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Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Sky Global CEO Indicted Over Encrypted Chat Drug Trafficking Support


A federal grand jury returned an indictment against the Chief Executive Officer and an associate of the Canada-based firm Sky Global on charges that they knowingly and intentionally participated in a criminal enterprise that facilitated the transnational importation and distribution of narcotics through the sale and service of encrypted communications devices.

Jean-Francois Eap, Sky Global’s Chief Executive Officer, and Thomas Herdman, a former high-level distributor of Sky Global devices, are charged with a conspiracy to violate the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).  Warrants were issued for their arrests.

According to the indictment, Sky Global’s devices are specifically designed to prevent law enforcement from actively monitoring the communications between members of transnational criminal organizations involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. As part of its services, Sky Global guarantees that messages stored on its devices can and will be remotely deleted by the company if the device is seized by law enforcement or otherwise compromised.

The indictment alleges that Sky Global installs sophisticated encryption software in iPhone, Google Pixel, Blackberry, and Nokia handsets. Sky Global device users communicate with each other in a closed network, and Sky Global routes these communications through encrypted servers located in Canada and France.

There are at least 70,000 Sky Global devices in use worldwide, including in the United States. The indictment alleges that for more than a decade, Sky Global has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in profit by facilitating the criminal activity of transnational criminal organizations and protecting these organizations from law enforcement. 

According to the indictment, Sky Global’s purpose was to create, maintain, and control a method of secure communication to facilitate the importation, exportation, and distribution of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine into Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America, including the United States and Canada; to launder the proceeds of such drug trafficking conduct; and to obstruct investigations of drug trafficking and money laundering organizations by creating, maintaining, and controlling a system whereby Sky Global would remotely delete evidence of such activities.

The indictment alleges that Sky Global employees used digital currencies, including Bitcoin, to facilitate illegal transactions on the firm’s website, to protect its customers’ anonymity, and to facilitate the laundering of the customers’ ill-gotten gains.  According to the indictment, Sky Global employees also set up and maintained shell companies to hide the proceeds generated by selling its encryption services and devices.

The international operation to seize Sky Global’s infrastructure involved cooperation and efforts by law enforcement authorities in the United States and Canada. In addition, on March 10, 2021, Europol announced that judicial and law enforcement authorities in Belgium, France and the Netherlands had wiretapped Sky Global’s servers and monitored hundreds of millions of messages by Sky Global’s users. The European investigation resulted in hundreds of arrests, the seizure of thousands of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine, hundreds of firearms, and millions of Euros.

In 2018, the principals of another communications encryption company, Phantom Secure, were indicted in the Southern District of California for their roles in providing encrypted devices to criminal groups. Phantom Secure’s chief executive, Vincent Ramos, pleaded guilty and admitted that he and his co-conspirators facilitated the distribution of narcotics around the world by supplying encrypted communications devices designed to thwart law enforcement.

As alleged in the indictment, Sky Global instituted an “ask nothing/do nothing” approach toward its clients shortly after the takedown of Phantom Secure.  This policy allowed for Sky Global to claim plausible deniability from the activities of their clients that they knew or had reason to know participated in illegal activities, including international drug trafficking. 

Source: DOJ

19 comments:

  1. tied to the Belgium arrests, and the Owen Hanson takedown, former USC guy who was charged with racketeering and international drug trafficking in 2016.

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    1. I added some more of this info as they were monitoring their chats on Sky for that bust

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  2. Here is the background story:

    http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2021/03/belgian-police-hit-organized-crime-with.html

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  3. You’re BACCKKK ???????

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  4. monitored hundres of millions of emails? that seems a little shady.

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  5. I guess Ford, Chevrolet, etc. Should be tried as well since drug traffickers use their cars for illicit activity.

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  6. You want a linux based phone that has been hardened. calling and texting should be disabled and use encrypted messaging apps. I could go on and on but I am not going to.

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  7. So we are not allowed privacy?

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    1. I don’t understand how they can prosecute a company because drug traffickers use their product. Doesn’t the FBI and gov’t and military use the same encrypted communications? Don’t these encryption device companies sell to everybody including legit companies? Unless the company was directly involved somehow this is ridiculous .. And to answer your question, the powers that be say no. The future they want is zero privacy for average people while their lives and privacy is protected.

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    2. @ 1.48
      Finally getting a glimpse of how things work.
      I agree, it's messed up.

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    3. i assume they can prove that he knew in what kind of trade his customers were involved. The same as with the secure blackberry devices a few years ago (phantom secure???).

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    4. The only safe telephón is the one Little Red Riding Hood asked the Big Bad Wolf about:
      What is that you gat over there?
      A: My telephón

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  8. 1/2 ton of weed arrest in Indiana

    https://abcnews.go.com/US/half-ton-marijuana-valued-million-found-dog-routine/story?id=76507462

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  9. .A free Sky phone if you can name the top 10.000 of the 70.000 people who owns these phones
    lol
    1. Mrs Clinton
    2

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  10. These guys had a store in montreal by du college metro. They would sell you a blackberry for 600$ cad with no mic and the encrypted network. All the big shots in Montreal got their phones there

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    Replies
    1. Ah, but Cambridge Analytica, robert mercer, rebeka mercer, steven bannon, jared kushner, his boyfriend, and their original presidential candidate Ted "Cancun" Cruise can't be investigated,

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