Notorious cartel hired hacker to use surveillance cameras, phone data to track and kill FBI informants, U.S. says

A notorious drug cartel enlisted a hacker who was able to infiltrate phone data and Mexico City’s surveillance cameras to help track and kill FBI informants, the U.S. Justice Department has revealed.

The 2018 operation was disclosed Thursday in a 47-page audit by the Justice Department Inspector General, outlining the FBI’s “efforts to mitigate the effects of ubiquitous technical surveillance.”

The partially redacted report cites a case involving Juaquin “El Chapo” Guzman — the founder of the infamous Sinaloa cartel. “El Chapo” is now serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in the U.S on multiple conspiracy counts for smuggling vast quantities of cocaine and other drugs into the U.S. for more than a quarter of a century.

According to the newly released audit, an unnamed hacker was recruited by the cartel in 2018. The hacker “observed people going in and out of the United States Embassy in Mexico City and identified ‘people of interest’ for the cartel, including an FBI assistant legal attaché,” the report said.

The hacker was able to use the attaché’s phone number to determine incoming and outgoing calls as well as the FBI official’s geolocation data, according to the audit.

The report said the hacker also used Mexico City’s surveillance camera system to follow the FBI attaché’ throughout the city and identify people they met with. “The cartel used that information to intimidate and, in some instances, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses,” the audit said.

The report noted that modern technology has made it difficult to protect sensitive operations and sources.

“Advances in data mining and analysis, facial recognition, and computer network exploitation have made it easier than ever for nation state adversaries, terrorist organizations and criminal networks to identify FBI personnel and operations,” the audit said.

The report urged the FBI to conduct an enterprise-wide threat assessment to determine where the agency is most vulnerable.

The Sinaloa cartel, which was designated a terrorist organization earlier this year by the Trump administration, has long been one of Mexico’s most powerful and ruthless crime syndicates. The cartel is one of the largest producers and traffickers of fentanyl and other drugs to the U.S. and has been known “to murder, kidnap, and intimidate civilians, government officials and journalists,” according to the U.S. State Department.

The revelation about the Sinaloa cartel hacker comes just weeks after the U.S. offered a $10 million reward for the capture of two of El Chapo’s sons  — Archivaldo Ivan Guzman Salazar and Jesus Alfredo Guzman Salazar. His other two sons — Joaquin Guzman Lopez and Ovidio Guzman Lopez — are currently in U.S. custody.

El Chapo’s sons lead a faction of the Sinaloa cartel known as the “Chapitos,” or “little Chapos.” The Chapitos and their cartel associates have used corkscrews, electrocution and hot chiles to torture their rivals while some of their victims were “fed dead or alive to tigers,” according to a 2023 U.S. indictment.