Title : Company boss arrested over encrypted phones with links to bikie murders
link : Company boss arrested over encrypted phones with links to bikie murders
Company boss arrested over encrypted phones with links to bikie murders
The boss of a company that supplied encrypted phones suspected of being used to plan at least two murders in Australia has been arrested in California, after a joint operation between law enforcement agencies in the US, Australia and other countries.
Key points:
- Phantom Secure allegedly built an international client base of criminals
- Company CEO Vincent Ramos has been arrested in California
- Investigators have been told encrypted phones were involved in gambling, money laundering and drug trafficking
Vincent Ramos, chief executive of a Canadian company called Phantom Secure, was charged last week in California with racketeering activity involving gambling, money laundering and drug trafficking.
US authorities have argued that Phantom Secure operated explicitly to enable organised crime groups to evade detection while planning major crimes.
Phantom allegedly built an international client base of criminals by taking BlackBerry devices, stripping out the camera, microphone, GPS navigation and other features, and installing encryption software, making them difficult for law enforcement to crack.
It is believed that the encrypted devices were used in the planning of a number of murders in Australia, including that of Sydney Hells Angels member Tyrone Slemnik in 2013, and drug cook and Hells Angels associate Roy Yaghi in 2012.
But as the arrest warrant for Mr Ramos shows, the Australian link to Phantom Secure runs deeper than the two murders.
An affidavit by an FBI investigator attached to the warrant shows that much of the information about the inner workings of Phantom and its links to transnational organised crime comes from a drug trafficker the FBI managed to turn into a "co-operating witness" after he was arrested in September 2015.
The man, identified in the affidavit as CW-1, told US investigators that his drug trafficking organisation moved hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from Mexico, through the United States, ultimately destined for Canada and Australia.
A Phantom Secure device was used to organise these shipments.
In August 2015, the affidavit says, CW-1 and his "Australian conspirators" used the encrypted devices to coordinate a shipment of 10 kilograms of cocaine from the US to Australia, which was seized by Australian Border Force, and five kilograms of methamphetamine, which CW-1 arranged to be delivered to someone who was actually an undercover agent.
A year later, Australian Federal Police were operating a Phantom Secure device they had seized from an Australian who was arrested for drug smuggling.
They communicated with an unknown person in Los Angeles, who shipped 10 kilograms of cocaine to them in September 2016.
According to Nicholas Cheviron, the FBI special agent who wrote the affidavit, there are approximately 10,000 Phantom Secure devices in Australia, of a worldwide total of 20,000.
Special Agent Cheviron also states that law enforcement sources in Australia, the US and Canada say they do not know of a single "legitimate" Phantom Secure user.
The affidavit reveals that Phantom Secure used Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) software on top of an email program, which it routes through encrypted servers in countries such as Hong Kong and Panama.
Phantom Secure marketing material boasts there are several "advantages of having our servers and a portion of our business located in Panama … Panama does not cooperate with any other country's inquiries … Panama does not consider tax evasion a crime and as such does not help other countries in their investigations".
Special Agent Cheviron also says potential Phantom Secure customers must be vouched for by an existing customer, and undergo background checks before being accepted as a client.
Each client is then given a secure email address.
The affidavit says some of the email names chosen included prefixes such as "leadslinger", "The.cartel", The.killa", "narco", "Trigger-happy" and "Knee_capper9".
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