The Holder

My damp rag meets the small table that wipes a way the days crumbs at the café where I slave for minimum wage after school. Unfortunately this tedious and mundane job is the only way I'll be able to pay for college in the fall. My boomer parents say that “an after school job teaches you the value of a dollar.” What they really mean is “we spent your college fund on a time share in Arizona”.

Speaking of money, a $100 bill peeks out from under a little black book sitting on the lonely table in the corner. It must have been left behind by the man with the laptop that sat there earlier today sipping his Americano. There's no way that this was meant as a tip for a 4 dollar drink. I quickly pocket the cash anyway and curiously open the book to the first page. Scribbled in black ink are the words “Money” with what looks to be an obscure web address, user name and password written underneath it.

Okay, I know what you're thinking, that this seemed incredibly sketchy. The website on this paper probably just goes to a pyramid scheme designed for single suburban moms. On the other hand, I'm a broke high school student who drives a 1998 Toyota Tercel named Myrtle that has it's side mirror duct taped on. So of course anything with the word "money" on it intrigues me.

After my shift I rush home, as fast as you can rush anywhere in a car named myrtile. I lock my bedroom door so my nosey mother, Brenda can't see what deviant things I'm up to. Looking at the notebook again I could see that this was no ordinary web address, this ended in “.onion." A quick internet search alerted me that this was from the Dark web. Again, this is probably where I should have backed out but I was honestly even more intrigued at this point. After downloading a dark web browser I typed in the address from the notebook. A black screen appeared with only space for username and password.

I type the username: “THEHOLDER” followed by the password and press enter.

I'm now in a simple chat room with around 8 other people, all with strange names like “THEWATCHER”, “THEKEEPER” and “THEERASER”. Before I can read the chat logs an instant message pops up from someone named “THEGIVER." “Is everything in place for the March 30th event?” He asks as if I should know what he's talking about. Instead of revealing myself as a 17 year old coffee shop barista who has no clue what they stumbled on I reply with “Yes, of course... Where is the money?”

Then there was a long pause. At this point I feel like maybe I blew the whole catfish by bringing up money, but isn't that why I'm here in the first place?

After about five minutes of silence I hear a ding followed by another message from THEGIVER which was just a long chain of letters and numbers that I made no sense to me. I reply with “Thank you." After doing another internet search on my phone I realize this was a crypto-currency address.

I create a crypto wallet and copy in the address from the message. As soon I transfer the funds to the digital wallet the dark web browser shuts off and I can no longer log in to the chat group.

I look at the value of the transfer and it's $0.42. I laugh to myself, at least I still have the 100 dollars. Maybe this was all some sort of prank, but all money is appreciated so I transferred the 42 cents to my bank account anyway and went to bed.

The next morning I check my account and realized that I hadn't transferred 42 cents, I transferred 0.42 Bitcoins or approximately $20 000. Maybe this isn't a lot of money to you but this was more money than I've ever had in my life. To me this was my shot at college, getting out of my parents house, maybe even getting a car that didn't smell like chili.

Of course I thought of the implications, I didn't know where this money came from or why I received it. It all seemed so anonymous though, how could anyone trace it back to me? At this point I couldn't give the money back even if I wanted to, and I didn't want to. It's best if I just go on like nothing ever happened right? That's what I did. I went on like someone who didn't accept $20 000 from a weirdo named “THEGIVER” in a darkweb chatroom. I tried to log into the chatroom a couple more times after this but it was as though the website never existed at all.

I got a bit paranoid after that though, I always felt like my phone and computer were lagging or that someone was watching me. I burnt the notebook later that week in my fireplace when my parents weren't home and I never mentioned this happened to anyone. Eventually things went back to normal and I stopped thinking about it.

It wasn't until a month later on March 30th that things went sideways. It was all over the news.

A ransomware virus struck every bank and hospital in the state restricting all of their client and patient data. An anonymous hacker group threatened to delete everything unless they received 1 billion dollars in Bitcoin, which they eventually did. It had been one of the largest and well orchestrated hacking events in history.

I thought about the chatroom I had entered a month prior and the brief conversation I had. I wasn't sure if the two events were connected until they came to arrest me.

Brenda looked on in horror as the FBI took me away in handcuffs. I was taken to an interrogation room similar to what you see in the movies. I was asked a lot of questions about the hacking. I knew nothing about it. “Where did the $20 000 in your bank account come from” A gruff looking officer asked?

“That's a lot of money for a barista to make in a day isn't it?” He pressed. “The laptop we seized from your house has all of the evidence of the entire operation on it.”

This is where I knew I had been had. When I deposited that money in my bank account I created a paper trail tying myself to the hacker organization. When I entered the chatroom they likely traced my IP address and hacked my computer knowing exactly who and where I was and then planted evidence in my computer to make me look like their ring leader.

I was the only one the FBI could ever find from the crime and so I became the fall guy. After I was arrested media pressure died down to find anyone else. They just ran wild with the story of a teenage hacker who ransomed the state for a billion dollars.

No one believed my story about the black notebook, the man with the laptop, THEGIVER, the chatroom, there was no trace of it. It was clear to me that this was a set up from the beginning from a mysterious man who drank an Americano, hoping that some dumb poor kid like me would take the bait. All I wanted was a different life and now there isn't anything I wouldn't do to have that old life back.

I'll have a lot of time to think about that from my jail cell.