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Sinaloa Cartel Hacked Security Cameras to Track and Kill FBI Informants

2025-06-28 12:19:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

A hacker working for the Sinaloa drug cartel managed to obtain the phone records of an FBI official and use Mexican surveillance cameras to help track and kill the agency's informants in 2018, according to a new report from the US Justice Department.

The incident was uncovered in an audit by the Justice Department's inspector general of the FBI's efforts to mitigate the effects of "ubiquitous technical surveillance," a term used to describe the global proliferation of cameras and the booming trade in vast troves of communication, travel and location data.

The report said the hacker worked for the Sinaloa drug cartel, led by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who was extradited to the United States in 2017.

The report says the hacker identified an FBI assistant legal attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and was able to use the attaché's phone number "to obtain calls made and received, as well as geolocation data." The report said the hacker also "used Mexico City's camera system to follow the FBI official around the city and identify people the official met with."

The report said that "the cartel used that information to intimidate and, in some cases, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses."

The report does not identify the suspected hacker or the victims.

The U.S. Embassy in Mexico referred questions to the State and Justice departments, which did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. The FBI and a lawyer for Guzmán did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

The collection of detailed location data from people's phones by a wide range of commercial and official actors, combined with the ever-increasing coverage of surveillance cameras, has presented a difficult problem for intelligence and law enforcement officials, many of whom rely on confidential informants.

The report said recent technological advances "have made it easier than ever for less sophisticated countries and criminal enterprises to identify and exploit vulnerabilities" in the global surveillance economy.

The FBI was said to have a strategic plan in the works to mitigate these weaknesses and made several recommendations, including more training for bureau personnel./ CNA , translated by The Guardian