Phantom Secure was a Canadian company that provided modified secure mobile phones, which were equipped with a remotely operated
kill switch
A kill switch, also known as an emergency stop (E-stop), emergency off (EMO) and as an emergency power off (EPO), is a safety mechanism used to shut off machinery in an emergency, when it cannot be shut down in the usual manner. Unlike a normal ...
.
After its shutdown, criminal users fled to alternatives including
ANOM, which turned out to be a
honeypot run by the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
.
Arrest of Vincent Ramos
CEO Vincent Ramos was arrested at an Over Easy restaurant in
Bellingham, Washington
Bellingham ( ) is the most populous city in, and county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies south of the U.S.–Canada border in between two major cities of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, British Columbia (loc ...
on 7 March 2018. At the time he lived in
Richmond, British Columbia
Richmond is a coastal city in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada. It occupies almost the entirety of Lulu Island (excluding Queensborough), between the two estuarine distributaries of the Fraser River. Encompassing the adja ...
. Ramos had turned state's witness by June. He handed over all login details to his systems, giving authorities access to his whole operation. Ramos did not know the real identities of many clients and police worked to uncover them.
[
]
Convictions
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. 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
The Sinaloa Cartel ( es, link=no, Cártel de Sinaloa), also known as the CDS, the Guzmán-Loera Organization, the Pacific Cartel, the Federation and the Blood Alliance, is a large, international organized crime syndicate that specializes in il ...
, and the FBI reportedly asked Ramos to plant a backdoor in Phantom Secure's encrypted network, which he refused to do.
Cameron Ortis
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
The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thre ...
before he joined.[
In 2018 a joint operation between the RCMP and ]FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
indicated that there might be a mole, the investigation led to the arrest of Ortis. Media reports have linked his arrest to Phantom Secure.[
He faces five charges under the Security of Information Act and the Criminal Code.][
]
See also
*EncroChat
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 ...
References
{{Reflist
Anonymity networks
Cyberspace
Dark web