Hunting Alexa: The Best Laid Plans of Monsters and Men
Hunting Alexa: The Best Laid Plans of Monsters and Men
Part 2 of 2
My son's Hot Wheels tracks are a strange mix of bits from various sets. Much like Lego, he's taken various parts from pre-packaged builds and kind of jerry-rigged them together, sometimes with green painter's tape, to hold it all together when it doesn't quite fit.
I'll be honest; I never saw the Hot Wheels invade my home. They just appeared like a bomb dropped into my basement. This makes sense. The original engineer who crafted the first Hot Wheels cars for Mattel, a guy named John W. Ryan, got his start working for Raytheon, the weapons manufacturer. After he graduated from Yale, the guy was scooped up to help build the government's Hawk and Sparrow III missile systems, which were both used in Vietnam and sold around the world to various militaries, both good and bad, to unleash hellfire upon their enemies.
After Ryan left Raytheon, he jumped into making toys for Mattel. His most well-known project was the world-famous doll, Barbie, and after that, the world was his oyster. He married Zsa Zsa Gabor and later worked to build Hot Wheels and a whole host of other popular toys.
My son is home on the second day of my search for Alexa. A section of the race track has been taped to the staircase heading upstairs, and he's using it as a ramp to launch cars into a cardboard box he found.
I've revisited the domain search and noted the information it provided about Alexa, or should I say, "Lexa Trenton."
"Whooooooa!" My son yells out. It is followed by the loud ‘ziiiiiiip’ of small plastic wheels ripping down a plastic track, much like the missiles Ryan helped build all those years ago, and the eventual *thud* as it hits the back of a cardboard box, much like the missiles.
There is a laugh, followed by another "Whooooooa!" and an eventual *thud.*
"That was a good one!" I could often hear my son say when the *thud* was particularly loud.
This repeats many times.
I wonder if Ryan ever reflected on this. His curious switch from building weapons of war that would go on to bring many tears to people's eyes to making kids all over the world laugh, have fun and imagine "what if?" The best-laid plans, I suppose…
A data breach log courtesy of Darkside led me to an apartment in LA and a domain hit gave me the name “Lexa Trenton,” a phone number, and a house in Flint.
I began with the name. And God, I wish I hadn’t.
Lexa Trenton is not a real person. She is a sexual fetish model for the virtual world/metaverse game, Second Life.
If you've never heard of Second Life, it was a very early kick-at-the-metaverse-can back in 2003. It was like someone took The Sims and put it online so you could meet and talk to others worldwide.
But guess what happens when you take the brakes off adults, allow them to be anonymous, and have free reign to build and customize their own worlds? Fucking. Online virtual fucking, actually.
Now, listen, I judge no one for their sexual proclivities when everyone is an adult and everyone consents. But, it must be noted that Second Life has a bit of a reputation regarding child predators. Honestly, a simple Google search of "Second Life" and "pedophile" will bring you countless articles. It’s still an issue today, but since so few people use Second Life or even know about it, it doesn't get much attention.
Anyway, Lexa's production company was a sort of Second Life modelling and fashion agency that catered to all kinds of kinks. Virtual oral sex in the back of a virtual ice cream van between a grown man and what looks like a child in pigtails? Got it. Sex in a virtual barn between a woman and a man who has horns like a bull? Got that, too.
This was a rabbit hole, one that Wonderland was definitely not at the bottom of. Instead, probably Hell, but I digress.
From a context perspective, this was helpful. Alexa and Lexa were clearly connected via a CSAM thread.
I decided to revisit Darkside. I had some new selectors, so I decided to run them to see what I could find.
I began with the phone number I found in the Domain search, and it led me to one name, which I can't publish, so we'll just say, "Reginald McCarthy."
I remember smirking again. Was Alexa, AKA Lexa Trenton, actually our man Reginald here?
And the same address that was attached to the Domain in Flint!
Reginald, Reginald, Reginald… I found you.
At this point, I stood up to grab a victory can of Coke Zero. My son was watching Bluey and eating a snack. I strutted over to the fridge, cracked open that can of sheer divine majesty and took a gulp. Like a hunter who just shot his prey, all I needed to do was bag it and flag it.
I sat back down, smug as fuck, and ran a basic search for Reginald McCarthy of Flint, Michigan, with the phone number and new email I had logged.
And there he was. He still resided in Flint, but not at the same address. I found his social media, images, everything. He was 25 years old and looked like he was in a committed and, healthy, seemingly adult relationship.
I wondered if she knew that her man Reginald was into little… oh, shit… he’s 25.
I quickly used my fingers to add, realizing that if he were Alexa, using Yahoo chat back in 2006, he would have been seven years old.
I rested my Coke Zero on the desk. Reginald lived at the same address as Lexa. They both used the same phone number, which turned out to be a landline.
Now, I figured I could place Reginald at the Flint home by looking at the timestamp of the data breach. In this case, it was a large Consumer Leads file dump. Another reason why I love Darkside so much is that I can check to see when the breaches and leaks occurred. In this case…
2019.
So, Reginald lived at the Flint home before 2019. Lexa registered her domain to that address back in 2013. Moreover, she also had an address in LA that I found in an online casino data breach for logs between 2010 and 2014.
Running a general search in Google on the Flint home, I quickly realized that many people were tied to that address. It was clearly a rental, and tenants came and went over the years. Reginald included.
I had to rethink my strategy. I took a sip of my Coke Zero. I realized that this may be a longer hunt. I looked over my notes and began contemplating my next steps. Go deep into that phone number and see if I can find records of ownership that tie to 2013. Look into whether Flint or the state of Michigan would have details of who lived at the property in 2013. Did Lexa Trenton slip up and divulge any clues about who she was in her Second Life … life? The thought of having to dive back into virtual sex fetishes made me unhappy.
I was about to take a break. I needed to think some more about what would be the most efficient path here. I leaned back in my chair. The purple and black Darkside logo was staring at me on my monitor.
I noticed that it played on the Lunar motif.
Right in between “dark” and “side” was a little moon. “Darkside of the Moon.” I never noticed it before. That’s kind of fun actually. Fun.
Something clicked.
I looked back through my notes.
“69fun.”
It was one of the passwords Alexa used multiple times. I remembered making a note of it but never searching it.
I gave it a shot.
113. Ugh.
I used the search bar and began punching in known information I had on Alexa. When I entered the IP address I had on file, a user, via a Neopets hack, popped up.
It was a different email, “Lexa_T@yahoo.com.”
This couldn’t be a coincidence.
But what was more interesting was the date of birth. 1977.
I went back to the search bar and typed in “1977.”
Holy forking shirt balls.
Exact same leak. Exact same password. Exact same birthdate.
But a brand new email and a name.
“Rob Parker.”
This one had a lot of connective tissue, so I felt confident this was a massive break.
I began searching the name and email address in Darkside, as well as on Google and some other tools I use (shout out to OSINT Industries).
I found him here, under a different email address. That opened a whole new host of selectors.
And old Rob lived in Utah too.
He has accounts on Etsy, Facebook, Nike Run Club, The Disney Store (ugh), Dropbox, Skype, Microsoft, Paypal, and Pinterest, and it just kept going.
I was able to confirm he resided in LA for a bit, and the address matched what I had from the Casino breach. He resided in Flint, and the address matched, and in Utah, where, yet again, the address matched what I had.
It was him! I found him! And much like Tommy and Turkish in Guy Ritchie’s masterpiece, Snatch, Alexa, or should I say, Rob Parker, was on “thin fucking ice.”
After I had packaged up the report, we sent it off to law enforcement, where we knew the crime had occurred (all the way back in 2006) and where he currently resided (not in Flint).
There is much more to this story. Our man Rob has had a colourful history, back before 2006, when he went by Alexa in a Yahoo chat log that eventually ended up on my desk.
Moreover, Alexa and Lexa Trenton are only two of his many names. There are others I can link back to him, others that have accounts on children’s gaming platforms and various other websites that cater to kids. Moreover, the entire Second Life sex world he built holds many more skeletons and associates who, much like him, are not what they seem to be.
All those years ago, when John W. Ryan was working for Mattel building Hot Wheels, he probably looked back at his time building bombs as this strange blip in his life—something worth forgetting because those days were over now; he was married to a movie star and building the most iconic toys ever.
And to be fair, no one really remembers Ryan for designing really good missiles. They remember him for building reallygreat toys. My son, with his countless Hot Wheels cars, couldn't care less. So long as they can be launched off the staircase and go fast, the multiple turns and twists provide long-lasting entertainment.
I wonder if Rob, better known to me as Alexa, remembers all those chats he had in 2006? The discussions on how to groom a little girl, or how he would send CSAM via email across Yahoo's platform. Does he consider this a blip in his life? Something worth forgetting? I do wonder if he thinks about it.
It's up to law enforcement now, and I can only hope that all this doesn't vanish into the ether of memory and the internet. I hope that on some idle Wednesday morning, while my son is playing with his Hot Wheels, yelling out, "Here we goooo!" as he launches them down the track taped to the stairs, Alexa looks out his window and sees a police car parked in his driveway.
That classic loud "ziiiiiiip" of small plastic wheels flying down a plastic track as two uniformed officers walk up toAlexa's door. The knock and the realization that the best-laid plans don't always work out, and the end of the track is fast approaching. At any moment, there will be an inevitable 'thud' when the car slams into the box set up at the end of the track.
"Whooooa! That was a good one!"