Paul Calder Le Roux [1] (born December 24, 1972 , Bulawayo ) is a programmer, former head of the crime cartel, and an informant at the Drug Enforcement Administration (USA).
| Paul Le Roux | |
|---|---|
| Paul Calder Le Roux | |
| Date of Birth | December 24, 1972 (aged 46) |
| Place of Birth | Bulawayo , Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe ) |
| Nationality | Australia , South Africa , Zimbabwe |
| Occupation | , |
He created - a free program for encrypting hard drives for Windows - in 1999, and is also considered the alleged creator of TrueCrypt , a similar program whose source code was based on the source code [2] .
Content
- 1 Biography
- 2 notes
- 3 Literature
- 4 References
Biography
Paul Le Roux was born December 24, 1972 in Bulawayo . Mother abandoned him immediately after birth. In his birth certificate in the column, the name is “unknown” and there is no mention of his father [2] . The identity of his mother is unknown: one source claims that she was a poor teenager, another says that Le Roux's maternal grandmother was the wife of an American senator [2] .
Two he was adopted by a couple from the city of , giving the name Paul Calder Le Roux. Parents did not tell Paul that he was an adopted child; he only found out about it in 2002 - his uncle and aunt told him [2] . Paul has a younger sister [2] .
After the political events of 1979-1980. in Zimbabwe, when Robert Mugabe came to power, ending the rule of the white minority, the family moved to South Africa in 1984 - parents wanted to give Paul a better education. The family settled in the mining town of Krugersdorp , and his father founded a company that manages coal mining, which brought wealth to the family.
Soon, Paul got a computer, which he received in exchange for washing his father's car. Paul was a tall handsome teenager, but not very sociable and did not go in for sports. Paul was obsessed with the video game Wing Commander [2] .
At the age of 15 or 16, Paul was arrested for selling pornography. The family managed to keep the incident secret. After the arrest, Paul became even more unsociable. As an excellent student, he refused to learn Afrikaans , compulsory in the schools of South Africa, calling the language dead. Paul dropped out of school at 16 years old [2] . He enrolled in programming courses and completed a one-year program in 8 weeks [2] .
After returning from a family trip to the United States, Paul decided to leave South Africa. After 8 months, he went to the UK [2] . Paul got a job as a programmer. In 1994, he met his future wife, Michelle. After 6 months of living in the USA [2] , Paul followed Michelle to Australia. The couple got married and Le Roux received Australian citizenship [2] . They lived in Perth and Sydney [3] . It is unclear whether the couple has children: some sources mention a son [2] , others claim that Le Roux's son appeared only with his second wife [4] .
Paul Le Roux himself does not talk about the early period of his life, most of the facts were found out by journalist [5] , relying on an unnamed source among Le Roux's relatives.
Notes
- ↑ Arina Suvorova. Contract killings and drug trafficking led the US military to prison . kp.ru. Komsomolskaya Pravda (March 11, 2019). Date accessed August 22, 2019.
- ↑ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Evan Ratliff. EPISODE 3: HOW DID A USENET TROLL AND ENCRYPTION GENIUS BECOME A CRIMINAL MASTERMIND? He Always Had a Dark Side . The Atavist ( 03.24.2016 ). Date of appeal April 14, 2019.
- ↑ Paul Tooney. Young Aussie's descent into underworld hell . The Daily Telegraph (10/10/2015). Date of appeal April 14, 2019.
- ↑ Mark Schliebs. The geek Paul Calder Le Roux, the guns, the drugs and the bodies . The Australian (04/01/2016). Date of appeal April 14, 2019.
- ↑ Anna Diamond. The Computer Programmer Who Ran a Global Drug Trafficking Empire . Smithsonian.com (01/29/2019). Date of appeal April 14, 2019.
Literature
- Elaine Shannon. Hunting Leroux: the inside story of the DEA takedown of a criminal genius and his empire . - NY: HarperCollins . - 368 p. - ISBN 9780062859150 . - ISBN 0062859153 .