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Michael Faulkner
Michael Blaine Faulkner began his professional career as an Electronic Engineer before his hobby of computer programming blossomed into a mid-sized eCommerce company. Faulkner migrated through the ...view moreMichael Blaine Faulkner began his professional career as an Electronic Engineer before his hobby of computer programming blossomed into a mid-sized eCommerce company. Faulkner migrated through the ownership and operation of dozens of start-up tech companies, with varying levels of success, while pursuing a more formal education in Business and Finance. His combined skills led to his eventual success in the aggressive growth industry of VOIP(Voice-over IP) telephony. Faulkner bought, sold, and created many telecom companies between 2004 and 2010, both in the US and abroad. Faulkner went on to found Crydon Capital Corporation, a private equity firm dedicated to funding VOIP ventures with an eye on challenging the legacy status-quo of the big phone companies. All the while, his board of directors, and the public at large, was unaware the the CEO of Crydon Capital, was also the infamous CygonX; a famous hacker, and noted network security professional. For years Faulkner had led the double life, while supporting one of the largest underground piracy networks online, and managing the famed Black Security Network; the favorite virtual watering hole for the Black Hat community. Ironically, it was not his Black Hat life, or connection to piracy that evoked the ire of the US Government. In 2009, Faulkner was at the center of The Great Data Center Raids that shocked the IT world, when FBI entry teams stormed Texas data centers, shut them down, and seized thousands of severs as “evidence.” Unknown to Faulkner, and the US public until Snowden, AT&T and the FBI had an intimate relationship that Faulkner had inadvertently interrupted. It turns out that Faulkner's companies had converted so much of the US/Mexico long-distance traffic to VOIP over private networks, at a lower cost to consumers, that he had shown up as a bright spot on the government's radar. Through his connections in Mexico, Faulkner was terminating VOIP directly into their GSM network, by passing all the ways AT&T and Verizon could make money, while avoiding all the ways the FBI could obtain their now famous warrant less-wiretaps from legacy telecoms The combined forces of AT&T, Verizon, and the US Federal Government came down like a ton of bricks. Thousands of businesses hosted on servers in these data centers were instantly put in jeopardy; mortgage, law firms, car dealerships, hospitals, and the entire all service network for multiple cities-all disconnected from their websites.view less