Yesterday, Sabu was a ghost—the spirit of Anonymous, having guided the group through its most powerful and infamous hacks. Now he's Hector Monsegur, a 28-year-old unemployed Puerto Rican father of two from the New York projects—and a snitch. Here's what we know:
Sabu is Puerto Rican
Sabu, unlike many of his cohorts, was not just another caucasian hacker stereotype living in his mom's suburban basement. He was a Puerto Rican guy in the projects.
Sabu started ratting on his friends after someone ratted on him
At a briefing by the United States Attorney's Office, it was revealed that Sabu flipped on Anonymous after the feds were tipped off to his identity by a 3rd party. Who? We don't know—but the man had plenty of enemies.
Sabu then went on to work with the FBI—sometimes inside FBI offices—for nine months.
Sabu lives/lived in this Manhattan housing project
Sabu calls 90 Avenue D, Apt. 6F home—otherwise known as the Jacob Riis Houses, a large dilapidated public project in New York's Lower East Side. All phone numbers associated with the property, where he lived with his mother, Irma, before she died, are either disconnected or ring indefinitely.
Here's his front door. Not exactly what you'd picture as the HQ of an internet supercriminal. I knocked, but nobody was home. I think I heard parakeets chirping.
Sabu had family trouble
The Monsegnur clan was written up in this 2007 NY Times article on public housing policy:
Iris and Hector Monsegur worry about their mother's diabetes, but they are not allowed to visit her at the Jacob Riis Houses in Manhattan. They were caught selling heroin in 1997 and sent to prison for seven years each, they said. Ms. Monsegur now runs a credit repair company out of her home on Staten Island, and her brother works for a sanitation company in New Jersey and lives in the Bronx.
Sabu's father is pictured at the top.
Sabu pretended to be a cop
It seems like Hector mistook being a snitch for being an FBI agent, our pals at Gawker explain:
On the evening of Feb. 3, an NYPD officer encountered 28-year-old Monsegnur at a Lower East Side apartment in New York City. When the cop asked Monsegnur for identification, the criminal complaint alleges, he replied, "My name is Boo. They call me Boo. Relax. I am a federal agent. I am an agent of the federal government."
He was not an agent of the federal government, and was charged with Criminal Impersonation on February 3rd, 2012.
Sabu really liked cars
FWD dug up Sabu's street racing-devoted YouTube account—"LeSTerrorist"—which includes automotive gems such as: "My boy Loco playing god mode; fixing Manny's front by pulling the bends out of the frame of the car. Watch till the end; you will see the hood lock!"
According to federal charging documents, Sabu hacked into an automotive parts company's computer to ship himself four engines worth over $3,000.
Sabu possibly worked at a small New York tech startup
This one's weird! Unearthed email records for Sabu point to an @openplans.org address, the email domain of a company planning real-time public transit tracking. Sabu's LinkedIn profile (even hackers use LinkedIn!) label him a "Senior Systems Administrator" for OpenPlans, though he's no longer listed in its employee directory, and a call to the company regarding his employment record hasn't been returned. OpenPlan's Director of Operations, Vanessa Hamer, confirmed he'd worked with them for "a few months" "a couple years ago," but declined to say if he'd been fired or quit, or anything about his employment at all.
He could afford an iMac
Despite living in the projects and taking care of two kids on his own, he apparently owned an iMac, visible in photos obtained by Fox News. It's possible the feds gave him this gear as a condition of his cooperation.
Note: After actually going to Sabu's place, there's no way the photo above was taken in his home. It's possibly a friend's place.
Sabu liked T.I.
The only video he favorited on YouTube is a now-defunct T.I music video.