Exposing Cyber Criminal Paul Le Roux

In “Breaking Bad,” Walter White went from ineffectual nonentity to super-competent tough guy and moral monster, and millions of us couldn't look away. The true-life story of Paul Le Roux offers the same binge-caliber morbid fascination. Two new books seek to give Le Roux his full, grisly measure. Evan Ratliff's “The Mastermind” and “Hunting LeRoux” by Elaine Shannon drop with TV and movie adaptations — from all-A-list Noah Hawley and the Russo brothers, and Michael Mann, respectively — already in the works. There's a boomlet on in scandal and skullduggery: Blood-testing scam Theranos is the subject of upcoming HBO and ABC documentaries plus a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence, while Netflix and Hulu documentaries spotlight faux music festival Fyre. But Le Roux makes Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and Fyre impresario Billy McFarland look like milquetoasts.
“The Mastermind” chronicles Le Roux's metamorphosis from garden-variety misanthropic nerd with mad coding skills (born in Zimbabwe, raised in South Africa, beguiled as a teen by programming's power “to create worlds in code”) to sociopathic kingpin. It's unclear why a doted-on kid from a well-off home broke bad, but Ratliff surmises that discovering at 30 he was adopted flicked a switch. Whatever the catalyst, his arc thereafter is one of exhilarating human agency, moral vacuity and abject depravity that intersects with the storylines of our time — failed states, war in Iraq and Afghanistan that washed up footloose vets and ex-military contractors in the fleshpots of Manila as bagmen and muscle for Le Roux's ventures, and the opioid epidemic.