DOJ Charges Criminal ‘Influencers’ Who Worked for FBI’s Honeypot Phone Company

On Monday Motherboard reported that for years the FBI secretly ran an encrypted communications network called “Anom” popular among serious organized criminals in order to harvest the content of their communications. The elaborate operation has resulted in hundreds of arrests around the world. Now, the Department of Justice is also charging people who worked for the fake encrypted phone company, including administrators and "influencers" who used their position in the underworld to encourage criminals to use the Anom phones, according to newly unsealed court records.

The defendants, some of which are international fugitives, include people in Turkey, Australia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland, Spain, Colombia, and Thailand. The DOJ is charging them under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a law traditionally used to target mafia bosses, but which the DOJ has recently used to prosecute encrypted phone companies that deliberately sold devices to criminals.

"Anom has generated the Defendants millions of dollars in profit by facilitating the criminal activity of transnational criminal organizations and protecting these organizations from law enforcement," the indictment against 17 individuals reads.

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