Sellers of Anom, the FBI's Secret Backdoored Phone, Plead Guilty
A group of men who sold Anom devices, the encrypted phone secretly backdoored by the FBI which led to the largest sting operation in history, pleaded guilty this month in San Diego. The defendants had been set to go to trial, in which the government was preparing to reveal the real identity of the confidential human source who provided the FBI with the Anom company in the first place. Now, that trial most likely won’t happen.
The court records released as part of the plea deals also provide new insight into how some of the phone sellers discussed drug trafficking on their Anom devices as well.
“If you really want to be secure there is only one word. ANOM,” one of the defendants wrote in messages collected from a backdoored phone.
In 2018, the FBI shut down an encrypted phone company called Phantom Secure. Companies in this underground industry typically take ordinary mobile handsets, then load them with custom encrypted messaging software and sometimes make modifications to the hardware too, such as removing the microphone or camera. Their customer bases are often disproportionately serious organized criminals, including drug traffickers, hitmen, and money launderers.
After shuttering Phantom Secure, a seller of the devices who used the moniker “Afgoo” approached the FBI with a staggering proposition: would the agency like to take the new encrypted phone company they had started, called Anom, and run it themselves? This meant the FBI could secretly backdoor Anom’s phones, and if criminals started using them, read all of their messages.
That would only work if criminals bought the phones, and if people in the encrypted phone industry sold them. That’s where the defendants Aurangzeb Ayub, Shane Ngakuru, Seyyed Hossein Hosseini, and Alexander Dmintrienko come in. Prosecutors allege they became part of Anom and sold Anom devices to criminals around the world.
Anom became a popular tool for serious criminals in Australia, Europe, South America, and South East Asia. Customers used the phones to coordinate massive, multi-ton shipments of drugs. In June 2021, authorities launched a global relay race of raids, with more than nine thousand law enforcement officials acting across a single day.
In a twist, even though the FBI secretly managed the Anom company, deciding which features should be included and those which shouldn’t, authorities also decided to charge what they saw as some of Anom’s most significant sellers. That indictment named seventeen people, including Hakan Ayik, who was Australia’s most wanted man and a key reason why Anom went global. Associates called him the “encryption king.”
The new plea agreements point to the defendants’ communications with criminal users of the phones. “Defendant assured his criminal customers that Anom would be safe from law enforcement and that Anom was more secure than other hardened encrypted device companies that had recently been infiltrated by law enforcement,” Ayub’s plea agreement reads.
In March 2021, authorities shut down Sky, one of the largest encrypted phone companies. Ayub then told Anom higher ups he was ready to sell 100 Anom devices and another 600 devices down the line, the record adds. “Defendant recognized that the criminal market for hardened encrypted device brands were overlapping and that the fall of a competitor provider presented opportunities for the growth of the Anom Enterprise,” it reads.
Hosseini’s agreement mentions a conversation where some of the men discussed keeping Anom underground. “Remeber. Word of mouth only. No social media nothing We don’t exist xx,” one called Edwin Harmendra Kumar wrote (Kumar previously pleaded guilty). “Yes we don’t advertize [sic],” Dmitrienko added. Hosseini then wrote “This one of the policies of ANOM no advertising!! I know you guys are aware of it.. Just a minder… 😉.” The irony, of course, was that all of these messages were being collected and then read by the FBI.
Some of the phone sellers also discussed drug sales in their messages, according to the plea agreements. Ngakuru coordinated a shipment of methamphetamine to New Zealand; Ayub spoke about the sale of kilograms of cocaine; and Hosseini discussed cocaine trafficking, according to the documents. Those three men have entered their pleas, but Dmintrienko’s hearing has been delayed to February, according to the court docket. Hosseini’s plea agreement mentions Dmintrienko in the cocaine discussion.
The guilty pleas close those cases, but some of the people charged by the U.S. remain overseas, including “encryption king” Ayik and Maximilian Rivkin, a Serbia-born drug trafficker who was also crucial to Anom’s aggressive expansion.
