apparently are pretty

00:08:28:14 – 00:08:33:04
Keith
common around. So that way basically, like if students have,

00:08:33:04 – 00:08:56:09
Keith
you know, some kind of assignment or presentation or something along those lines, you can basically send whatever their project or digital file is to that kiosk, have it printed off and they could go pick it up and it would look professional as opposed to maybe like an inkjet printer in a dorm room, which would look a little less professional, maybe.

00:08:56:12 – 00:09:14:28
Keith
So now you kind of understand the industry that we’re talking about here. Now, Pepper was a sales consultant, so he wasn’t the technical person. He was a person that would meet with customers and probably explain how these products work and try to get customers to purchase more of those products.

00:09:14:28 – 00:09:39:25
Keith
so Troy Pepper was let go from Wepa in 2015. So now we’ve got a timeframe here. 2015. Troy Pepper does not have a job, but he has a lot of experience. It sounds like with this printing kiosk industry. So he approached the CEO of a competitor, the CEO of Ink Labs. His name was Jonathan Manzi for a job.

00:09:39:27 – 00:10:08:27
Keith
Jonathan hired him and it sounded like from everything I read, it just sounded like it wasn’t really a way to get competitive knowledge thing. It was more hired him because he needed a job and we needed somebody to fill the job. It wasn’t it didn’t sound nefarious that it was going from a competitor to competitor. Sometimes when that happens, it is nefarious and you’re going to see an instance down the road in this story where it was.

00:10:08:27 – 00:10:19:04
Keith
But it sounds like this jump of employment was just let go of one company. He happened to be available. Manzi needed somebody and hired him.

00:10:19:04 – 00:10:37:24
Keith
So fast forward two years now it’s February 2017. Pepper leaves Ink Labs and went back to Wepa and you just said, Hey, it’s probably not nefarious, right, Keith. Because he did that first time he went from Wepa to Ink Labs.

00:10:37:24 – 00:10:51:09
Keith
He’s probably just going back. Well, from what I understand, this could be with a high probability, a nefarious jump. And that’s kind of the subject of why everything happened here.

00:10:51:09 – 00:10:56:00
Keith
So real quick, let me show you a picture

00:10:56:00 – 00:10:58:12
Keith
of Wepa’s website.

00:10:58:12 – 00:11:03:17
Keith
All right. So you video viewers, I have it on your screen here. Here’s the website, the domain.

00:11:03:20 – 00:11:07:03
Keith
If you want to go check it out for yourself, I’ll give you an Ink Labs here in a second. So don’t worry.

00:11:07:03 – 00:11:15:16
Keith
This is what they do. So as of today, in 2023, when I went to the website, this is what they do. It looks like they still do.

00:11:15:19 – 00:11:16:28
Seth
That.

00:11:17:01 – 00:11:19:28
Keith
File management and printing and so forth.

00:11:19:28 – 00:11:20:06
Seth
Well.

00:11:20:06 – 00:11:47:02
Seth
Okay, so let’s talk about our nefarious CEO, Jonathan Manzi. So he is the focus of the podcast. He is the CEO of Ink Labs. He also has clearly done a couple other things he mentions in his LinkedIn profile that he’s also now the CEO of some kind of cryptocurrency company. The investigative side we’ll get into that. Ink Labs is a competitor to Wepa in the kiosk printing industry.

00:11:47:02 – 00:12:03:07
Seth
Now, Manzi, I don’t wanna say he’s a megalomaniac, but he’s definitely impressed with himself. He claims he has been a millionaire since he was 16 years old when he first started a company in his basement. So that’s his LinkedIn profile that you can see there. He did go to Stanford.

00:12:03:13 – 00:12:07:26
Keith
Go ahead. Let me go ahead and pop that up on the screen here. Seth. Sorry.

00:12:07:26 – 00:12:08:20
Seth
I’m sorry.

00:12:08:25 – 00:12:17:17
Keith
Listeners, listeners, if you haven’t figured it out, I control it. I got like a little master control board on my side here. So I got to like, press a bunch of buttons for the video.

00:12:17:17 – 00:12:20:01
Seth
DJ Assistant Engineer. Yeah.

00:12:20:04 – 00:12:28:29
Keith
So get you to the slide that you are talking about. Pop it up for you. There we go. All right, so video views. This is his LinkedIn that Seth is talking about, right?

00:12:28:29 – 00:12:53:07
Seth
So he’s a frontier technology entrepreneur. Very, very impressive. And also distributed ledger technology, which as we all know, is part of the crypto world while technology advocate. It’s based out of San Fran, although you’ll find that he actually had set up web out in Nebraska, which I thought was odd. But regardless he went to Stanford, although he did not graduate from there.

00:12:53:10 – 00:13:04:00
Seth
And we’ll learn a little bit more. And this is also where he posted his fairly epic let’s call it his soliloquy. It doesn’t on all things.

00:13:04:02 – 00:13:28:04
Keith
It doesn’t spoil anything. If I tell you why they moved to Nebraska, there was it sounded like a financial incentive by a city and he was able to do a ribbon cutting. So it’s sounded like he was in San Francisco, got an offer to move the company out there. And that’s where the crime happened as well. And here’s the next if you scroll down his LinkedIn Seth, this is what you see.

00:13:28:07 – 00:13:55:09
Seth
Yeah. So again, you can see his experience. He does list some currently new business called Beyond Protocol. I’m assuming that is the distributed ledger or crypto related work. He’s a CEO there, but that’s been open since 2018. But the one at issue here is that co-founder and chairman and chief executive officer of Ink, which it looks like it started in April 2014 and apparently is still running, they claim to be using emerging technology to build the print shop of tomorrow.

00:13:55:09 – 00:14:13:19
Seth
And they celebrate empathy, love, passion and creativity. How nice he did go to Stanford, although you could see he only went there for a year. Oh, actually, no, that’s not true. He was only the chair of the entrepreneurship program there. But he did mention in his court documents or in his soliloquy that he did drop out to go startup Ink.

00:14:13:22 – 00:14:19:23
Seth
So, okay, that’s what we have on. And our friend Mr. Manzi.

00:14:19:25 – 00:14:39:09
Keith
Yeah. And this is their web page and that’s their website, that sort of domain there. Now we’ll say it’s not written as Ink Labs, it’s written as ink. I don’t know if there is a name change or if I got the name totally wrong when I wrote Ink Labs. But the that’s their website, as best I can tell.

00:14:39:09 – 00:14:49:20
Keith
And they’ve been referred to as Ink Labs or ink. So if you see any of those terms, we mean all the same company here. The one that Jonathan Manzi is the CEO of.

00:14:49:20 – 00:14:54:25
Keith
Okay. So I want to read you something.

00:14:54:28 – 00:15:21:16
Keith
This is in Jonathan Manzi’s these words. So he has this this is an article publicly available on his LinkedIn. It’s something that he’s self-published. Kind of gives you a insight into how he thinks and writes and so forth. He’s obviously you can tell he’s a gifted thinker. He writes very, very well, in my opinion. So it starts with the title.

00:15:21:16 – 00:16:05:27
Keith
It says, My Journey through Digital Ethics, Policy, Love and Fear and Intention, which started with a homeless lady in San Francisco. And I was like, Oh, all righty, I got to read this right. And the body starts. To this point in my life, my identity has been linked with the American dream. I was a self-made millionaire at 16 after starting at an ad technology company in my parents basement following high school, I attended Stanford, where I was chair of entrepreneurship for the student government, co-founded Entrepreneurship Dorm on campus, and was invited as a youth delegate for entrepreneurship at summits around the world

00:16:05:27 – 00:16:17:12
Keith
like the St Petersburg Economic Forum. And if you wonder why slow down and stumble? It’s just my old eyes and it’s really small font. Trust me. No, I just. I really can’t read Well.

00:16:17:12 – 00:16:32:24
Keith
All right, he continues. It says, later dropped out to start Ink, a hardware and software company, creating a modern version of FedEx office. We moved the company from San Francisco to Nebraska in a ribbon cutting with the governor.

00:16:32:24 – 00:16:37:00
Keith
After we saw significant opportunities in the state. Now I’m going to stop there.

00:16:37:00 – 00:16:55:14
Keith
This article we’re going to stop reading here because as you see, I have not scratched the surface of anything that’s in that title. We have not even talked about a homeless lady yet. And we’re not even going to even talk about the homeless lady part because that kind of goes way tangent and what it is that we’re trying to bring to you in this

00:16:55:14 – 00:16:56:03
Keith
episode.

00:16:56:03 – 00:17:16:20
Keith
We want to bring in the technology portion, but there’s a lot more to this that is going to be the focus of Act four that we’re going to read, and it talks about what happened and what Seth and I are about to present to you up until that point. So what I’m saying is put a little pause here.

00:17:16:23 – 00:17:36:18
Keith
This is I guess I just saw I just watched Oppenheimer. So this is kind of like the pause where we’re going to go now. Black and white, back back in time to what it is that Jonathan Manzi did to lead up to this point for this article, and then we’ll read the rest article once you know the background, because then it’ll make sense to you.

00:17:36:24 – 00:17:40:08
Keith
Sound good. All right. So

00:17:40:08 – 00:17:41:25
Keith
where did things go wrong?

00:17:41:25 – 00:17:50:21
Keith
Manzi believes Pepper stole data when he left Ink and took it to the competitor Wepa.

00:17:50:21 – 00:18:03:05
Keith
There was a new Ink mini kiosk being developed and Manzi claims Pepper stole this information and took it to Wepa. Now why do I tell you all these details in these episodes?

00:18:03:05 – 00:18:45:03
Keith
You’re like, Keith, this is way, way, way too long of an episode is to give you the background to understand. Pepper isn’t a technical person. He would know about overall things about like kiosk contracts at certain sites and so forth. So when you hear this type of evidence where or this type of claim where Manzi says Pepper took ink data about this mini kiosk, which sounds like it’s a next new generation type of kiosk being developed and went and took it to Wepa.

00:18:45:06 – 00:19:15:12
Keith
This is this sounds totally believable, believable to me. It sounds like the type of information that Pepper would have. Now, Manzi claims that Pepper used this information to win customers from ink to Wepa when he was employed at Wepa. He also believes that Pepper sent Ink Labs data to his personal Google email, Google Drive and or Dropbox account.

00:19:15:15 – 00:19:19:15
Keith
Okay, so let me explain what these these is going to say.

00:19:19:18 – 00:19:30:27
Seth
I was going to say, yeah, please do that. But I kind of want it to kind of maybe help paint the picture for from Manzi and WEP and sorry and Ink’s perspective, what may have been the worst case scenario here.

00:19:30:29 – 00:19:34:18
Keith
But yeah, we don’t have to explain these services.

00:19:34:21 – 00:19:35:01
Seth
Yeah.

00:19:35:03 – 00:19:58:05
Keith
Let me explain these services and then you can take that if you’d like. So the three services that we’re talking about, if you haven’t used them, if you’ve ever used a Gmail account, same thing as Google email. Okay. If you’ve ever used a google.com email account anywhere, same thing. That’s what we’re talking about here. If you’ve ever used Google email at work, same type of thing here.

00:19:58:05 – 00:20:22:26
Keith
So it’s a web based email system that typically you log into with your web browser on your desktop, or you tie in with your phone to basically pull down your email every so often with that service. And even the free accounts that I know of, you get Google Drive. And what does that mean? Well,

00:20:22:26 – 00:20:24:24
Keith
let’s say I want to share a file with Seth.

00:20:24:24 – 00:20:53:02
Keith
I do this. We do this all the time. I want to share a file with Seth. I’m like Seth. Check out the slides to our newest episode. Seth can go on a virtual drive service like Google Drive. Grab the file, open it up, view it, and that way it’s stored in the cloud and not on my computer. He can access it at any time or in computer terms, asynchronously, whenever it’s convenient for him.

00:20:53:04 – 00:21:17:03
Keith
And that’s what Google Drive allows you to do. And the other service I talked about is Dropbox. Now, a Dropbox, in my opinion, is just a competitor to Google Drive. It’s just the exact same thing that I was talking about where you can put a file and other people can access it. Now that’s I gave you the, the personal file sharing sense of between Seth and I.

00:21:17:06 – 00:21:31:25
Keith
But employers can use Dropbox and Google Drive as their their file server of choice too. And we’re going to be talking about that later on down the the episode here. And what Go ahead, Seth.

00:21:31:28 – 00:21:56:28
Seth
So I was going to say, I mean, in my real life job, I spent a lot of time on these issues specifically trying to protect from what ostensibly and I want to get that word very clear, we don’t really know exactly what happened or what Pepper did or didn’t do. We know that it got very Manzi got very upset about it, but people who leave companies are statistically at a higher risk for taking things that don’t belong to them.

00:21:57:00 – 00:22:12:01
Seth
And it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re looking to steal things, but it also doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re doing the right thing. And sometimes it’s a mix. So for example, you might have a specific large set of you might have a folder really like your desktop computer at your work computer and it’s got a bunch of stuff in it, right?

00:22:12:01 – 00:22:34:06
Seth
It’s got your kids and your family birthdays on it, but it also maybe has, you know, your credit card reconciliation and may have some work notes. So you take the whole file and only some of that is personal to you, but some of it may be proprietary and confidential to your employer. So this is really one of the challenges we have is, well, how do we segregate what isn’t truly personal item to you versus what is it that belongs to the company.

00:22:34:09 – 00:22:51:02
Seth
Now, it is not a new thing for people in the sales space to leave their company, take some of that key contact, you know, client contact information or other kinds of stuff that would be very valuable to another employer and bring it with them. And the argument is, hey, I brought these in when I came in. I’m bringing them now with me.

00:22:51:02 – 00:23:20:05
Seth
But that’s not really how the law works. Moreover, I was looking at this from the perspective of Manzi. He I can understand if it was the worst case scenario, it would kind of be like, Yeah, he worked for Wepa. Then he came to work for me. But he really his heart was always with Wepa. So when he left Ink, one of the reasons he left Ink was to have some kind of plot to go back to his former employer, but he needed something to go back there with hat in hand.

00:23:20:08 – 00:23:40:12
Seth
So he took some really, really confidential proprietary stuff that would give Wepa some kind of, you know, advantage in the market. Apparently something related to a new mini kiosk. And maybe it was tied to a whole bunch of customer lists. Again, we don’t have any evidence of this. I’m just saying. And the best case scenario for for Manzi to give him a reason to do what he did here.

00:23:40:14 – 00:23:58:11
Seth
So I can understand, you know, that that would be something that would be very, very problematic for a company like sorry, like Ink rather, to have a key employee go back to his old employee with potentially confidential proprietary information.

00:23:58:13 – 00:24:21:28
Keith
Yeah. So at this point, you got to ask yourself, what would I do if I was in Manzi’s position? Does he contact law enforcement? Go. You need to talk to Troy Pepper. He stole my shit. Does he go to his lawyer and start a civil case and go, You need to go to Troy Pepper and said you stole my shit.

00:24:22:01 – 00:24:41:02
Keith
No, he doesn’t. What happens is Manzi strikes back, and that is act two. So you’re going to have to stick around either tomorrow or the day after were going to bring you Act two, which is Manzi strikes back and hope to see you there.

00:24:41:02 – 00:24:48:19
Keith
Thanks for coming and seeing Act One of the CEO who SIM swaps his competitor.

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CEO Jonathan Manzi SIM Swaps His Competitor – Act 1: Meet The Players

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