Player Season: The Pickup Artist Who Hacked Nike (28 page)

Here is what I wrote:

"Nik,

I started to write a comment on the Willy Jigba post from the 24th, and then I remembered the comment someone had left in that post about how keeping the news fresh will put more pressure on the police. So instead of commenting, I'm hoping you will do a new post to keep the story in the news. I watched this "search" of Tempe Town Lake for at least two hours the other day. It was an absolute joke...and was one of the most staged events I have ever witnessed. It appeared as if their cause was to be seen by the public, instead of actually attempting to find the guy. There was one boat in the water the entire time, and the boat never made it to the left side of the bridge. This was a small boat too, so there couldn't have been more than a few people on board. (back end of the boat is in one of the pictures). There were 28 vehicles on the scene and 12 police officers just standing around, doing nothing. Then I saw two officers walk along the sidewalk to the top of the bridge, and they were walking with a purpose. What was this purpose? To stand at the top of the bridge and look down in the water. Last time I checked, the water in Tempe Town Lake looks nothing like the water in the Caribbean...so I seriously doubt they could have managed to see anything beyond one foot of depth. I checked the news...they are supposed to continue their search of the lake today. If you blast them this morning for their lack of effort the other day...it may cause them to step their game up when they go back out again today. I do not want anything out of reporting this to you...I actually want the opposite, because I would prefer and nicely ask you to keep this email private. I simply want them to do the right thing by showing more effort. Thanks."

The email was sent at 8:10AM on Thursday, and I went to sleep sometime later in the day. When I awoke on Thursday night, I went on TheDirty and discovered the search for Willie Jigba was called off just hours earlier, but Nik Richie didn't posted the email I wrote to him – at least not yet.

I genuinely felt my words would make an impact, so I wrote him another email at 4:25AM on Friday. There were no words this time, simply a link to a YouTube video from the movie 'Finding Forrester'. In the video, Sean Connery famously yelled to his apprentice "Punch the keys for Christ's sake! Yes! Yes! You're the man now dog!"

Although Nik was far from being my apprentice, I thought the video was a clear representation of the message I was trying to get across.

He posted my email on Friday morning, and I was right.

In a shocking series of events, the police decided to continue their search, which was called off the day before, a few hours after he published what I wrote.

My email was anonymous, but this fact didn't stop me from being stricken with anxiety while I read over hundreds of comments on what became a wildly popular post. On top of this, the police were outside searching the lake again, and I assumed the only reason they returned was to fan off the negative press my words created, but they will never tell you that. In fact, the reason they gave to various news outlets was so dishonest it was sad; apparently they resumed the search because of a 'gut-feeling'.

Bullshit.

Once again, I went on the balcony to watch their (re-launched) search effort, and I was baffled by what I saw; in a good way. When I looked down, the landscape was much different this time around. There were no news trucks and not a single person was just standing around. Interestingly enough, every last one of the officers was huddled up next to the boat. Even though I was worried about being pointed out, I couldn't miss the opportunity to snap another picture.

I sent the picture to Nik in an email, and he quickly responded.

"I just posted old one... I will get this up this afternoon. They need to drain the lake!" his email read.

"I like your attitude!" I replied.

I pulled up both pictures on my computer screen, the before and after, and was enamored by the stark contrast between the two. Not only was I already convinced the police continued searching because of what I wrote (and Nik published), but I was also fairly certain they changed their conduct during the search from what I photographed.

Then the unthinkable happened – the police found Willie Jigba's body in the water...

I was immediately capsulated with every human emotion at once. I was grieving, happy, sad, proud, nervous, honored, anxious, appreciative and fearful. I didn't know what to think or feel, and to be honest – I've never been the same since.

On one hand, I never knew words could be so influential to the point where it caused a real change and drastically affecting other people's lives. On the other hand, overall it was a sad event; no one wants to hear his or her son's body has just been found. Personally, I took solace in knowing that if I were one of Willie Jigba's parent's, I would rather know something over nothing at all.

I took a break for the next few days and spent most of my time playing Dave or David Price in online FIFA, just to get my mind off everything that happened.

Then, on Sunday, it dawned on me. What if those two guys I saw on the bridge had something to do with it? Most people who commit murders often return to the scene of the crime, according to the show The First 48. Their behavior was certainly odd, so I sent Nik an email about it, but never heard back from him.

On Monday, I witnessed another abnormal scene. Two city workers who wore orange shirts were cleaning the walkway on the bridge with a leaf blower and a shovel. Without the autopsy being complete, I imagined they would treat this area as a potential crime scene. To make matters even more peculiar, they only cleaned one side of the bridge – the same side the two guys were on.

Seeing potential evidence being destroyed was aggravating, so I stepped onto the balcony, for the third time, and took more pictures. For the third time, I forwarded the pictures to Nik.

He was slow to act, so I impatiently plastered the pictures on my own website. Soon after I did this, he emailed me and said he would publish them the following day.

As promised, he posted a story suggesting there was a cover-up and furthermore, that there was some "dirty cop shit going on."

This is the moment I began worrying about retaliation. If you know anything about Arizona, then you've probably heard of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He titles himself 'America's Toughest Sheriff', nationally known for making inmates wear pink boxers, but locally known for cracking down and raiding anyone who dares to criticize him.

I grew paranoid when I began seeing cop cars 80% of the time I looked out my window. Either it was a coincidence, or I was next.

So I decided to lay low for a while and put my activism on the shelf, after all, it wasn't smart for me to criticize the police when I was in the middle of hacking Nike's website.

People can say what they want about Nik Richie and TheDirty.com. Personally, I don't agree with a lot of the stuff he does. However, there is no doubt in my mind he was the only person who had enough balls to publish this story, and I will forever respect him because of it.

I still don't know if they ever figured out what exactly happened to Willie Jigba.

When you see a popular website make such a great impact on the world around you, it motivates you to have one of your own.

The first story to really take off on PlayerSeason.com was, regrettably, one I originally posted as a joke.

Blake Griffin was probably the most covered athlete at the time, so I created a blog post suggesting he was in a relationship with a girl named Jasmine Shein. In reality, the pictures were of Natalia, and furthermore, I created the fictitious name Jasmine Shein.

I knew it would be convincing because I already had a fake Facebook page setup for her with a few thousand friends. Ironically, the back-story I created for their relationship actually claimed they met on Facebook.

With the blog article and Facebook page active, all I did next was go on a forum where girls asked about Blake Griffin's girlfriend, wrote one sentence alleging he was dating Jasmine Shein and then added my link.

From there, the story took off.

Every sports website in the country was talking about Blake Griffin's relationship with Jasmine Shein, and I was sitting at my desk laughing.

FuelTV even did a segment on air about her, but the pinnacle came when I logged onto TNT.com and saw a link to "Check out Blake Griffin's New Girlfriend Jasmine Shein!"

The links were doing wonders for the traffic on my website. Her article, by itself, brought in around 3,000 hits a day, and her name alone produced well over 100,000 hits on Google search. The best part was how Blake Griffin never said a word about it not being true, but with a girl like her, why would he?

"This is crazy, my friend just saw me on TV," Natalia said to me on the phone.

She wasn't alone; I was also amazed by how fast it was spreading. Then one website questioned the authenticity, and instead of admitting to the hoax, I came up with a plan to convince them it was real.

My method was simple, I asked Natalia to send me a picture of herself holding a piece of paper with "I'm REAL" written in black ink.

Her picture certainly calmed the storm of skepticism, but I kept getting requests for a picture of her and Blake Griffin together. This is when most people would give up, but I didn't. I checked the Clippers schedule and figured out they were coming to Phoenix on March 1
^st
, which was one month away.

I arranged for Natalia to fly to Phoenix, and began plotting on how I would get a picture of them together. There was plenty of time, or so I thought.

More traffic meant more demand for better stories, so I hired my first writer. My moniker was 'The Player President', so he coined himself as 'The General' and, technically, Nike was paying his salary.

From this point on, I decided all of my future stories would be real.

My methods may or may not have been questionable, but either way, I began producing, and publishing, documents no one else could get their hands on.

The first exhibit of documentation was official MLB scouting reports on every single hitter in the New York Yankees lineup.

Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira, Robinson Cano, Jorge Posada, Curtis Granderson, Nick Swisher, Brett Gardner, Randy Winn, Marcus Thames and a few others. I even forwarded them to David Price for personal use, but he replied back saying he doesn't look at scouting reports, which was a shocking response from a Vanderbilt graduate.

If he didn't put them to good use, at least I was. There's nothing better for a website than posting original content, and my Google juice was flowing.

Giving one of Nike's top athletes bad press was, in hindsight, another bad play. I was unknowingly digging my own grave, and I wasn't done yet.

I 'stumbled across' a document titled "Rotohog Payouts". Once I opened it, I realized the contents were far more valuable than the scouting reports.

The spreadsheet contained a list of MLB baseball players who played in a fantasy football league together. They were big names too, like Chipper Jones, Kevin Millar, Sean Casey and Travis Hafner. There was even a professional poker player in the mix named Josh Arieh.

This wasn't your average fantasy league, they were betting big money (to an average person). The regular season winner, Kerry Lightenberg, took home $18,500.

My favorite part is the list of team names, particularly 'Boats & Hoes'. I still can't figure out what Chipper Jones' team name is supposed to mean. Fake bizzies?

Anyways, I was happy. I had my own place, a potentially successful website and most importantly; I wasn't living under my friends wings anymore – and then all hell broke loose.