One of the most mysterious and dangerous crime figures in the world is currently in the custody of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and his life of crime may have been encouraged by an attorney from Costa Rica.

The life of Paul Calder Le Roux, a 43-year old Caucasian man born in the former African nation of Rhodesia, seems to have been envisioned by the late British author Ian Fleming as he chose cartoonishly evil nemeses for James Bond, Agent 007 of Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

Paul Le Roux is suspected to have acted in a leadership position in the following crimes:

• Illegal sales of prescription narcotics
• Land grabs in Zimbabwe
• Illegal logging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Illegal mining of precious metals
• Smuggling of gold
• Money laundering
• Coca, poppy and cannabis farming
• Cocaine trafficking in the Americas
• Weapons trafficking in Somalia
• Drug trafficking in Southeast Asia
• Disarming mercenary groups in Africa to profit from selling their weapons
• Running a private army in Africa
• Stockpiling materials for the fabrication of explosives
• Keeping a network of hitmen
• Ordering multiple assassinations around the world (!)
• Exporting a missile guidance system to Iran (!!)

According to a fascinating investigation by United States journalist Evan Ratliff of Atavist magazine, a young Paul Le Roux was very interested in data encryption around during the mid-1990s.

Members of the open source encryption community recall Mr. Le Roux as a brilliant, yet despicable and racist programmer whose work may have resulted in TrueCrypt, once considered to be the strongest disk encryption utility in the world. By the time TrueCrypt was making headlines due to its ability to thwart criminal and judicial investigations, Mr. Le Roux had moved on. Always hungry to make money, he considered coding an online casino engine that he would sell to firms in Canada and Romania, and that seems to have been his sole connection to Costa Rica around 2004.

According to Mr. Ratliff’s Atavist investigation:

Mr. Le Roux said he decided to switch to online pill selling after a lawyer in Costa Rica—where much of the online casino industry was based—suggested that he go into pharmacies instead.

It is common knowledge that by 2004 the online gambling industry of Costa Rica was fully developed (and legal), and thus Mr. Le Roux would have faced considerable competition. Mr. Le Roux would go on to make millions of dollars from the operations of a massive network of illegal online pharmacies that mostly served pill seekers in the United States. From that point on, he reinvested those illegal profits into more nefarious pursuits.

Mr. Le Roux would be arrested in Liberia (the African nation, not the city in Costa Rica) after falling into a trap set by DEA agents in Rio de Janeiro. Mr. Le Roux thought he was participating in a lucrative shipment of methamphetamine. His arrest took place within a veil of total secrecy. As of March 2016, Mr. Le Roux was still being handled by the DEA as a top-level informant.