Back in February of this year, I received one of the most chilling emails in my life when someone threatened my life: “I will slaughter you“.

That email penetrated something deep into my soul and heart and I was not quite myself for a few days.

Almost six month later (a few days ago), I received another email from a person who claims to be this “Al Nocai” from that first threat. I read the beginning of this email several times before I actually could make myself continue past the opening paragraphs. Slightly worried what to find, with the memories from the last time coming back.

This email however, says “an apology” in the subject. I believe this email is written by the same guy.

The long and full apology is inserted below. The gist of it is: he claims to have been the victim of all sorts of bad stuff by several people named “Dan” and I got lumped in there because of my first name. He (?) also says he suffers from schizophrenia.

I’m publishing this partly because I got a lot of attention when I made the initial threat public so I figure it could be interesting for some to learn about this development. I can of course not verify that this is in fact the same person nor will I even attempt to verify any of his many claims of wrongdoings against him.

I’m happy for “Al” that he’s getting help and tries to move on. For me, this apology at least finally proves that this threat is over and in fact never was intended literally. I hope I will never receive anything close to that again.

The apology in full

I am Al Nocai. When I contacted you initially, I believed you to be a Dan E., from texas, or a Dan S from delaware or a Dan from Minneapolis. I didn’t do my research, and when I found it was actually you and you had nothing to do with my situation, I became indignant and even more of an asshole. You had every right to be mad, and publish as you did. I’m not trying to justify what I did, there is none, I should have been a lot more cordial. I just want to provide context around what was happening, I believe I at least owe you why.

I had to retire from my career do to schizophrenia. Again, I should have not let my delusions go to the point they did nor should I have acted the way it does. My illness doesn’t detract from the rashness of my actions.

I, at the time, lost my defense project after getting hacked through the Department of Veterans Affairs in the US. It was a few years into development, and it was meant to be a pathway to get homeless veterans off the streets. I was trying to develop a “trade-route” in tech. At the time I was very lucid. I was volunteering regularly in my community and I had a great family life. In October 2020, there was an attempt on my life which left me bludgeoned and near death with 2 orbital fractures. These event led me to uncover a massive money laundering operation and then had ties elsewhere. I then got hacked. When I say hacked, I lost every device. They rooted my charge arbitrator, I was bios bonded and I basically lost every document and all my software.

The people who did it gloated to me about it to me through linkedin. Trying to take my computers back, I ended up QAing a lot of their malware. This led to be being whaled for months. People attempted to blackmail me, they stole my identity and I was lied to about what I was doing as the people approaching me hid their relations to the people who initially hacked me.

These stressors where the predicates to my psychotic break. My federal correspondence about the hacking was re-routed. I had people impersonating microsoft employees. I even had a $50 billion dollar mortgage servicer trying to sue me over tweets. I also had firms like outpost 24 doing MiTM attacks on me, which is also a factor as I didnt realize at first where all my EU Certs were coming from in my Active directory.

Last, just to give you a clearer picture at how much I was monitored: I ended up not being able to take anything back in Windows. They were in my Windows Registry directly from install. Finding what I did, I believe I misattributed a good amount of sloppy programming to malicious behavior due to stress and paranoia.

So why did I believe you to be someone else? All the people responsible for these actions, well most of them were named Dan. They were mostly ex-google employees. Which is why my results changed and I ended up with about 19k various porn accounts in my name. This, they were also posing as random people named Dan (i.e. when IO tried telling Convercent, Microsoft’s auditor) about the issues. They were named Dan, and they were fraudulent.

So when I found what I did, and as well maintained as I did, I jumped the gun and assumed you were, again, one of the individuals I had whaling me. And at that point, after going to every agency I could, state and local, about the issue, I was a vicious dog backed into a corner. And I also at the time didn’t mean I’d physically harm you. I meant I was going to keep taking out your site.

Again, this doesn’t excuse my behavior. And in the end after all I tried to do to report everything that was happening. I ended up making the people who whaled me a lot of money. And I ended up still losing everything, but I also hurt and was a real asshole to a lot of people that had nothing to do with anything.

In the end, I had a hard time realizing what I did and the curl reason was a piss poor one. Again, I was just being an indignant ass. Especially to someone who actually reported security issues.

Sorry it took me a long time to write this. I should have apologized right after I knew I was wrong. I apologize for that mistake as well.

This amends is also a part of my getting better. So I apologize if this angered you. I just needed to make sure I tell you that I was wrong and I should have had better judgement.

I hope this message finds you well,
nocai