Hi! I’m Ari, and this is my newsletter where I send updates about my work as a longform journalist. You’re receiving this because you subscribed some time ago. You can always unsubscribe below (but please don’t).
I recently saw a preview of Mountain Gazette 201 and have to say it’s the best issue of the magazine yet. I loved everything in it, especially the opening photo essay.
My feature in this issue is an investigation into the ultra-wealthy Yellowstone Club. I don’t want to sound like a salesman, but I’ve poured most of my energy into this piece over the past six months, and I hope you’ll spare the cost of a subscription to read it. The magazine should start arriving in mailboxes in early May. I believe the deadline to subscribe and receive this issue is April 29.
Shout-out
A big congratulations to fellow Mountain Gazette contributor Chip Kalback, whose photographs for our mutton busting assignment in Mountain Gazette 199 won an Applied Arts Photography Award. Chip was a pleasure to work with, and his photos were truly phenomenal. He shared a few on his website here.
Now on Apple News+
You might think a cop would have been able to cover his tracks better. But “DrMonster” wasn’t so careful. A 33-year-old Buffalo, New York, detective named Terrance Ciszek stands accused of using the DrMonster alias to purchase 194 stolen login credentials from an illicit web store called Genesis Market. Usernames and passwords for Gmail, Hulu, an elementary school parent portal, Facebook, Amazon, a mortgage lender, BestBuy, eBay, Spotify, and the Church of Jesus Christ are included.
DrMonster wasn’t shy about sharing his cybercrime methods. “I got a lotta people texting me and asking me about my setup,” he says in a video uploaded to Vimeo in April 2020. In it, he demonstrates how he purchases stolen credit card data online while hiding his IP address from law enforcement (excluding himself, of course).
But even though DrMonster was confident about his ability to mask his IP address, the FBI — in the midst of a five-year international investigation intended to dismantle Genesis Market — had other ways to track him.
My story for the latest issue of Popular Mechanics chronicles the FBI’s operation, which led to hundreds of arrests worldwide last year. It’s available to read on Apple News.
Books I’ve Liked Lately
I set a goal to read 100 books in 2024. I’m slightly behind, but I think I’ll still make it. Who doesn’t like book recommendations? So here are my top three favorite reads since January 1:
Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street by Sheelah Kolhatkar
Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt
Circe by Madeline Miller
Stuff TK
I’ll be hitting the road in the months to come on assignment for Mountain Gazette 202. Otherwise, things might be a little quiet from me this spring and summer as I throw myself into a potential book project and a particularly ambitious assignment due next year. But I would like to try to find some ways to use this newsletter when I’m not publishing. If there’s anything you’d like to read here — short essays, behind-the-scenes reporting stuff, etc. — please let me know. Or email me your questions about one of my stories or my work in general. I get a lot of messages with questions from early-career journalists. It might be fun to turn a few interesting ones into a post.