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KINGPIN

Johnson's darkest suspicions were confirmed when he located Elizabeth on a website on which men post reviews of strippers and prostitutes. There it was, line after line of disgusting detail about the services his girlfriend had been providing in exchange for cocaine and cash. He confronted her with the evidence, and she tearfully promised to quit the drugs and the prostitution.

Hoping to wrench her from the patterns of her old life, Johnson showered Elizabeth with more gifts and expensive dinners out. It was that, and not any hidden agenda, that impelled his return from retirement. He needed the money, plain and simple.

The luck that had seen him through Operation Firewall failed him on February 8, 2005, when Charleston, North Carolina, police busted him for using counterfeit Bank of America cashier's checks to pay for Kruger- rands and watches he won on eBay and had shipped COD to his drops. After a week of stewing in the Charleston County Detention Center, pin- ing for Elizabeth, the Secret Service paid him a visit. Once he convinced them he was Gollumfun—the admin who got away when they dropped the hammer on Shadowcrew—they agreed to help him with his state case if he'd work for them.

The Secret Service had Johnson's bail lowered to $10,000. When he bonded out, the agents moved him from Charleston to Columbia, South Carolina, where they rented him a corporate apartment and paid him a $50 per diem. Now he was a daily visitor to the Columbia field office, checking in at four p.m. and working until nine, taking the Secret Service deep into Carders Market and the other boards. Everything that crossed his computer was recorded and displayed simultaneously on a forty-two- inch plasma screen hanging on the wall of the office.

They called it Operation Anglerphish, and Johnson thought it would make a great book one day. That's why he'd registered the domain name Anglerphish.com and opened up talks with a New York Times reporter. When Manus Dei cracked his e-mail and revealed those activities online, Johnson's Secret Service handlers were irate. They promptly banned him