Authorities say Ramon Abbas, aka Hushpuppi, perfected a simple internet scam and laundered millions of dollars. His past says a lot about digital swagger, and the kinds of stories that get told online.

Why didn’t we?

Nicola Gobbo defended Melbourne’s most notorious criminals at the height of a 
gangland war. They didn’t know she had a secret.

One year ago the journalist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and never walked out. This is what happened.

How a brilliant self-made software programmer from South Africa single-handedly built an online startup that became one of the largest individual contributors to America’s burgeoning painkiller epidemic. In his world, everything was for sale. Pure methamphetamine manufactured in North Korea. Yachts built to outrun coast guards. Police protection and judges’ favor. Crates of military-grade weapons. Private jets full of gold. Missile-guidance systems. Unbreakable encryption. African militias. Explosives. Kidnapping. Torture. Murder. It's a world that lurks just outside of our everyday perception, in the dark corners of the internet we never visit, the quiet ports where ships slip in by night, the back room of the clinic down the street.

Part 1 of “The Mastermind,” a serialized investigation of Paul Le Roux, who went from brilliant programmer to vicious cartel boss to highly protected U.S. government asset.

On then-agent, now-congressman Michael Grimm and what happens when an F.B.I. informant turns out to be a con man.

“I shared my plans with no one, not my girlfriend, not my parents, not my closest friends. Nobody knew the route I was taking out of town, where I was going, or my new name. If I got caught, it would be by my own mistakes.” A writer’s attempt to disappear for a month with a $5,000 bounty on his head.

Tracking cyberextortionists and their roving swarms of bots.

How memories go wrong.

The search for the genetic distinction that allows certain animals, humans included, to be domesticated.

Most military experts agree that robots, not people, will inevitably do the fighting in ground wars. In Tennessee, a high-end gunsmith is already there. The story of Jerry Baber and his robot army.