You’ve got international criminal cartels after you now …
Summary: The FBI investigates a series of cyber-crimes that may have deadly consequences
Original air date: November 6, 2009 (US)
Written by: Julie Hebert
Directed by: Julie Hebert
Opening numbers:
50: Billion dollars
6000: Customers
4: Illegal markets
$11.29: Stealing one person’s identity
Family Concepts: (character development)
- ‘Nikki’ is short for Nicola
- Don buys a motorcycle
- Robin is in Portland, Oregon for a trial
- Amita likes wine tasting
Episode Quotes:
- Augie: It may be the shock talking, but you just saved my life over there and I’m feeling some pretty intense emotions about you right now.
Nikki: Actually, it was Agent Sinclair, but I’ll let him know how you feel. - Nikki: Augie, people want to kill you. I want to kill you.
- Amita: Luckily I speak leet.
Charlie: That’s so hot!
Episode Synopsis:
The FBI is running a sting operation at a mathematics conference in order to catch persons involved in internet identity theft; in particular they want to catch a man know only as “The Fist”. In the middle of their operation, Augie Harris takes the stage and blows covers for David, Nikki and Liz; Nikki arrests Augie while David and Liz chase after “The Fist”. “The Fist” escapes after shooting a valet and stealing a car. Along with cracking the FBI database to get photos of David and the others, Augie also apparently hijacked several fraudulent sites owned by various cartels around the world.
Augie doesn’t realize the trouble he’s in, he thinks he’s king of the hacker world. Nikki tries to explain the danger to him and even has Augie meet one of his identity theft victims, Estelle Brown. Augie, however, only sees the identity theft as a way to prove he’s cracked various systems. This all change however when someone is able to again hack into the FBI systems, this time to set off the fire alarms. When everyone is evacuated, a hit man takes a shot at Augie. The shooter misses Augie, and is killed when he is shot and falls over a second story railing.
Don arranges for Augie to be held by the US Marshal’s office while Don works on getting Augie into witness protection. Charlie and Amita work on Augie’s computer set up to see if they can track who might be hacking Augie’s sites to regain control. Of the four cartels whose web sites Augie hacked, only the cartel run by “The Fist” doesn’t seem interested in taking back their information. This may be because Augie did something other than hijack their systems, he may know something else. As it turns out, Augie set up several back doors into the cartel web sites and the one for “The Fist” now known as Tal Feigenbaum actually would give anyone access to all of his records.
Augie manages to hack the US Marshal computers and forge release papers for himself. He goes to see his Aunt Rose Harris for help. Rose tells David and Nikki she doesn’t know what Augie plans to do next, but she had given him some money and her laptop. Unfortunately, the FBI aren’t the only ones who find the connection between Augie and Rose and through an IRC chat, Feigenbaum sends Augie a picture of his aunt held at gunpoint.
By the time Augie gets to his aunt’s house, Rose has been killed, and Feigenbaum and an accomplice are waiting for him. David and Nikki get a heads up from Don about what’s happening and they get to Rose’s house in time to hear shots fired. David heads into the house and confronts Feigenbaum while Nikki takes care of the accomplice shooting at Augie. Augie can’t believe his aunt has been killed and doesn’t know what he did to cause the chain of events.