The Sinaloa drug cartel hired a hacker to use phone data and surveillance cameras to track and kill FBI informants, according to the Justice Department.
On Thursday, the operation was revealed in a 47-page audit released by the department’s inspector general, detailing the FBI’s “efforts to mitigate the effects of ubiquitous technical surveillance.”
According to the partially redacted audit, an unidentified hacker was recruited by the cartel in 2018, when the FBI was working on the El Chapo case. Juaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is the founder of the Sinaloa cartel. He is serving a life sentence in a maximum-security U.S. prison for trafficking massive amounts of cocaine and other drugs into America for more than 25 years.
The report said the hacker “observed people going in and out of the United States Embassy in Mexico City and identified ‘people of interest’ for the cartel, including an FBI assistant legal attache.”
Using the attache’s phone number, the hacker was able to trace incoming and outgoing calls, and obtain geolocation data. According to the FBI, the hacker was also able to use Mexico City’s camera system to follow the attache throughout the city and identify people they met with.
“The cartel used that information to intimidate and, in some instances, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses,” the audit said.
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Author: Dillon B
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