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Phantom Secure was a Canadian company that provided modified secure mobile phones, which were equipped with a remotely operated kill switch. [1] After its shutdown, criminal users fled to alternatives including ANOM, which turned out to be a honeypot run by the FBI.
CEO Vincent Ramos was arrested at an Over Easy restaurant in Bellingham, Washington on 7 March 2018. At the time he lived in Richmond, British Columbia. Ramos had turned state's witness by June. Vincent Ramos did not provide login information or backdoors to Phantom Secure, deciding to instead serve the max sentence given, which was nine years in US prison. [1] [2]
It was said to have provided "secure communications to high-level drug traffickers and other criminal organization leaders" according to a 2018 FBI takedown announcement. [3] Its CEO, Vincent Ramos, was sentenced in 2019 to a nine-year prison sentence after telling undercover agents that he created the device to help drug traffickers. Customers included members of the Sinaloa Cartel, [4] and the FBI reportedly asked Ramos to plant a backdoor in Phantom Secure's encrypted network, which he refused to do. [5]
In September 2019 the RCMP arrested a man charged with leaking information to foreign entities. Cameron Ortis was director general of the National Intelligence Coordination Centre, a branch of the RCMP that specialised in analytics. He had been running the NICC since 2016 having joined the RCMP in 2007 as a strategic analyst from an academic background in technology and crime, after completing a PhD at the University of British Columbia before he joined. [1]
In 2018 a joint operation between the RCMP and FBI indicated that there might be a mole, the investigation led to the arrest of Ortis. Media reports have linked his arrest to Phantom Secure. [6]
He faces five charges under the Security of Information Act and the Criminal Code. [1] [6]
Charges against him include that in 2015 he supplied "special operational information" to "V.R", believed to be Vincent Ramos. [1] In early 2024, Ortis was sentenced to 14 years in prison. [7]
Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, commonly known as "El Chapo", is a Mexican former drug lord and a former leader within the Sinaloa Cartel. Guzmán is believed to be responsible for the deaths of over 34,000 people, and was considered to be the most powerful drug trafficker in the world until he was extradited to the United States and sentenced to life in prison.
Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, commonly referred to by his aliases El Jefe de Jefes and El Padrino, is a convicted Mexican drug kingpin who was one of the founders of the Guadalajara Cartel, which controlled much of the drug trafficking in Mexico and the corridors along the Mexico–United States border in the 1980s.
Rafael "Rafa" Caro Quintero is a Mexican drug lord who co-founded the now-disintegrated Guadalajara Cartel with Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo and other drug traffickers in the late 1970s. He is the brother of fellow drug trafficker Miguel Caro Quintero, founder and former leader of the defunct Sonora Cartel.
The Mexican drug war is an ongoing asymmetric armed conflict between the Mexican government and various drug trafficking syndicates. When the Mexican military intervened in 2006, the government's main objective was to reduce drug-related violence. The Mexican government has asserted that their primary focus is dismantling the cartels and preventing drug trafficking. The conflict has been described as the Mexican theater of the global war on drugs, as led by the United States federal government.
The Federal Ministerial Police is a Mexican federal agency tasked with fighting corruption and organized crime, through an executive order by President Felipe Calderón. The agency is directed by the Attorney General's Office (FGR) and may have been partly modeled on the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. PFM agents in action often wear masks to prevent themselves from being identified by gang leaders. PFM agents are uniformed when carrying out raids.
The Colima Cartel was a Mexican drug trafficking and methamphetamine producing cartel operating in Guadalajara, Jalisco. It was founded and led by José de Jesús Amezcua Contreras and supported by his brothers Adán and Luis.
Héctor Luis Palma Salazar, commonly known as "El Güero Palma", is a Mexican former drug trafficker and leader of the Sinaloa Cartel alongside Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. After his boss Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo ordered the brutal murder of his family, Palma set out to avenge them. Palma was arrested on June 23, 1995, and extradited to the United States, where he served a jail sentence until June 2016. He was then deported back to Mexico and charged with a double homicide for murdering two Nayarit police officers in 1995. Palma is currently incarcerated at the Altiplano Prison near Mexico City.
Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, commonly referred to by his alias Don Neto, is a Mexican drug lord and former leader of the Guadalajara Cartel, a defunct criminal group based in Jalisco. He headed the organization alongside Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, and Rafael Caro Quintero. Fonseca Carrillo was involved with drug trafficking since the early 1970s, primarily in Ecuador, and later moved his operations to Mexico.
Edgar Valdez Villarreal, also known as La Barbie, is a Mexican-American former drug lord and high-ranking lieutenant of the Beltrán Leyva Cartel. Valdez is serving a 49-year prison sentence at USP Coleman II in Florida.
The Sonora Cartel, also known as Caro Quintero Organization, was a Mexico based criminal cartel. Upon the cartel's disintegration, its leaders were incorporated into the Tijuana Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel.
A drug lord, drug baron, kingpin, or lord of drugs is a type of crime boss in charge of a drug trafficking network, organization, or enterprise.
La Línea is currently the leading faction of the Juárez Cartel originally designed to be one of the cartel's enforcer units set up by a number of former and active-duty policemen, heavily armed and extensively trained in urban warfare. Their corrupt "line" of policemen were set up to protect drug traffickers, but after forming an alliance with Barrio Azteca to fight off the forces of the Sinaloa Cartel in 2008, they established a foothold in Ciudad Juárez as the enforcement wing of the Juárez cartel. La Línea has also been involved in extortions and kidnappings. As of 2021, La Línea has formed an alliance with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in Ciudad Juárez to fight off influence and incursions from the Sinaloa Cartel.
Barrio Azteca, or Los Aztecas, is a Mexican-American street and prison gang originally based in El Paso, Texas, USA and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. The gang was formed in the Coffield Unit, located near Tennessee Colony, Texas by Jose "Raulio" Rivera, a prisoner from El Paso, in the early 1980s. It expanded into a transnational criminal organization that traded mainly across the US-Mexico border. Currently one of the most violent gangs in the United States, they are said to have over 3,000 members across the country in locations such as New Mexico, Texas, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania as well as at least 5,000 members in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
Serafín Zambada Ortiz is an American convicted drug trafficker and high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel, a criminal group based in Sinaloa. He is the son of Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, top leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. He is married to Karime Ellameli Torres Acosta, the daughter of the late Manuel Torres Félix, another Sinaloa Cartel leader. Zambada Ortiz was active on social media, where he posted pictures of his extravagant lifestyle.
On 9 November 1999, two agents from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were threatened at gunpoint and nearly killed in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, by gunmen of the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in the area. The two agents traveled to Matamoros with an informant to gather intelligence on the operations of the Gulf Cartel. As they cruised through one of the properties owned by the criminal group, they noticed several vehicles following them. The agents were forced to a stop and were corralled by a convoy of eight vehicles, from which 15 gunmen emerged and surrounded the agents' car. Some of them wore uniforms of the local police. Among the gunmen was the former kingpin Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, who recognized the informant and ordered the three of them to get out of their vehicle.
Idalia Ramos Rangel is a Mexican business owner and suspected drug lord. According to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), she is a high-ranking member of the Gulf Cartel, a criminal group based in Tamaulipas, Mexico. In the cartel, Ramos Rangel is known by her aliases Big Momma and La Tía. She has reportedly been responsible for coordinating international drug trafficking shipments from Mexico to the United States since the mid-1980s. Her role in organized crime is unusual, as a woman active in the male-dominated Mexican drug trafficking industry over several decades.
EncroChat was a Europe-based communications network and service provider that offered modified smartphones allowing encrypted communication among subscribers. It was used primarily by organized crime members to plan criminal activities. Police infiltrated the network between at least March and June 2020 during a Europe-wide investigation. An unidentified source associated with EncroChat announced on the night of 12–13 June 2020 that the company would cease operations because of the police operation.
Sky Global was a communications network and service provider founded in 2008 in Vancouver, Canada. It developed the world's largest encrypted messaging network called Sky ECC, operating through three servers of the OVHcloud company in Roubaix, France. A significant share of the system's users were international crime organizations involved in drug trafficking, and the company management was suspected of collusion.
Operation Trojan Shield, part of Operation Ironside, was a collaboration by law enforcement agencies from several countries, running between 2018 and 2021. It was a sting operation that intercepted millions of messages sent through the supposedly secure smartphone-based proprietary messaging app ANOM. The ANOM service was widely used by criminals, but instead of providing secure communication, it was actually a trojan horse covertly distributed by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Australian Federal Police (AFP), enabling them to monitor all communications. Through collaboration with other law enforcement agencies worldwide, the operation resulted in the arrest of over 800 suspects allegedly involved in criminal activity, in 16 countries. Among the arrested people were alleged members of Australian-based Italian mafia, Albanian organised crime, outlaw motorcycle clubs, drug syndicates and other organised crime groups.
Joseph Hakan Ayik, also known as Hakan Reis is a Turkish-Australian drug trafficker. He has an estimated net worth of 1.2 billion dollars, and was described in June 2021 as "Australia's most wanted man".
A third source told Motherboard "He never gave law enforcement a backdoor into Phantom Secure. He did not do that." When pressed on whether the FBI still asked for access, the source, who worked directly on the case, said, "Basically that's all I want to say. He did not give law enforcement a backdoor into Phantom Secure." ... One of the sources said Ramos did not have the technical knowledge to implement a backdoor though, and so the FBI asked Ramos to lure another Phantom member who could. Ramos declined, the source said.