01x02 - We got hacked!

[bunniefuu]

So my April Fool's Day prank plan is

to put some jelly

behind the refrigerator handle.

Then she's gonna come over here

to the sink, turn it on

and [chuckles]

And get sprayed in the face.

[kids shouting]

[Nia] Ew, Samuel! Oh my gosh!

- [Sam] What?

- I hate jelly on my hands!

[gasps] Samuel Paul Rader!

[synth music plays]

[both chuckling]

April Fool's!

Oh my gosh!

After the Frozen video went viral,

a lot of people were like,

"You have a cute family.

You should blog, you should vlog."

We're not really shy,

we're both personable people.

We're like, "We could do this,

this would be a lot of fun."

Well, hey! [laughs]

[Nia] And we just started.

We're on our way to the FC Dallas game.

[straining] Yes!

This doesn't look very good.

Sam knew the ya know, the YouTube scene,

I guess.

He kinda knew how to title things

and, like, how to create a legit video,

and our channel started to, like, thrive.

[dance music plays]

It's that time of the week again,

Symphony and I are going exploring.

The response was really good.

We were putting out videos day after day.

Good morning, guys!

Good morning!

How's everybody doing?

Our following just started amassing.

We got more and more subscribers.

It was insane.

Nice to meet you.

You guys are the two things

we watch as a family.

For us, vlogging was just

showing other families

what it looked like to live for the Lord.

[Nia] Even people

who have not been introduced to God,

they're being introduced to God

through the love we're demonstrating.

I really like to be outside with the kids

for at least Ahhh!

The most exciting thing for me

was that now Sam

is present with the camera.

I was no longer going

to the grocery store alone.

Cooking breakfast became,

like, a family affair.

Everything was just like,

"Life is awesome now."

Ashley Madison was behind me.

But I had no idea what was coming.

[sound distorts]

[theme music plays]

[foreboding music plays]

[Cathy] It was just a regular day

going into work.

I was starting at nine.

When we walked into the office,

everyone was just like standing around,

and we were told

not to touch our computers.

Then we,

in our customer-service morning meeting,

found out that there was a hack.

We had an overnight customer-service rep,

and the message popped up on her screen.

"We are the Impact Team."

"We have taken over all systems

in your entire office

and production domains."

"Ashley Madison must shut down

immediately, permanently."

We got hacked.

I mean, it was just crazy.

It was blackmail.

"If you don't shut down your business,

we're going

to make public

everybody in your databases,

all of their addresses,

all of their credit-card information,

and all of their sexual fantasies."

[images click by]

If that information got out,

this would ruin a lot of people's lives.

[Evan] I went in to talk to Noel

and the top executives.

There was a lot of anger in that room,

Noel was pissed.

If it hit the press,

it would've been devastating.

Up until that point,

Noel's focus was taking the company public

on the stock exchange.

For an investor,

if you believe online dating

is here to stay,

then Ashley Madison

becomes a very safe bet.

We were excited.

The IPO was gonna mean

we would make a shitload of money,

and he didn't want anything to stop that,

so we would never shut down.

We were very secretive

about what happened.

No press and certainly no police.

[dramatic orchestral music plays]

We had to figure out who hacked us

before they released the database.

Noel was not fearful.

He was like, "We have really bright guys,

we're gonna bring in

some other bright guys."

He got on the phone

with these specialists from Sweden.

[phone line ringing]

[funky dance music plays]

[line picks up]

[man] I get a call from Canada,

and they informed me

that Ashley Madison has been compromised.

Most of my clients

are like government agencies.

It's, uh, national security-related.

Offensive security.

So more more attack

than defense, basically.

Ashley Madison wanted me to fly over,

and I decided to call my friend André.

The first time I heard about Joel

was when I was working

for the, uh, Swedish Security Services.

They were suspecting Joel

of a computer breach.

He's the best hacker I know in the world.

[chuckles] They keep sliding down.

[laughs]

The thing is, I usually like work,

you know, leaned back. [laughs]

Yeah.

Well, he's [splutters]in the top ten.

Joel called me about the data breach,

and we agreed that I should join him.

Before I went over to Canada,

I did not know anything about the site.

I don't judge, I'm a Swede. [laughs]

We're we're quite liberal.

[Joel] I arrived in Toronto

at Ashley Madison.

It was obviously a bit chaotic.

Everyone was wondering what is going on

and who who was behind it.

[Amit] All I remember

is coming into the office

and seeing a team of individuals

I've never seen before.

I was pretty young and junior,

so, for me, I was completely in the dark.

[André] Then I met

the man in charge, Noel.

He did not know what to do,

so he was a bit lost.

I could not see

that there was an investigation ongoing.

There was no contact with law enforcement.

I took charge. [laughs]

The mandate I got from Noel

was find the data and secure the data.

I think he was the most determined

anybody would be for anything.

I think he felt

Ashley Madison was his baby,

and his baby had a brain tumor,

and it needed to get resolved

or the baby was gonna die.

[solemn music plays]

[André] The mood was very intense.

The company had a daily revenue

of like a quarter of a million.

So that was at stake here.

But also the integrity

of 40 million users of the site.

People using this service, having affairs.

It was a lot of people's private life

that was on the balance here.

[gentle piano music plays]

[woman] In a close-knit community,

you are known.

And there is a lot good about being known,

and there's a lot that's not so good

about being known.

If you've got something to hide

it's not so great,

or if you wanna get away with something,

um, it's not so great.

For 30 years I lived in New Orleans,

where my husband was a professor

at New Orleans Seminary,

and I worked on staff at a church.

[projector clicks]

I met John when I was 23.

I was visiting with some friends,

and they invited John over.

I liked him. He was funny.

He was smart,

and he was super friendly and outgoing.

And so we just begin writing

back and forth.

I would get so excited

about a letter coming.

This was before e-mail,

it was before all of that.

John is an incredible letter writer.

He was very idealistic,

and I felt like we wanted the same things.

By the time I was 24, we married.

I was just full of hope

that I was gonna have this perfect life.

And yes, we would encounter trials.

But I would've never,

in a million years, have imagined

that Ashley Madison would've played

a part in our marriage.

[André] At the office there was a space

that they called the Clinton Room,

and that was a conference room

in back of the office

that we commandeered

and where we set up our headquarters.

[anxious violin music plays]

[Cathy] The boardroom was relatively close

to the customer-service area.

There's a lot of commotion,

people going in and out,

pacing of higher-ups going back and forth.

Everything was still expected to get done.

So needless to say

it was stressful and quite distracting

tryin' to juggle this unknown

that was going on

with everything else we had to do.

[André] Every investigation

is a challenge,

and the challenge is finding the answer.

So it's like a treasure hunt.

There were things working against us.

When we arrived to Ashley Madison,

it seemed to me they were doing things

like erasing hard drives.

They were probably

trying to secure the systems

so they could lock out the hacker.

Like, if something is suspicious,

okay, then wipe it.

Wipe the laptop, wipe the

And I'm like, "No!"

This is exactly what

we need to be looking at.

[André] But at least no data

had been leaked yet.

The first thing to look at

was the hackers' initial message.

Of course it's important,

because that's a clue.

[Joel] They had called themselves

the Impact Team.

They were not after any money

or recognition.

I think it's a very

[pleasant guitar music plays]

ideologically, um,

motivated attack.

My first feeling was maybe

some religious zealot.

There was watercooler conversation

that it might've been

a disgruntled customer.

Somebody who found out

that their spouse was using the website.

But it was clear that

with a service such as this,

you piss off a lot of people.

[mysterious music plays]

[André] To find the traces,

the fingerprints,

of whoever has done this,

you always go to the log files

because that's the record

of what has happened in in the past

for that computer network.

We can see the time and what account

has been used to log into the system.

I spent most of my time

analyzing these logs.

And then I had found something

that was quite interesting.

So in the log file,

I could see the hackers had connected

using software

as if they were an employee,

with a very specific version.

And that particular version

had only been used

by a previous contractor.

And that contractor

didn't work for Ashley Madison

at the time when they connected.

We could already link them

to unauthorized activity.

To me, it was quite clear

that this had significance.

[menacing music plays]

But then, suddenly,

things got really bad for Ashley Madison.

New this morning,

millions of cheating husbands and wives

should be on edge right now.

The Impact Team released

the public statement on the Internet.

[Evan] The hack had been our secret,

and now everybody had found out.

Their names

and other sensitive information

could soon be exposed.

Hackers have attacked

the dating website Ashley Madison.

It got picked up by media,

and it was a complete frenzy.

Thirty-seven million users.

Thirty-seven million users.

Thirty-seven million.

Thirty-seven million people right now

biting their fingernails.

If this is revealed

I remember, uh, getting assigned

to cover that story.

Just a sense of,

is there a b*mb that's about to go off?

They call themselves Impact Team.

"Shutting down AM will cost you,

non-compliance will cost you more."

If you're a hacker,

sometimes you steal data,

you sell it,

you do everything in the shadows.

These guys, they had a demand,

they wanted it to be known,

and not just to the company,

but to basically everybody else

on the Internet.

This is not a site to share recipes,

it's to share sexual fantasies and photos.

Okay, th this is this is

this is f*cking bad.

- I'm waiting for the fun to begin on this.

- Yeah.

- [man] Could be horrible.

- Whose name will be on it?

It was all over the place.

Late night making jokes.

Isn't that like everyone? Isn't that like

[audience laughing]

I mean, really.

Walmart doesn't have 37 million customers.

[Evan] Noel's like,

"I can't believe this has happened."

The IPO is gonna be blown up.

Now, the threat was to comply

within a certain time window.

They gave us 30 days to shut down

or they would release, uh, the data.

Ultimately, now Ashley Madison

has a decision to make.

[Evan] Now the clock was ticking, 30 days,

because then they were gonna release

the database,

and nobody had any doubt

that they had the database,

and they would release it.

Nobody had any doubt of that.

[phones ringing]

[Cathy] That's when

the phone calls started.

Hundreds a day.

Everyone wanted to know

what information was out there.

Do they really have my address?

Do they have access to my profile pics?

I had sympathy for them, of course.

We promised discretion and privacy,

and that didn't happen.

So it was heartbreaking

to see customers going through that.

[whimsical music plays]

[Sam] I heard about the hack.

The title appeared on Yahoo! News.

I didn't wanna consider it.

It would have just completely decimated

my reputation, especially as a Christian.

I would've been known

for the opposite of what I stood for.

So I just Nope, not even going there.

[inaudible]

Also, Nia and I were trying

for another baby.

Hey, guys.

Trying to hide from Nia.

So I've had this dream

about announcing Nia's pregnancy to her.

I wanted to find out before she does.

[whispers] I have a specimen.

I have a specimen.

I knew it would be there.

It's a pretty clear sample.

Two lines is "pregnant."

[gasps] Oh my gosh!

Oh!

I felt kinda wrong.

Like I had this information

I'm not allowed to have

before a woman has it.

Good morning.

Can you pick something

out of my top pocket right there?

- Pull it out.

- Oh my gosh.

Pull it out.

Oh gosh, you are so funny.

Oh, you brought a positive one home?

You're so silly.

The joke's on her, right, guys?

What did you do?

Did you get a dropper out of the toilet?

- No, you didn't.

- I did.

No way. Are you serious right now?

[Sam] Her reaction is just priceless.

She, like, freaked out.

I couldn't believe what was happening.

Like, has any guy in history

ever been able to surprise the wife?

It never happens that way.

There's a baby in my tummy.

I uploaded the video and called it

"Husband Shocks Wife with Pregnancy."

This is not fair!

[Sam] That day, the video

has this massive spike in views.

[Nia] It took off right away.

This was like next level

from what we had seen,

and we were getting calls

from local news stations.

She wrote me at work,

"I'm two weeks late."

I was like,

"Oh, wow, I gotta get on this."

So I took some pregnancy tests home

that that morning.

[Nia] This was good for Sam.

He could quit his job

and do this full-time.

We are about to start an interview

with RTL Television.

We were living in the public now,

and suddenly I felt so vulnerable.

- [chuckling]

- Oh, h*!

Samuel!

[Sam] If my name was discovered

in the Ashley Madison dump, I'm done.

That's it for me and my marriage.

[mellow string music plays]

I was sitting in my office

at police headquarters,

and I was reading

the Toronto Sun newspaper.

That's when I heard

about Ashley Madison bein' hacked.

"Life is short, have an affair."

Yes, I mean,

it was obviously, uh, what that was for.

I mean, it was for hookups.

One-night stands, maybe a week stands.

The hackers say they don't just have

the records, each person's profile.

They also have the financial information.

This hack, it's criminal stuff.

So we went to Ashley Madison.

I wanted to get a clearer picture.

I met with the CEO.

We found out they hired

a cybersecurity team from Europe.

I wanted to inform Ashley Madison

the cooperation that was required.

[delicate music plays]

But a lot of stuff was not bein' shared.

I don't think that any company would allow

the police in with an open door.

Their focus was the damage control

more than anything.

[André] It was an enormous pressure

from the board on Noel to get this fixed.

Earlier this spring the company

was talking about going public.

I think this pushes those plans back.

[André] The sense of urgency went up.

[Bryce] They'd already identified

a potential suspect.

[André] So we set up a phone conversation,

and he agreed to meet us.

So we needed to have a plan.

Noel and the board wanted

to have this meeting on the same day

and get the information back

as soon as possible.

[Bryce] I was told later on that matters

were taken in their own hands.

Their focus was making it go away

at whatever resources they could afford.

[André] As soon as we had a place to meet,

Noel sent me

for this meeting with the suspect.

At that point, I really thought

that things were quite promising.

[morose music plays]

[André] And I met him and had a coffee.

He was very nervous, of course,

and he was like,

"I had nothing to do with this."

After a while,

he starts to realize that we have

information that was pointing at him.

So he understood that.

So his demeanor changed.

He admitted readily to them about

the previous breeches into the system.

[André] But at this time,

he's still not saying

that he is involved with the hack.

[Bryce] He was offered monies

to help pay his mortgage off

if information would not be released

to the general public.

They had a lot to lose as a company.

But, uh, at the end of the day,

the money didn't talk.

He denied being involved.

Yeah, it it's frustrating. [chuckles]

[André] After, of course,

we phoned up the office

and told them what the outcome

of that conversation was.

I think Noel was disappointed.

But the contractor

was not taking responsibility.

Of course, it may not have been him.

[Joel] It could have been someone else

using their credentials.

We need to gather more evidence.

[Bryce] When we, the Toronto Police,

got search warrants

and finally go

and interview this gentleman,

by then he was, uh, involved

with a lawyer.

[André] When he did not confess

to the police,

they could not hold him

on these circumstances.

[hopeful music plays]

[Bryce] We were hampered

and hindered with this suspect

because there was a promise of monies

being offered to this individual.

I would have did a different approach.

There's so many options,

but those options were limited to almost

nonexistent with this gentleman.

[André] Then there was not much more

that the police could do,

and that was the end

of that investigation.

So we needed to find other leads

to investigate.

[upbeat music plays]

We were starting

to interview certain employees

that were kinda identified

as maybe potentially havin' knowledge

or bein' involved.

[André] So we were looking at person X

and person Y and so on.

Some were dismissed, uh, right away,

some were more

of an ongoing investigation.

[André] There was a lot of leads

that did not go anywhere.

That was disappointing.

[Evan] The police were not able

to get anything done.

Our team was not

really getting too much done.

Noel and the board members

would never give up millions of dollars

in revenue.

So we had to play chicken.

We knew that if there was any truth

behind the Impact Team,

of their actual threat,

it was now just a waiting period.

We were bracing.

Our legal department, our PR machine,

we were waiting, holding our breath.

Maybe hoping we'd come back the next day,

turn on our computers, and it'd say,

"This is the Impact Team,

we're just kidding." [laughs]

Likely.

[clock ticking]

[upbeat music crescendoes]

[dramatic choir music plays]

[female reporter] The hackers

who stole private data

from the cheating website Ashley Madison

just followed through on their threat.

The whole dataset

was released to the world.

[female reporter] E-mails, names,

credit-card transactions, and much more

reportedly leaked

onto the so-called dark web.

This was the outcome that nobody wanted.

Another story we're following.

It could spell trouble

for the millions of users

of the cheating website Ashley Madison.

Tonight, thanks to hackers,

a lot of secrets are out.

It's a worldwide victimization.

It's now left many South Africans

in a somewhat uncomfortable position.

[reporting in French]

[reporting in Spanish]

[in English] I had not witnessed any other

personal hacks of this magnitude

ever happen anywhere in the world.

It's the type of data that's not meant

to be shared with the general public.

It was chaos.

It was one step forward,

10,000 steps backwards.

You can't put the genie back in the bottle

once the data is out there.

- [man] The damage is done.

- [woman] Really scary.

[Evan] Noel couldn't believe

what was happening.

It was like they cut off Ashley Madison

at the knees.

Everything we had worked so hard for

was all just blowing up.

[foreboding music plays]

[mouse clicks]

[Bryce] You see and witness what some

of these clients place in their profile.

A lot of people

were talkin' about three-way sex.

Most was two females and a male,

but a lot of these gentlemen wanted

to have sex with a male and a female.

Uh, there's people that wanted

to be urinated on, defecated on.

In 2015, journalists were still grappling

with the idea

of whether they should even download

or use data that was stolen by hackers.

[woman] I'm sure you're going through it.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, this is true, I am looking

through it for journalistic purposes.

But the question that matters is,

is there anything in here

that's in the public interest,

that people should know?

Everyone was digging through it,

looking for dirt,

uh, looking for names that they recognize.

[Sam] When I saw that the Impact

had decided to come out with the data,

I got worried.

[intriguing music plays]

Nia and I were at the airport.

We were headed

to a vlogger fair in Seattle.

It's a conference for vloggers,

family vloggers.

And then name after name

started coming out.

State attorney Jeff Ashton

had a membership to the website.

I deeply regret

my affiliation with the site,

which has caused a great amount of stress

and heartache to my wife and children.

That's when I did start freakin' out

a little.

And I'm scrolling Twitter,

makin' sure that my name was safe,

and I was just, like, hoping for the best.

And then as I'm scrolling,

I see this obscure account

made this tweet that says,

"Did I just scoop that Sam Rader

was found in the Ashley Madison dump?"

I was like

I couldn't believe what I was reading.

I feel like it was probably the closest

I've ever come to to passing out

from just seeing something

or reading something.

Everything just disappears around me.

I felt a sudden sense of doom

and that my life was over.

We're about to sit down to eat

at a Chili's inside of the airport,

and so I make the decision

somewhere right there.

I have to tell Nia before she reads this,

before she finds out.

How the heck am I gonna tell her this?

[anxious violin music plays]

[Nia] I think it was like six at night

by this point.

I had not eaten that day,

and I was just, like, on the menu,

like really invested.

What are we getting?

Let's get this quickly.

I look over, Sam's on his phone,

and he looks very serious

and intent about what he's reading.

I just put my hands on the table.

She can tell something's really wrong.

The waiter came, he took our order,

and after that

I remember Sam leaning forward.

His body language was kind of like inward,

like he didn't want anybody to hear

what he was about to say.

And he said,

"I have something to tell you."

"There's a website where married people

can go to have an affair,

and stupidly I had an account for that,

and someone has hacked

into Ashley Madison,

and a list of names

is being leaked, like, right now,

and my name was just exposed on Twitter."

She was just kinda lookin' down,

listening to me,

and just tryin' to take it in.

I was infuriated.

I was really just angry right away

about the not thinking it through

on his part. Like

Just such a selfish decision.

Now here we are

potentially going to just, like,

lose everything, like, maybe we've built.

[delicate piano music plays]

[quietly] Oh, wow.

I kinda started questioning him.

"So did you meet up with anybody?" "No."

- "You talk to anybody?" "Not really."

- [Sam] This was a couple years ago.

I never met with a single person before,

I never cheated on you.

He was a little v um, vague about

He k kept that pretty, like

Minimize. Like, "I did nothing.

Nothing happened, don't worry."

And and I I kinda like latched

onto that.

But I still felt betrayed.

[Sam] We got on the airplane.

Nia's kind of visibly upset.

For some reason,

Nia and I sit separately on the plane.

I can't remember why.

I remember saying,

"I don't wanna sit with you."

[sad piano music plays]

There was just a lot of anger.

Like, "I've been a good wife.

I've been a good mother."

There's just no reason, you know?

He's got everything he needs.

Like, I I I'm there for him

in every way.

What in the world is missing

that he needs to go on this website?

And at the same time,

I didn't want to get off the plane

and arrive at a convention

at odds with him.

I believed that he didn't do anything.

I really, truly believed him,

and my heart wanted to forgive quickly.

So maybe he got curious about it,

and maybe I need to accept that he's got

some curiosities I didn't know about.

But he still didn't,

and it's like that part was still safe.

[Sam] Plane lands, we're in Seattle.

She's like,

"Okay. So, what are we gonna do?"

[Nia] We went to a hotel that night.

I remember sitting on the edge of the bed,

like so proud of myself.

Like, "I really am the best wife."

I really felt like I outdid him

in that moment.

Like, "You signed up

for the stupid, skeezy website,

and here I am working to forgive you,

still going to be intimate with you."

Like, "What woman would be intimate

with you?"

And thinking like,

"I'm winning at this marriage game."

[Christi] I would say most people thought

we had a very happy marriage.

You can work so hard at an image,

that you can make it very believable.

You spend so much time building that,

that you begin to believe

it's the reality.

[intriguing music plays]

I remember hearing

that Ashley Madison had been hacked,

and it crossed my mind

that John's name might be there.

[projector clicks]

He has always been a secret-keeper.

But as secretive as John is,

he wasn't very careful with his secrets.

Early on, when I started seeing things

that made me wonder,

that I wasn't real sure about,

that I had doubts about,

I would just go,

"Wait, no, everything's okay."

"I must be imagining that."

"I must be creating something

that's not really there."

I think I gaslighted myself

as much as anything.

But there were just a few things that

that happened that I couldn't brush aside.

I discovered

some inappropriate relationships.

I would come across a letter

from someone to him.

I think the letters

were one of the hardest things.

That was our thing.

And, um, that hurt.

So when I first heard

about Ashley Madison,

I tried to search for his name.

And it wasn't quite that easy.

There were hoops you had to jump through,

and I didn't wanna jump through them.

I had reached a point where I'd realized,

"Christi, you're really not gonna do

anything about it."

"So why know?"

So I just didn't look anymore,

hoping I was wrong.

[man] The only people that aren't

freaking out are probably lawyers,

'cause you can only imagine

the number of people

that are gonna be taking

their significant other to divorce court.

[manic piano music plays]

Seeing the scale of the data

and how quickly the media picked up on it,

it was a real gut punch.

[reporter] The list of Ashley Madison

users being exposed is growing fast,

from school principals

to state prosecutors.

You had celebrities

being disgraced in in public.

Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi's husband

Jionni LaValle's e-mail

was reportedly found

linked to the cheating site.

[man] The reality television star

Josh Duggar

admits now he cheated on his wife.

[woman] Real Housewives of New York

star Kristen Taekman's husband Josh

has admitted he did indeed sign up

for what Ashley Madison was selling.

Their clientele ranged from common folk

to the prominent people in society,

and some of them had, uh, status.

WIRED magazine's reporting

that one analysis of the e-mail addresses

shows that some 15,000 were dot-mil,

military e-mail addresses,

or dot-gov addresses.

[man] The son of Vice President Joe Biden

is responding after an unconfirmed report

showed an Ashley Madison account

linked to his e-mail address.

When you start seein' the names

on those lists,

it could cause

some national-security issues.

This could be the biggest hack

of all time.

If not in raw numbers,

at least in terms of impact.

A lot of people were starting to receive,

um, threatening letters, blackmailing.

Saying that if you pay me

X amount of dollars,

I will clear your name

and any sort of trace

that you ever had an account

with Ashley Madison.

[Cathy] We wouldn't advise

to do it or not do it.

But we would definitely suggest

that they change their password.

If a company states a privacy policy,

they'd better stand by

that privacy policy.

They'll be out of business.

Everyone was on edge.

There could be lawsuits,

there could be fines.

[Evan] Noel still seemed to think

that he would come through it

and he would save his company.

[Nia] Hair 101 with April here.

- What do you think?

- [Nia] That looks cool.

The next day we wake up.

So we go into the conference.

It's a convention for vloggers.

Like daily vloggers, weekly, whatever.

You can network, make new friends.

[Sam] We were goin' about our day.

There were some comments

on Twitter about me,

but it's not goin' viral or anything.

[Nia] And then it kinda shifted.

People were just kinda looking at us.

[anxious music plays]

And I see all these articles

start coming out about me.

That I was in the Ashley Madison dump.

Then another and another,

and this is within like ten minutes.

"Oh gosh, it's happening."

Today we're sticking to one subject,

the celebrity fallout

from the Ashley Madison hack.

Christian blogger Sam Rader was found

on the master list as a subscriber.

[Nia] I felt so humiliated.

Just had this sense of,

like, all eyes on us.

I'm obviously the wife,

and so "poor her," you know?

Like, "I'm so sorry for her."

And I was so annoyed,

like, that he put all this on me.

[Sam] And I start getting tons of e-mails

from media outlets.

E-mail after e-mail, phone call.

I just didn't say a word.

I kept completely silent.

It was just unbelievable to me

that I'm in the news for this.

[sighs]

It just didn't make any sense to me

that people cared.

If you do boast a moral high ground,

you get more attention when you're caught

on a website

with the sole purpose of adultery.

The attitude toward people

using the website was

It was an it was an absolute witch hunt.

It certainly brings up echoes of,

in the past adulterers would have to wear

a scarlet letter A around their neck.

I just love this.

I love the idea that people thought,

somehow, that there was a fail-safe method

of going hunting for available women

when you were married,

and somehow karma would not fall on you

like a ton of bricks.

People started, uh, making websites

that you could type a name

or e-mail address into the search bar,

and it would tell you if that person

had an account on the website.

Now what you're seeing,

this happened in the last couple hours,

people are taking this data

and making it easy to find

on the open web.

Different media outlets

took different approaches with this.

I think one that took it the farthest

was an Australian radio station

that invited people to call in,

provide their partner's e-mail address,

and they would look up whether or not

their partner had been on the site,

live on the air.

[boat horn blares]

[dramatic music plays]

[Australian man 1] All right, now, Jo,

you've rung us.

You're suspicious about your partner.

[Australian woman] Yeah. When I heard it,

I thought I should ring up.

His hours have changed.

He's following very close to him now.

Bits of money, where have they gone?

Not really sure.

[Australian man 1] Okay.

We've got his details here.

Um, and his details have revealed

that he's actually on the website, Jo.

[Australian woman] Are you serious?

- [Australian man 1] Yeah, I'm sorry.

- Are you kidding me?

[Australian man] Yeah. No, no, we Yeah.

[Australian woman] These websites

are disgusting.

[Australian man 1] Yeah Oh, Jo's gone.

[Australian man 2] I dunno

if we should've done that.

This practice in terms of, uh, you know,

the witch hunt,

of accusing people,

trying to publicly shame them,

I think went way, way too far.

[foreboding music plays]

[Christi] I woke up that morning

just like any other morning.

The first thing I smell is the coffee.

And I know John's in the kitchen.

And we were standing in the kitchen,

talking over our coffee.

We made plans for dinner.

He reminded me

we had some leftovers in the fridge,

and I said,

"Leftovers sounds good, let's eat that."

Then I went to work.

Later on, I got home

and a friend met me at the house,

and we stood in the driveway

and talked for a little while.

She said, "I hear something.

Is there a phone in there that's ringing?"

And she eventually left

and I went on inside.

So I began to sense

that things weren't right.

John wasn't in the kitchen.

I went to the kitchen, he wasn't there,

which is where he would've been.

So I began looking

around the house for him.

Went upstairs.

Looked in our room.

He wasn't there.

And when I made it to the garage,

um

That's where I found him.

I realized the sound

that my friend was hearing

was the carbon monoxide alarm going off.

[beeping]

I immediately rushed over to him.

I checked his pulse at his neck,

I checked his pulse in his arms.

I felt his skin,

and he was cold to the touch.

He had been gone for a while.

I just sat there.

I didn't know what to do.

I was in shock. I was in shock.

Not a day I ever imagined.

Not a day

I would ever wanna live through again.

It was horrible.

I went back inside to find my phone

and called my friend,

and even in talking to her,

I couldn't say the words

"John is dead."

I said, "I I I think John is dead."

Because we lived within our community,

my house just immediately filled up.

In the course of all that,

I remember the moment

I remember somebody sitting down

and said, "Christi, we need to tell you

a little bit about what happened today."

[mysterious music plays]

He went to work.

He was told that he had an appointment

with the council that were his bosses.

And he went to the meeting,

and they let him know that his name

had been on the Ashley Madison website.

And the way they described it,

he was in tears,

and, um, did not try to deny it

in any way.

Just said, "Yes,

and I know you need my resignation."

And that he turned it in.

This was a school

for people studying to be in the ministry,

and he was from

three generations of pastors.

He couldn't walk into a classroom

at a seminary

and continue to teach with this known.

To realize that his name

was on Ashley Madison,

that realization, I think,

was very shocking for people.

I'm sure there are people

who are angry about Ashley Madison.

[intriguing music plays]

But I blame the secrecy.

The cancer of shame

that was eating away at him.

As far as the people

who just were poring over that list

and looking for names, and the witch hunt,

there's just a self-righteousness in that

that I think assumes that

you are without sin and without fault.

And when the men

were stoning the woman caught in adultery,

Jesus said, "Let you who is without sin

cast the first stone."

And I don't think any of us is qualified.

[Sam] So Nia and I,

we get back to our Airbnb,

and then we started getting pressure

from all directions to publish a response.

From our viewers, like,

"Sam, tell us what's going on."

"Is this real? True? What's happening?"

Hey, guys, as you may have seen,

my name has been associated

with an Ashley Madison account.

A website made for spouses

who wanna have an affair.

Um, I'm here to clarify some of this

with you guys because I owe it to you.

Um, I did make the account.

I made the account two years ago.

This was brought to my wife's attention.

She has forgiven me for this mistake

that I made in opening the account.

Um, I've sought forgiveness to God,

and he's forgiven me.

So I've been completely cleansed

of this sin.

And also, I need to c I need to be clear

that I've never met with a single person

face-to-face through that website,

and that I never had an affair

with anybody ever

while I've been married with Nia.

I did feel like it was his mess to fix.

I felt like, "You got yourself into this

and put us in this position."

Take responsibility

and do the majority of speaking.

This is what the atonement's all about,

forgiveness and second chances.

And I just wanna add too, guys,

I have forgiven Sam,

and I stand behind him.

Marriage is the real deal,

and it's been sealed,

and it's worth fighting for.

It always will be.

So [exhales] Oh, gosh.

[quiet music plays]

Yeah, so the aim was

to put an end to it and be done,

and continue our lives as it was

before this came out.

And I would say

it was pretty effective in doing that.

[Nia] I'm really clinging

to just this naive

and really hopeful place

of like, this is what is necessary

for us to move forward.

[dramatic music plays]

[Sam] But after uploading it,

the convictions like hit me

like a ton of bricks.

I knew how phony that video was

in the moment.

Like, I I knew what I was doing.

I kept ignoring it.

Nia had forgiven me, for sure,

right in that moment.

But Nia had no idea what

she was actually gonna have to forgive.

[sniffles]

[Evan] I just remember it was everywhere.

We were all over the news.

The media was relentless.

[man] Ashley Madison was a bad business.

I didn't like it.

So the fact that they'll probably

go out of business is good.

On one hand, I thought,

"This is completely catastrophic."

"This is it."

I think a lot of people

felt Ashley Madison, ya know, got hacked,

it's like, "Oh, Ted Bundy

got k*lled in a car accident."

It's like, who gives a sh*t?

On the flip side,

I also saw signs

that any press could mean good press.

All the world was talking about it.

Ashley Madison.

- Ashley Madison.

- Ashley Madison.

The website saw traffic

at levels that were never seen before.

They say, ya know, negative publicity

is good publicity.

I think that was the idea.

People were curious.

The history of the company

has always been a lot of media attention,

and that led me to think that maybe

that was just the whole purpose of it.

Why? Do we know anything

about why the hackers did this?

It's interesting.

I hadn't heard of this hacker group.

Not many people had.

They call themselves the Impact Team.

There were never any demands for money.

She says she's never heard of this group,

but you can assume they want publicity.

Maybe this was a publicity stunt.

Okay. Is the company responsible for this?

As I said, talk good about me,

talk bad about me,

but please talk about me.

[André] I have a total open mindset.

So everybody is a suspect

until, uh, they are not.

And that's when I started to ask myself,

is Noel capable of doing that?

[cheerful music plays]