The Scene
In early 2015, the Australian hacker Chris Wade got a visit from the fish doctor at his aquarium-filled Florida home. The patient was Gemmy the Gem Tang, a rare saltwater species known for its striking white dots and bright yellow tail that had cost Wade $3,500.
Wade was then nursing an uncomfortable secret: A 2005 criminal conviction, and years of quiet, compelled collaboration with federal law enforcement. And the fish doctor’s visit was the beginning of a strange sequence of events that would end, five years later, in a presidential pardon from Donald Trump for the legendary hacker, who now runs a cybersecurity research firm, that he believes spared him eventual deportation.
“It saved my life, honestly,” he said in his slightly watered-down Australian accent. “I didn’t even think a pardon was possible.” Wade, who is now 40, has never shared his story publicly, but said he was speaking to Semafor to set the record straight after his criminal case was partially unsealed in October, inviting speculation about his past.
His unlikely rise from an upbringing without electricity in rural Australia to a successful US tech entrepreneur reads like the classic American success story. People who’ve worked with him say he has a rare understanding of computers, which he’s used for a wide range of projects, like early iPhone jailbreaks, earning him accolades and interest from companies like Apple and Citrix.
He’s been featured in publications and books about hacking and spoken on the main stages of the biggest cybersecurity conferences. But until recently, very few people knew that Wade was also using his skills to aid US law enforcement, first for the Secret Service and then for the FBI, after he pleaded guilty to federal hacking charges when he was 21 years old.
“He was probably the smartest guy I ever met,” said former FBI special agent Christopher Tarbell, who was instrumental in the investigation of the dark web marketplace known as Silk Road.
Tarbell declined to discuss Wade’s work with the FBI on cases, details of which are still confidential. Wade’s relationship with law enforcement has not been previously reported. But Tarbell said the two remain close friends, despite the fact that Wade began his journey on the other side of the law. “I just knew I could trust him very early on,” he said.
When Trump pardoned Wade in 2020, at the end of his first term, there was so little information provided — in part because Wade’s criminal conviction case was still sealed by the courts — nobody could be sure it was the same Christopher Wade who was known for his computer prowess.
The news came around the same time Wade’s company, Corellium, defeated Apple in a protracted legal battle, during which Wade received calls from reporters who heard the two Christopher Wades were the same.
“Wade received a pardon from President Trump, who has tended to reserve his pardons for crooked Republican congresspeople, convicted felons who worked on his campaign, family members (crooks, of course), and child-killing war criminals,” John Gruber, a long time Apple blogger, wrote then.
But the pardon got almost no attention until last January, when The New York Times petitioned the court to unseal Wade’s case, arguing it was in the public’s interest. Despite Wade’s objections, a federal judge ordered parts of the case unsealed in October.
Earlier this month, Business Insider wrote an article about Wade, citing court records and speculating that the pardon was related to Corellium’s government contracts.
The truth was more complicated.
Step Back
Wade grew up in “the bush” in New South Wales, where there was no power. His father, who had an engineering background, built a hydroelectric generator that charged a set of old milk truck batteries so they could have electricity for about an hour a night.
It wasn’t until Wade was around eight years old that the home was connected to the power grid, and he got a Commodore 64 computer, which Wade immediately used to learn to code. He became obsessed with all kinds of technology, from robotics to artificial intelligence to software.
When the family got dial-up internet, Wade was instantly hooked. And like many adolescent hackers of that early internet era, he got into trouble. After creating a “proof of concept” computer virus that accidentally shut down his high school’s internet connection for days, he dropped out and traveled the world.
Wade is not the stereotypical introvert computer programmer. He exudes earnest enthusiasm, has a dry sense of humor and seems to be perpetually in motion, in pursuit of some creative project or business goal.
“Engineers like this, they’re 100x guys. They usually come in really odd packages,” said Mark Templeton, the former CEO of Citrix, which acquired one of Wade’s companies in 2014. Wade was an exception. “He’s kind, he’s very empathetic,” he said. “He will call a spade a spade in a second. But he’s so damn smart, he’ll be right and try to help people get to the right answer.”
He later moved to Texas and married a woman he met while traveling around the world. While he waited for his Green Card application to process, he often tinkered with computers in the garage. For fun, Wade would create bots to take over IRC channels, early versions of internet forums.
His garage soon became filled with gadgets and hacking projects, like a supercomputer that he put together by reprogramming dozens of MSN TVs — failed consumer internet devices that were sold on eBay for pennies.
One day, someone Wade knew online asked if he would sell his bots so they could be used for sending spam emails. Wade agreed, figuring he could earn some extra money before he could legally work in the US, not thinking he was doing anything particularly nefarious.
He later got caught because someone posing as a customer was actually an informant for the US Secret Service, which was cracking down on email spam.
Soon after, Wade’s Green Card came through and he immediately got a job as a computer programmer. His days of selling bots were over.
But a few weeks later, the Secret Service, wielding shotguns, burst into his house while Wade was still asleep. They took every piece of electronics they could find and led Wade out in handcuffs.
Then, without a lawyer, Wade proceeded to spend six hours with the Secret Service and admitted to everything he had done, in detail, he said.
“I knew I did stuff wrong, but I’m like, I didn’t set out to hurt anyone or cause any trouble,” he said. “It’s kind of like a prank that goes too far.” Wade assumed, after they raided his house with shotguns and laid out their case to him, they had enough evidence that there was no point in fighting it.
A week later, he was taken to a Secret Service lab in Dallas, where the agents had essentially reassembled his garage, including his makeshift supercomputer. They wanted Wade to explain how it all worked. It was there that he won them over, proving he could be useful in helping the agency with crimes involving computers and the web.
Wade eventually pleaded guilty to all counts, with a promise that if he provided help as a kind of technical consultant to the government, they would do their best to lighten the sentence.
But the Secret Service only used Wade intermittently, and eventually handed him off to the New York FBI, which had a high-performing cybersecurity team that needed Wade’s help.
Know More
In 2007, Wade and his wife moved to New York, where he worked full time, but had a second job. He would often secretly visit the FBI office in downtown Manhattan, where he would consult on cases involving complex technology. Wade became friends with agents, including Tarbell, and began to enjoy the work.
“I don’t look at it as cooperation. I look at it as consulting. They need my help, so I help them. And I’m not forced to do it. I genuinely like the fact that I make a difference,” Wade said. “When your life is solving problems, having the government give you problems to solve is like the coolest thing ever.”
But his past was also taking a toll. Every time he would leave the country and come back, he would be held for hours by customs agents because of his criminal conviction.
Wade was worried that, one day, he’d be deported. And in 2012, he was finally sentenced, without receiving any prison time.
Wanting a change, he moved to Florida to work in iOS security for OpenPeak. He had made a name for himself by jailbreaking iPhones so that they could be customized in ways that Apple didn’t allow. The practice gave him intimate knowledge of the security holes in iPhones and how to fix them.
While working at OpenPeak, Wade met Templeton, then CEO of Citrix. The two companies were in acquisition talks. Templeton made a comment about how it would be cool if you could use a mouse on an iPad.
“Hang on a second,” Wade said, and left the boardroom. He drove to Best Buy and bought a Bluetooth mouse and wrote a new driver for the device, hacking it so that it worked on the iPad. He came back later that day and demonstrated his handiwork.
Templeton said he was blown away, but his engineering team assigned to due diligence on OpenPeak thought Wade faked the demo. “They thought it was impossible,” Templeton said.
Years later, Wade would turn the iPad mouse into a successful product for Citrix, allowing business executives to log in and use their Windows work computers through their iPads.
The View From Isaac Perlmutter
Wade’s legal lifeline stemmed from his fish obsession, which developed because his wife in his second marriage is allergic to dogs. Eventually, every room in their Florida home had at least one fish tank.
Wade had also made his own operating system, called Fish OS, that would automatically test the water chemistry, and turn the lights on and off.
The centerpiece was a 1,000-gallon tank of brilliantly colored coral and dazzling tropical fish.
When the fish doctor came over to look at Gemmy, he was wowed by Wade’s collection and told him he only knew one other person as crazy about fish. He wanted to make an introduction.
Wade ended up meeting Isaac Perlmutter at the Miami Seaquarium and the two instantly hit it off. Perlmutter told Wade he was a janitor at Marvel Entertainment.
Wade knew that story didn’t quite add up when the two had lunch and Perlmutter got into a $200,000 car. He later told Wade he was actually chairman and CEO of Marvel, and a respected, feared, intensely private businessman whose legendary gloves-off battles with the likes of Carl Icahn and the Disney board have made him a polarizing figure.
Wade gifted Perlmutter a piece of coral, he said, helping to seed Perlmutter’s massive aquarium in his home. And over the years, the two have traded countless fish, and they and their wives went on vacation to Australia.
The two never discussed politics. A longtime friend of Trump’s, Perlmutter has donated millions of dollars to his campaigns and has been an informal advisor, especially on veterans affairs. “We talk about fish,” Wade said.
And through their friendship, Wade ended up in close proximity to some of the country’s most powerful people.
During the pandemic, the outdated computer system that controls Florida’s unemployment benefits payment system buckled under the unprecedented volume.
Perlmutter told Gov. Ron DeSantis that Wade could help. Wade said he got a call from DeSantis, who put him in touch with the state employees in charge of the system. Wade ended up overseeing a complete overhaul of the byzantine unemployment payment software. Within a week or two, the checks were going out again, but Wade worked around the clock for another three months to fix it.
Wade never asked for anything in return, nor was his help ever publicized, according to a person on the governor’s staff at the time.
At the same time, Wade saw his chances of remaining in the US were fading. He had petitioned the Manhattan US Attorney to recommend vacating his conviction so that he would no longer be subject to deportation proceedings. But those attempts had been shut down, ending Wade’s ability to seek citizenship and stay in the US.
In 2017, Wade’s lawyer told him his only other avenue for staying in the country would be to get a presidential pardon.
Toward the end of 2019, Wade explained his situation to Perlmutter, who said he’d try to help. “I got to know Chris years ago through our shared interest in saltwater fish tanks and live reef aquariums. Over the years, our relationship broadened and grew into one based on genuine friendship and respect. When I learned Chris was seeking a pardon, I was happy to support his effort,” Perlmutter said in a statement.
Now What?
What ensued was a letter-writing campaign from many of the people Wade had gotten to know, which included top FBI agents and members of the community. Tarbell said it is the only time he has ever written a letter supporting a presidential pardon.
Wade’s conviction also harkened back to a forgotten era of cybersecurity enforcement — the war on spam. Wade’s conviction came shortly after the CAN-SPAM Act was implemented and law enforcement was eager to show they were doing something about it.
“It was just using people’s IP addresses to get through spam filters,” Tarbell said. “We don’t even charge spam anymore.”
Wade waited for a year but heard nothing. He was preoccupied with a nasty lawsuit filed by Apple, which accused him of providing technology to hostile governments — an allegation that the judge in the case shot down.
Finally, in December of 2020, Wade’s luck turned. He won the case against Apple. And for the first time in four years, he took a vacation with his wife to the Florida Keys.
Wade was standing on a pier, watching the sunset when his phone rang. It was Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who told Wade that Trump had just signed the pardon, and sent a photo of the signed document.
Then Ivanka Trump grabbed the phone from her husband, and told Wade that she was excited for him and they would have dinner with him sometime to hear his story.
Wade called his lawyer and explained, matter-of-factly, that he had received a presidential pardon and would like to pursue citizenship. “He didn’t believe me,” Wade said.
The following fall, Wade and his wife hosted Ivanka and Kushner, as well as Perlmutter and his wife, for a steak dinner. The couples shared stories and Wade introduced them to a healthy Gemmy, who was still swimming in the 1,000-gallon tank.