THESE HACKERS ARE THE GOOD GUYS
MIAMI-DADE’S NEW CY BER COPS HUNT HIGH-TECH CROOKS
Tucked away in a corner of Northwest Miami-Dade is a sprawling office built by the federal government with special copper interior walls to block electronic snooping. It’s filled with dozens of savvy techies monitoring blinking high-tech computer systems in search of targets.
Their boss affectionately refers to them as “hackers” and “monsters.” But the targets in this place are actually the bad guys fueling the booming industry of internet crime.
In the past year, the work of the recently formed but little-known South Florida Cyber Crimes Task Force has led to the recovery of millions of dollars of laundered money, the arrest of several suspected scam artists and even the jailing of a fellow law enforcement officer on child pornography charges.
“We’re like the sexiest unit right now,” said Miami-Dade Sgt. Bridget Doyle, 37. “Joining this unit was very much a no-brainer for me.”
With so many crimes migrating to the internet, the new task force — comprised of sharp and mostly young computer geeks from a number of local, state and federal agencies — is riding into what has become the new Wild
West for criminals and crime syndicates, both in South Florida’s backyard and overseas.
There is a lot to chase. Internet scams have become so prevalent that just about everyone has at the very least had a credit card number pilfered or, worse still, an identity stolen. The task force investigates ransomware and malware attacks and tracks cryptocurrency laundering scams. Investigators with search warrants can even access
Internet scams have become so prevalent that just about everyone has at the very least had a credit card number pilfered or, worse, an identity stolen.
High tech gear fills
the offices of Miami-Dade Police’s South Florida Cyber Crimes Task Force office. The building that houses the unit is constructed to
block outside electronic snooping.
cellphones for information before criminals are able to wipe them clean remotely. And then there is the seedy underworld of child pornography, circulated in obscure chat rooms in dark recesses of the web.
“There have always been sexual predators and we’ve had snake oil salesmen since the beginning of time,” said George Perera, a major with Miami-Dade Police and the commander of the Cyber Crimes Task Force. “But today you have this thing called the internet and you can find user groups that like just about anything. And much of the internet is unregulated. It creates a perfect storm.”
Only a year old, the unit quickly outgrew its space at the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Doral headquarters. Perera, a police veteran of more than three decades who has worked most departments at MDPD, began lobbying Director Alfredo “Freddy” Ramirez for a cybercrimes unit several years ago. At first, Ramirez balked. He said his hands were tied because of budget constraints. Then last year the director gave the go-ahead and the task force was born.
Almost immediately, young, talented, mostly computer-savvy police officers, who never dreamed the games of their youth could influence their law enforcement careers, began applying for the few positions.
Today, the Cyber
Crimes unit has grown to almost five dozen detectives, not including a pair of six-person squads from the Secret Service and representatives from most state and federal law enforcement agencies. All are sworn federal agents.
The unit has become so effective and gained enough attention that Perera is often asked to speak to other police departments about it. In July, he flew to Washington, D.C., to meet with brass from the New York Police Department to discuss the newly created squad’s advances in chasing cryptocurrency scams.
“Until now, we didn’t have a crypto investigative arm,” Perera said. “This is what we should have been doing all along. There was so much untapped talent inside the agency.”
GAMES TO CRIMES
The Cyber Crimes unit is made up of mostly younger cops; most, with a few exceptions, grew up gaming and surfing the web. They were born into a world fast turning digital.
But they couldn’t imagine that when they decided to become police officers, they’d end up spending so much of their time behind a blue screen, hunting for bad guys down online rabbit holes.
Cyber Crimes Detective Carlos Diaz, 42, said it was one of those “wow” moments after he landed the job. He walked into an office filled with computers equipped with hightech software and discovered he’d be able to use many of the skills he honed playing World of Warcraft for the past 15 years. In the wildly popular video game, players navigate a fantasy world full of villains and monsters.
“I thought I’d just be in a regular investigative unit,” Diaz said. “Cyber Crimes is basically digging through layers. You hear a victim’s story. You find out it’s over an email. You look at the content of the email and see where it came from. Then you just keep digging and digging, further and further, for clues.”
Brad Gomez took the less common path to the Cyber Crimes unit. The 33-year-old first worked patrol then moved on to the agency’s Priority Response Team, a group of quick strike police units that roam the county in order to get to dangerous crime scenes quickly. He joined Cyber Crimes after a stint in the cyber unit working with Homeland Security.
‘READING, LEARNING’
“I knew very little about the cyber world. The first four or five months was a lot of reading and learning,” he said.
Gomez now investigates a lot of money-laundering cases. He recently worked a relatively mundane crime in which a 76-yearold woman who lost her cellphone and wallet had her identification stolen. Soon, a cyber crook logged into several of her accounts and transferred money.
“The case work is interesting. Nothing is ever the same,” said Gomez. “It’s like chess, not checkers. The criminals always are ahead of the game.”
Earlier this year the unit even took down one of their own.
Miami-Dade Police Officer David Behney, 33, was charged with 19 felony counts of child pornography. Police said they found eight videos of children as young as 8 having sex with adult men on Behney’s cellphone.
Behney exchanged explicit material and substituted the words “child pornography” with “Cheese Pizza,” his arrest report said. Among other acts, the videos, police said, showed young children giving oral sex. The warrant said investigators found a text exchange from him in WhatsApp that contained three child porn videos and a message saying he was “looking for more of the same material.”
Perera said it’s fairly common for predators to communicate with each other and use cryptocurrency in exchange for unique child porn.
“Sometimes they make purchases,” he said.
The cyber cops were informed of Behney’s alleged crimes by employees of the website Kik, which is similar to Instagram, but for kids.
From there, Perera said, an IP address was quickly linked back to Behney. Though Perera wouldn’t go into the exact details of his capture — the case hasn’t gone to trial yet — the major said it’s not unusual for detectives to capture a predator by playing the role of a child on the site.
Behney’s attorney, Diego Weiner, chose not to comment for this article.
SCHOOL HACK ATTACK FOILED
Late last year the Cyber Crimes unit foiled a hack attack on Miami-Dade Public Schools computers.
Doyle, the Cyber Crimes sergeant, said that early on in the fall semester internet access went dark at several schools in Southwest Miami-Dade. MiamiDade Schools Police were at a loss of what to do, she said. Not only did classes dependent on internet access almost come to a halt, but students were upset about losing cellphone connections.
Cyber crimes detectives quickly linked the hack to a “young adult” outside school grounds who had accepted a challenge over social media that included a payday, Doyle said. Though it wasn’t a Ransomware attack — a form of online extortion where online intruders encrypt and hold data or information in exchange for money — Doyle said she feared the hacker would be emboldened by success and escalate attacks.
“It became a game,” Doyle said.
Doyle wouldn’t name the suspect and said a plea deal is being negotiated that could help her unit immensely. Prosecutors are likely to offer a reduced charge in exchange for key information on how the hackers communicate on the web and ply their craft.
She also said if the suspect had not been caught, the damage could have been much worse.
“He was testing the water and testing boundaries,” Doyle said. “That’s the thrill of the game.
They start small, like at local schools, then move on to hospitals and airports where it becomes a national security issue at that point.”
Miami-Dade Schools Police Chief Edwin Lopez referred back to a similar attack at the start of the pandemic that basically handcuffed students and teachers.
“It was huge,” he said. “You’re dealing with remote learning during the pandemic. It affected not only students, but teachers who were trying to teach.”
CHASING A CRYPTO KING
One of their latest cases involves a man named Ryan “Brody” Crawford, who is alleged to have enticed clients into investing sometimes staggering sums in return for big profits trading cryptocurrency.
Though he hasn’t been charged with a crime, he’s been sued several times. And since the Miami Herald wrote about him, Cyber Crimes unit detectives have talked to several people who said they’ve been ripped off by him.
In June, Crawford told the Miami Herald that he’s never scammed anyone and he’s told everyone who’s ever invested with him to “only invest what you are willing to lose.”
Attempts to reach Crawford over the last few weeks were unsuccessful.
Perera said his cyber unit was unaware of complaints about Crawford and now that they are, they’re trying to sort out his operation. But they still haven’t spoken with him directly.
Crawford, as of early September, had not been charged with any crime. Perera said investigators hadn’t spoken to him as of late July.
“He’s taking steps to evade contact with law enforcement,” said Perera. “We’ve reached out to all the people in the story and brought everyone in. We have an enormous investigation going on, probably in the tens of millions of dollars.”
The major said his detectives believe there are dozens of more victims, perhaps hundreds who had lost tens of millions of dollars, some likely hidden in accounts in an Indian Ocean archipelago called the Republic of Seychelles.
Perera says of the oversight that his unit is still relatively new and that victims and other agencies need to reach out more often.
“People need to understand, we’re here to help you,” he said. “Nobody else is doing this kind of thing and we have the resources, the depth and the staff.”
THE CYBER CRIMES UNIT IS MADE UP OF MOSTLY YOUNGER COPS; MOST GREW UP GAMING AND SURFING THE WEB. THEY WERE BORN INTO A WORLD FAST TURNING DIGITAL.