Paul Le Roux

Le Roux's involvement with TrueCrypt still remains unclear as of 2016. Le Roux himself has denied developing TrueCrypt in a court hearing in March 2016, in which he also confirmed he had written E4M. On the other hand, he reportedly ordered employees around 2007 to encrypt their hard disks with E4M and later with TrueCrypt.

Hunter faced between 10 years and life in prison, with federal guidelines recommending between 24 and 30 years. His defense attorney asked for the minimum of 10 years, arguing Hunter is suffering from PTSD resulting from his time in the military and as a security contractor. On May 31, 2016, Hunter was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Co-defendants Gögel and Vamvakias also received 20-year sentences.

Le Roux made his first public court appearance testifying in the case in March 2016, despite his lawyers arguing that media coverage of the proceedings would put his family in danger and filing several motions to prevent a public hearing. A fake arrest report, dated February 29, 2016, was produced, apparently to conceal the circumstances of his arrest.

Court documents revealed in early March 2016 that photos were found on Stillwell's cell phone, dated the day of Lee's murder and "appear[ing] to depict, among other things, a white van similar to the one in which (according to witness accounts) Lee was murdered, and a wounded human head."

According to Matthew Green, a computer science professor at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute and leader of the TrueCrypt audit in 2014, TrueCrypt "was written by anonymous folks; it could have been Paul Le Roux writing under an assumed name, or it could have been someone completely different."

To place an order on these sites, customers would fill out questionnaires about their medical history and symptoms, order their chosen medication and pay by credit card. The questionnaires would get forwarded to doctors in the US, who would in turn write prescriptions for the drugs ordered, despite never having examined the patient in person. The prescription, along with the customer's order, would go to a pharmacy in the US, which would then ship the drug. Both the doctor and the pharmacy would receive a commission for the order. Prosecution in the case alleged in 2014 that "some of [RX Limited's] customers' hands are cold and 6 feet under right now."

A 2014 court document revealed that Le Roux was also charged with exporting "goods, technology and services" to the Iranian government between 2009 and 2012. The goods are believed to be a missile guidance system.

Replacement captain Burne was arrested but jumped bail. Later, in December 2014, he was sentenced in absentia to eight years of imprisonment for tax evasion related to the shipment. He remains at large as of early 2016.

Nash ran a security firm in the Subic Bay area. A close friend of both Bruce Jones and Joe Zuñiga, he was the last to see both men alive. As the National Bureau of Investigation started investigating him in connection with Zuñiga's case, they discovered he was using the identity of a deceased person and arrested him on May 2, 2014. He refused to disclose his identity and, despite inquiries to the US, UK, Australia and South Africa, no state can give any clue to his citizenship or identity, nor can any of his acquaintances. He remains in custody in the Philippines as of November 2015, thus far only accused of an immigration violation. His identity, citizenship, possible connection to Le Roux or role in the cases of Jones and Zuñiga, remain unclear.

Le Roux modified his own email service, fast-free-email.com, through which all his personal mail passed, to preserve copies of his messages (the system had previously been set up to periodically destroy them). He continued to direct his former associates until at least mid-2014, leading them into stings set up by DEA agents. His cooperation has resulted in the arrest of at least 11 people. Another 7 were arrested by the DEA without his direct involvement.

In April 2014, Stammers and Shackels met with the Colombians and a prospective arms buyer in Mauritius. A second meeting was with Stammers, Shackels, the Colombians and two Serbians from whom they sought to obtain between 700 and 1,000 kg of cocaine to make up for the loss of the JeReVe. Hunter's three new hires provided security.

Le Roux pleaded guilty to being involved with RX Limited in January 2014. In December 2014, he pleaded guilty to trafficking methamphetamine into the US, selling technology to Iran, ordering or participating in seven murders, as well as fraud and bribery. In March 2016 it was revealed that US authorities had taken unspecified steps to protect Le Roux's family.

After Hunter's connection with Le Roux became publicly known in December 2014, his defense lawyer argued in January 2015 that Hunter acted out of fear of Le Roux. The court dismissed the motion. Hunter pleaded guilty in late January. All of his co-defendants followed over the course of 2015.

Le Roux lured two of the call center managers to Romania in early 2014, in one case under the pretense of arranging for the transfer of money still owed to laid-off employees. Both were arrested by local police and extradited to the US. One of them skipped bail and presumably returned to Israel.

According to his family, Hunter had become increasingly short-tempered during his time in the army. Hunter himself stated that his time in Iraq exacerbated these traits. He became moody, irritable and aggressive. Later, while in custody following his arrest in 2013, he was diagnosed with PTSD.

Tongan police tried to locate relatives of Rindzák in Slovakia, but Rindzák's parents claimed that the body was not their son's. Slovak media speculated that the body could be Maroš Deák, but this remains unconfirmed. Slovak police refused to comment on the speculations, citing ongoing investigations. The body remained unclaimed and was eventually buried in January 2013 at a local cemetery.

In October/November 2013, eleven individuals linked to RX Limited were indicted in Minnesota. These included five RX Limited managers, a pharmacist who had supplied RX Limited and helped it set up its credit card processing in the US, as well as a physician who had issued prescriptions to patients he had never examined in person.

Le Roux's arrest was initially kept secret. The arrests of his associates were reported in the media but initially not connected to each other or to Le Roux. A first report of Le Roux's arrest surfaced in December 2013 in a Brazilian newspaper, but still did not mention a connection with the other arrests. The article was in Portuguese and did not spread widely. It would take another year, until December 2014, before the New York Times reported about Hunter's arrest, revealing that it was facilitated by Le Roux's cooperation with authorities. Still, Le Roux's case file, and large portions of those of the other defendants, remained sealed. Le Roux was the subject of Gimlet Media's Reply All (podcast) episode #136. In 2019, Evan Ratliff—who wrote a series of articles about Le Roux for The Atavist Magazine—published The Mastermind, a 446-page account of Le Roux's ventures.

He was arrested on September 26, 2012 for conspiracy to import narcotics into the United States. He subsequently admitted to arranging or participating in seven murders, carried out as part of an extensive illegal business empire.

RX Limited advertised its services through spam email. As messages pointing to one particular web site would quickly get blocked by spam filters, RX Limited would open up new sites. Initially the new domains were purchased individually from domain sellers such as GoDaddy, until RX Limited set up its own domain seller, ABSystems, allowing RX Limited to spawn new domains on a much larger scale. By 2012, LegitScript estimated that more than half the rogue online pharmacies in the world were registered through ABSystems.

Le Roux arrived in Rio de Janeiro on May 19, 2012, with Cayanan and their daughter, posing as tourists. Three Israeli associates would oversee his operations during his absence.

Hit man Ronald Baricuatro, apprehended in February 2012 and connected to the assassination of Mike Lontoc in September 2011, stated he was hired by Smith to conduct surveillance on journalist Mar T. Supnad in preparation of a planned hit. Both hits were in connection with the seizure of the Captain Ufuk in 2009.

Le Roux has never been formally accused in connection with Jones's death, although he allegedly admitted to ordering the hit in a private conversation. The case was archived between 2012 and 2013, and remains unsolved as of October 2015, with no suspect ever arrested over it.

Lawyer Joe Frank Zuñiga had represented Jones in the Captain Ufuk case. On June 20, 2012, he left his home to meet with a client. He was last seen at 11:45 in the Subic Bay area in the company of Timothy Desmond, CEO of the Ocean Adventure water park, and John Nash, its head of security. Around the same time, a witness reported a man being dragged into a van near Zuñiga's car. A call between Zuñiga's cell phone and a family member appears to have taken place at 2 pm. His car was discovered on the afternoon of the following day. Zuñiga has since been missing and police presume him dead. The case was archived between 2012 and 2014, without any suspects ever being arrested over it.

All open cases related to the Captain Ufuk were archived between 2012 and 2014. Paul Le Roux has never been formally accused in any of them. Journalist Evan Ratliff, citing sources in law enforcement and Le Roux's organization, implies that he avoided charges through bribery and intimidation.

Following his relocation to Rio de Janeiro, Le Roux started planning two drug shipments from Ecuador via yacht. One of the two yachts to be used for the shipment, the JeReVe (from French je rêve "I dream"), arrived in Ecuador in August 2012.

In early February 2012 Lee received an email from two men, who had been hired by Hunter. They introduced themselves as Bill Maxwell and Tony, claiming to be Canadians living in Manila and seeking to invest in real estate. She met the two men and, over the course of three days, showed them various properties. She was last seen alive at 4:30 pm of February 12, their third day, by the owners of a property they had visited and three other brokers. She departed in a car with her clients. Her body was found at 6:30 am the next day in a field in Taytay, Rizal, an industrial city an hour east of Manila. She had been shot four times, a gunshot wound under each eye, which the National Bureau of Investigation suspected to be a signature killing. Dissatisfied with the way the killing was carried out, Hunter dismissed the two hit men.

Following their arrests in 2012 and 2013, neither Le Roux nor Hunter have been formally accused of the case, despite Le Roux having admitted to ordering the murder in court. (Le Roux signed a proffer agreement, which would give him immunity against prosecution).

In March 2012 the DEA searched a pharmacy in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Its owner had signed up in the summer of 2006 after a recruiter had assured him about the legitimacy of the business, and over the years had evolved into the main supplier for RX Limited. The owner immediately admitted his involvement and agreed to cooperate with the authorities. He maintained his contacts with the company to help the DEA identify key figures in the operation.

US and Brazilian authorities managed to survey Le Roux in Brazil starting in early 2012. Among others, they recorded phone calls between him and his wife Lilian Cheung Yuen Pui. In these, he warned her not to invest into real estate in the Netherlands, as it would be too easy to seize if he were arrested, pointing out that his business was illegal.

An associate of Le Roux approached him about a representative of a Colombian cartel that wanted to build a methamphetamine operation in Liberia, and flew to Rio de Janeiro for a meeting on May 11, 2012. Le Roux would supply precursor chemicals, a facility and a chemist. In return, he would be offered 100 kg of cocaine for each 100 kg of methamphetamine produced, after letting the Colombians test a sample. Le Roux would meet the cartel representative in Liberia to finalize the deal.

Starting in late 2012, Le Roux ordered his associates Scott Stammers and Allan Kelly Reyes Peralta to provide methamphetamine from Ye Tiong Tan Lim, who had worked with Le Roux before. Peralta and Lim met the fake Colombian cartel representatives in January. The Colombians asked to see the labs, which, according to Lim, were located in North Korea. Lim declined the request as the presence of foreigners would have raised suspicions. Lim provided samples of meth in February, sending it to Philip Shackels, another Le Roux associate. Shackels and Stammers forwarded it to Monrovia, as requested by their clients. The samples tested at 96% and 98%.

Hunter was later connected to the 2012 murder of Catherine Lee but has not been formally accused.

In 2011 the US government restricted the distribution of Soma, banning its distribution across state borders and requiring pharmacies to obtain special DEA approval to dispense it. As Soma was among RX Limited's best-selling drugs, the company lost around one third of its business and was forced to downsize. Le Roux decided to close the Tel Aviv call center and downsize the Jerusalem office. He began smuggling pharmaceuticals from Mexico into the US to fulfill orders.

Around 2011 Le Roux began to disappear for long periods of time, with none of his employees knowing his whereabouts. As US authorities were closing in on him, Le Roux took up temporary residence in Rio de Janeiro and planned his move there. Accounts on the timeframe vary: depending on the source, he first arrived in Rio sometime between 2010 (two years before his arrival in May 2012) and November 2011. Le Roux had a Brazilian lover in Rio, with whom he had a son, thus being protected from extradition under Brazilian law.

In 2011, Le Roux began suspecting Smith of skimming off drugs and gold from shipments, and had him assassinated. According to one source, Smith was kidnapped outside a bar while drunk, and placed in a shallow grave. Then he was shot and buried. Another source claims that Smith was thrown off a boat and shot in a manner similar to the Israeli call center manager. Le Roux himself supposedly fired at least some of the shots. In a court hearing in March 2016, Le Roux admitted his involvement. The judge did not allow questions on how Smith was murdered.

Following the dispute with "Ottavio", most of Southern Ace's international staff left Somalia by early 2011, with only two remaining. "Ottavio" took over local operations, the two foreigners appear to have handled administrative tasks. One of them, a Zimbabwean national named Jirat Taeko, is reported to have been killed in January 2011 following an argument over financial issues. Altogether, Le Roux's organization spent an estimated $3m on the operation, including almost $1m in militia salaries and over $150,000 worth in arms and ammunition.

Lontoc, general manager of Red White and Blue Arms Inc., was on his way back from a shooting competition in a Manila suburb in September 2011. As he slowed down at a busy intersection, he received a cell phone call. At the same time, four men surrounded his car and fired into it. Lontoc died on the scene. His widow later told reporters he had become involved with an arms smuggling cartel and tried to get out.

Part-time real estate broker Noimie Edillor was married to a Filipino customs officer (because of this, some sources incorrectly refer to her as a customs agent) and allegedly worked for La Plata Trading. She allegedly accepted a bribe to help smuggle goods through customs, but did not keep her part of the deal. Hunter hired assassins who put her under surveillance at home, thus discovering she worked as a real estate agent. They posed as potential customers looking for rental property, selecting the one where they believed the murder would be easiest to carry out. They then asked to see that property again and shot her at the door on June 23, 2011.

Around 2011, Le Roux enlisted real estate broker Catherine Lee from Las Piñas City, Philippines, to purchase vacation property in Batangas for him and paid her an advance of $50 million Philippine pesos (the equivalent of US$3million). Lee enlisted an unnamed associate to fix the deal; however, that associate disappeared with the money.

US authorities also became suspicious because of numerous calls to Somalia made from the phone number they had previously linked to Le Roux, but his activities were only revealed in a 2011 UN report.

As RX Limited continued to grow, Le Roux began opening call centers in the Philippines, staffing manager positions with Israelis recruited by the SCSM managers. Le Roux paid Israeli-level salaries despite the cost of living being much lower in Manila, making his job offers seem an attractive opportunity. He provided the Israeli expats with apartments in various neighborhoods of Manila but would frequently relocate them, stating he needed their apartment. By 2010, he had at least ten call centers with more than 1,000 employees.

In 2010 Dave Smith dismissed Hunter, considering him "too hot headed". Hunter lived in the US for a year and returned following Smith's assassination in 2011, taking Smith's former position. His exit from and return to the organization would later prompt the court to reject his duress defense. Hunter carried out or oversaw multiple murders for Le Roux, which the organization referred to as "bonus jobs". He apparently recruited hit men through contacts from his days as a defense contractor. Many of the hit men Hunter recruited for Le Roux were, like him, former soldiers who had had trouble settling into civilian life.

In March 2010, Le Roux had plans to import a large quantity of heavy weapons to Somalia by air, though the delivery never took place. In mid-2010 Le Roux discovered he was paying militiamen almost twice the market rate, and a dispute with his partner in the operation, known only by his alias "Ottavio", erupted.

The crew, all of them Georgian citizens, were detained and indicted in 2010. They were eventually deported to Georgia.

The press implicated Jones in its coverage of the case. Jones went into hiding and in early September surrendered to the authorities. He agreed to cooperate, on the condition of being placed on a witness protection program. He received numerous death threats and observed individuals apparently surveying him. He was never given the witness protection his lawyer requested. One year after the incident, he started to become confident that his former employers were no longer after him. On September 21, 2010, he and his wife and son met a friend, known to him as John Nash, and his wife for lunch in a mall in Angeles City, north of Manila. On his way back from the mall, Jones was shot fatally by two assassins on a motorcycle. His wife was struck by one bullet but survived. The assassination took place next to a shooting range, which provided ideal cover.

In early October 2010 the Philippine National Police searched the home of Herbert Tan Tiu and discovered several Indonesian-made assault rifles, suspected to come from the Captain Ufuk. Tan Tiu disappeared later and is still missing.

Through his company Southern Ace, Le Roux supplied AK-47 assault rifles and light machine guns to Somali militias starting in April 2009, in violation of an existing arms embargo.

In 2009, US authorities came across Le Roux's name and a phone number believed to be his, and started monitoring it.

Around the same time, Hunter was directed by Le Roux to assemble a team of hit men for the fake Colombian cartel. Hunter recruited three military veterans, two Germans (Michael Filter and Dennis Gögel) and one Pole (Slawomir Soborski). He arranged a meeting with them and the "clients" in a house belonging to Le Roux in Phuket. The DEA agents recorded the conversations between all of them. In the recordings, Hunter was heard boasting of having carried out two murders in the Philippines, as well as the mock execution of the call center manager in 2009. He claimed to have assassinated nine people in one year.

Reports about Le Roux's personal image vary: while one former associate describes him as "not a soft, gentle person", another claims he was extraordinarily friendly to newly hired employees, often buying gifts for people. According to him, this way in which Le Roux presented himself made him seem more legitimate, and many of his staff joined his organization believing they were doing legitimate work. The highly compartmentalized nature of Le Roux's operations helped this, as few, if any, employees were aware of the full extent of the activities Le Roux was involved in. As rumors of Le Roux's expansion into organized crime and ordered killings surfaced starting in 2009, many employees stayed out of fear he might have them killed or otherwise harm them, should they try to leave.

In the fall of 2008, the two managers of the Jerusalem call center were tasked with overseeing the opening of a new call center in Tel Aviv. The new call center opened in 2009 under the name CSWW (Customer Service World-Wide) and took over customer service, while Jerusalem-based SCSM would handle accounting and company infrastructure.

Realizing the rapid expansion of RX Limited and its constant search of new pharmacies in late 2008, two managers of the Israeli call center started casually discussing the possibility of opening their own pharmacy in the US. They believed they could open a flourishing business while at the same time helping Le Roux's operations.

Smith was a British native and allegedly carried an American passport. He had done security work in Iraq and then for a risk-management company in the Philippines. Le Roux hired Smith in or before 2008, making him his de facto deputy and head of security. Smith gave Le Roux access to a network of former security contractors who had previously served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

According to his own accounts, Bruce Jones was hired by Dave Smith in 2008 to purchase a ship in Turkey and sail it from there to the Philippines via Indonesia, with Manila-based company La Plata Trading (one of Le Roux's companies) paying expenses and supplying the crew. Jones completed the purchase of the Captain Ufuk and sailed to Jakarta, Indonesia. There he picked up a shipment of guns from a company called PT Pindad, bound for Manila-based Red White and Blue Arms Inc., and continued his journey to the Philippines.

As Jones approached his final destination, he was ordered by his employers to delay bringing the ship into port. The ship remained anchored for several days near the coast of Mariveles, Bataan, three hours west of Manila. On August 19, 2008, Jones told his boss he wanted to get on land, as his wife was pregnant and due to deliver. His employers sent out a yacht, the Mou Man Tai, with Smith, replacement captain Lawrence Burne and a rubber speedboat on board. 16 boxes of guns were transferred to the yacht, accompanied by Hunter, who had been on board the Captain Ufuk. Jones returned to Subic Bay in the smaller boat.

Between September 2007 and 2008, Le Roux spent $12m to secure 99-year leases on farmland the Zimbabwean government had seized from white farmers, and to lobby Mugabe with the help of Ari Ben-Menashe, lobbyist and former Israeli intelligence officer. His plan was to bring back white farmers to the land. It is alleged that he "wanted to see Zimbabwe back under the control of the whites". In his only known media statement, Le Roux told the Washington newspaper The Hill: "We want recognition that injustice was done in the past and that the land-reform program corrects that." Rumors existed that the farmland leases were only part of a bigger plan going as far as removing Mugabe from power. Le Roux eventually abandoned his plans around 2008.

In 2007, Le Roux also took up logging operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Also around 2007–2008, Le Roux hired Ben-Menashe to lobby the government of Vanuatu to allow the logging of kauri trees. The deal was arranged, but Le Roux disappeared. Between late 2008 and early 2009 Le Roux withdrew from all of his logging operations.

In 2007, Le Roux relocated his family to Manila, into a house in the upscale gated community of Dasmariñas, and oversaw his business from there.

Realizing the commercial success of his online pharmacy business, a legal gray area at the time, Le Roux decided to diversify and expand into illegal activities around 2007. These included logging, precious metals mining, gold smuggling, land deals, drug shipments, arms trafficking and money laundering. He operated in a number of places, including Manila, Hong Kong, Colombia, Africa and Brazil. Numerous Israelis were recruited through RX Limited during that time, invited to the Philippines and assigned to operations outside RX Limited. These included a logging business in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, procuring gold directly from African mines or guarding houses owned by Le Roux in Hong Kong. Many of Le Roux's organizations were staffed with former soldiers.

Joseph Hunter, who would later become Le Roux's top hit man, was hired between 2007 and 2009. Raised in Owensboro, Kentucky, Hunter had enlisted in the army in 1983 and joined the Rangers in 1985. Eight months later, in 1986, Hunter was discharged for medical reasons, after the death of a friend in his unit during a training exercise left him traumatized. He spent the rest of his military career as a drill sergeant and sniper instructor. Over the course of 18 years he was posted in Germany, Panama and Puerto Rico. He was dismissed in mid-2004, holding the rank of sergeant first class. He received multiple honors for his service in the Army.

Between 2007 and 2009, Hunter was introduced to Le Roux by a colleague. He was initially tasked with buying and selling gold in Mali. Le Roux offered Hunter a job as his bodyguard in 2009. According to Hunter's own accounts, he began to realize in mid-2009 that he was involved in illegal operations and, due to his name being used in various operations, suspected he was being set up to be "sacrificed" to law enforcement, but claimed to fear for his life if he were to quit.

US authorities began investigations against RX Limited in September 2007.

In 2007, he relocated his family to Manila. The couple have a daughter, born around 2007. Despite Le Roux claiming Cayanan as his wife on at least one occasion, his marriage to Pui was never dissolved and he stayed in contact with her until his arrest. A "newborn son" is also mentioned in 2012, but it is unclear whether the mother is Cayanan or Le Roux's Brazilian mistress.

The business was highly profitable. The US Internal Revenue Service calculated that RX Limited owed more than $1.5m in tax from 2005 alone. The debt is still outstanding.

One such operation was Beit Oridan (later renamed to IBS Systems and finally to SCSM). The Jerusalem-based business was registered in 2005 by two Israeli brothers, with Le Roux acting as a silent partner. One of the brothers left the company in July 2006, the other in the fall of 2007, with no official explanation, and Le Roux oversaw the operation directly, with the two Israeli managers now reporting directly to him.

In 2005 Hunter became an inmate counselor at the Green River Correctional Complex. Dissatisfied with his job, he quit it after 15 months in 2006, and subsequently signed up with a private security firm. He was dispatched to Iraq, taking fingerprints and DNA swabs from company employees. Two years later he joined another firm, protecting US embassy staff and investigating suicide bombings.

In February 2004 the first version of TrueCrypt was released by anonymous developers who called themselves "the TrueCrypt Team", built on E4M code. As its developers remained anonymous, some of Le Roux's former SecurStar colleagues, including Hafner, suspected Le Roux of being involved but could not find any corroborating evidence. The actual authors remain unknown as of 2017.

Around 2004, at the advice of a lawyer in Costa Rica, Le Roux abandoned his online gambling activities and launched several web sites and call centers for the online sale of prescription drugs.

In 2003, Le Roux sent out a request to various Usenet groups, in which he solicited business contacts in the US:

Aged two months, he was adopted by a couple living in the asbestos-mining town of Mashava and given his future name, Paul Calder Le Roux. His parents never told him about his adoption, although various family members would learn of it over the years, and Le Roux himself would only find out in 2002. He had a younger sister and was well-loved by his adoptive parents and the extended family.

Le Roux's parents never told him about his adoption, despite various family members learning of it over the years. Only in 2002, on a trip to Zimbabwe to retrieve a copy of his birth certificate, did Le Roux's aunt and uncle reveal the truth to him. An unnamed relative recalls this discovery sent Le Roux into a deep personal crisis. Most of all, he is reported to have been upset about "the 'unknown' part" (which could refer to his first name being listed as "unknown", the fact that he never knew his biological mother, the fact that his birth certificate does not state who his biological father is, or all of these).

In 2001 Le Roux was approached by Wilfried Hafner, a client with whom he had corresponded for several years about E4M. Hafner offered him a position in his newly founded company SecurStar. Le Roux was to build the engine for its upcoming DriveCrypt product, based on E4M and another product, Scramdisk (whose inventor, Shaun Hollingworth, had also joined SecurStar, where he still worked as of mid-2019). Both Hafner and Hollingworth describe him as a gifted programmer who would contribute innovative ideas. He was dismissed in 2002 upon Hafner discovering that Le Roux continued to work on E4M, incorporating some of the work he had done for SecurStar. Nonetheless, Hafner and Le Roux reconciled personally and stayed in touch for some time.

Around the same time, Le Roux was working on a gaming engine for an online casino he intended to launch in Canada and Romania. Hafner would later describe Le Roux as "not a marketer" and that he "didn't see how he could bring in the gamers to play." In 2001, Le Roux appears listed as a director of a company named SSD Software. SW Professionals went out of business in October 2002 and Le Roux solicited contract work with a Usenet post.

To monetize E4M, he launched SW Professionals in 2000. Based in South Africa, the company offered offshore programming, including E4M customization. According to its website, it had 5 to 6 employees. Le Roux himself was reportedly rarely seen in South Africa, and was still in a precarious financial situation.

Between 2000 and 2001, Le Roux married a Dutch citizen named Lilian Cheung Yuen Pui. The couple had a son soon after. She appears to have been involved in his business, managing some of his assets, until Le Roux's arrest.

In 1999, he created E4M, a free and open-source disk encryption software program for Microsoft Windows, and is sometimes credited for open-source TrueCrypt, which is based on E4M's code, though he denies involvement with TrueCrypt.

With no income from his previous two years of labor, Le Roux was struggling financially. He was divorced from his first wife in Brisbane in 1999. Sources close to Le Roux describe the divorce as "violent", while another states the couple parted ways amicably.

Among those arrested was Maroš Deák, operating under the name Ivan Vaclavik, wanted in the EU in connection with the murder of his brother Roman in 1999. He later jumped bail and escaped to Rio de Janeiro. A Filipino citizen was also arrested and jumped bail later.

Around 1997–1998, Le Roux began to develop E4M (Encryption for the Masses), which was first released on December 18, 1998. The product is capable of encrypting entire disks, and optionally of plausible deniability (denying the existence of an encrypted volume). Le Roux claimed the software had been written "from scratch". The software was released free of charge and with source code. In the "Politics" section of the E4M website, Le Roux published a kind of manifesto stating that governments are increasingly relying on electronic data gathering. Citing projects such as Echelon, linked to the five nation states which would become known as the "Five Eyes" more than a decade later, he stated that encryption is the only way to preserve civil liberties.

In 1995, Le Roux appears as the owner of a business, World Away Pty.

Upon returning from a family holiday trip to the US, 17-year-old Le Roux decided to leave South Africa, and departed to the UK eight months later. He found work as a programmer, and, in 1994, met his future wife, Michelle. After six months in the US, he followed Michelle to Australia in 1995. The couple married and Le Roux acquired Australian citizenship. They lived in Perth and Sydney. It is unclear whether the couple had any children – some sources mention a son, while others claim Le Roux's first child (a son) was with his second wife.

Le Roux met his first wife, an Australian citizen, in London in 1994, and married her in 1995. The couple divorced in Brisbane in 1999. Sources close to Le Roux describe the divorce as "violent", while another states the couple parted ways amicably. It is unclear whether the couple had any children – some sources mention a son while others claim Le Roux's first child (a son) was with his second wife.

Various Usenet newsgroup postings made by Le Roux are known from the second half of the 1990s. Some of them are highly technical encryption discussions, while others can be summarized as trolling. Le Roux would frequently post angry, sarcastic and offensive messages, including harsh verbal attacks against Australia as well as racist comments. On various occasions, he would later express his amusement at the reactions of other users.

Beginning in or before 2008, Le Roux started covering his tracks. He operated through several shell companies in various countries and used multiple false identities, some backed with false papers. He also held a legitimate Congolese diplomatic passport, issued in August 2008 (the passport lists his name as Solotshi Calder Le Roux, Paul, and his birth date as 1982-12-24). In a 2008 online chat transcript he discussed staging his own death and disappearing into a new identity, and getting a birth certificate under a new name.

Following the political events of 1980, with Robert Mugabe assuming power and ending white minority rule, the family relocated to South Africa in 1984 for better schooling opportunities for Paul. They found a new home in the mining town of Krugersdorp, where Le Roux's father started a company managing coal-mining operations, soon bringing wealth to the family.

Paul Calder Le Roux (born December 24, 1972) is a former programmer, former criminal cartel boss and informant to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Le Roux was born on December 24, 1972, at Lady Rodwell Maternity Home in Bulawayo and given up for adoption. His birth certificate gives his first name as "unknown" and makes no mention of his father. His biological mother's identity has not been disclosed: one source claims she was a poor teenager, while another states that his maternal grandmother was married to a US senator.