Borderland Beat by DD
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It could have been any other morning. Felipe del Jesús Peréz García got dressed, said goodbye to his wife and kids, and drove off to work. It would be a two hour commute from their home in Monterrey, in Northeastern Mexico’s Nuevo León state, to Reynosa, in neighboring Tamaulipas state, where Felipe, an architect, would scout possible installation sites for cell phone towers for a telecommunications company before returning that evening.
Just like legitimate businesses, Mexico drug cartels put a premium on the use of technology, such as the Internet and cellular phones to run their massive operations. It takes educated trained personnel to design and set up high tech systems and and to operate those systems.
The cartels do not have the luxury of openly recruiting promising young engineers or high tech students at job fairs on campuses as the big IT companies do. So how do the cartels get their IT wizards?
It could have been any other morning. Felipe del Jesús Peréz García got dressed, said goodbye to his wife and kids, and drove off to work. It would be a two hour commute from their home in Monterrey, in Northeastern Mexico’s Nuevo León state, to Reynosa, in neighboring Tamaulipas state, where Felipe, an architect, would scout possible installation sites for cell phone towers for a telecommunications company before returning that evening.
That was the last time anyone saw him.
It’s a story, or lack thereof, that’s common across Mexico. People vanish, and the vast majority of cases aren’t solved for years, if they’re ever closed at all.
Only this story is, perhaps, not just another kidnapping.
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| The most recent photo of Felipe Pérez, an architect, taken just weeks before he disappeared in Northeastern Mexico in March 2013. He was wearing this shirt the day he vanished. Photo: Tanya Elizabeth Gonzalez Vaya. |
What happened to Felipe Peréz? One theory suggests he was abducted by a sophisticated organized crime syndicate, and then forced into a hacker brigade that builds and services the cartel’s hidden, backcountry communications infrastructure. They’re the Geek Squads to some of the biggest mafia-style organizations in the world. To keep the wheels turning on such vast scales, the Golfo and Zetas use their own encrypted radio networks to communicate without authorities listening in.
Those networks also intercept chatter from cops, the military, and other security forces. And the cartels need experts to build them.
At least 40 information technology specialists disappeared in Mexico from 2008 to 2012, allegedly nabbed by one of the two dominant gangs in the region, the Cartel del Golfo or Los Zetas. We don’t know for sure how many hackers have been disappeared since—reliable numbers are hard to come by - especially in Tamaulipas where cartel news in the media is nearly totally suppressed by the cartels. The Mexican government also did not respond to queries from the website Motherboard for the total number of disappeared specialists and confiscated radio towers and antennas in Northeastern Mexico between 2012 and 2014 by the time their story went to press.
A current high-ranking Mexican intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the people who have gathered evidence and data related to narcos kidnapping communications specialists “are not allowed to reveal any information.”
A current high-ranking Mexican intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue, said the people who have gathered evidence and data related to narcos kidnapping communications specialists “are not allowed to reveal any information.”
For at least ten years, Mexico’s cartels have relied in part on a sophisticated radio network to handle their communications. The Zetas hide radio antennas and signal relay stations deep inside remote and hard-to-reach terrain, connect them to solar panels, and then link the facilities to radio-receiving cellphones and Nextel devices.
Because the bulk of these networks are installed in places that are difficult to access—in rural, not urban zones—rooting them out is not easy. Antennas and repeaters have been found staked on hilltops and high grounds in the Northeastern part of Mexico, a coveted port-of-entry into America for the Golfo and Zetas. It could take five days’ walking into the bush to find this stuff, according to París Martínez; these stations are so remote, many draw energy from solar panels.
It would be a considerable undertaking to rig up elaborate radio stations in such inhospitable conditions, and across such vast expanses, if it weren’t for the fact that these cartels are already out there. This is where they thrive, where they evade authorities, deep in backcountry. When the authorities discover equipment used in the illegal communication system they destroy it. Because the cartels already have people in the area including IT professionals who are needed to be kept close for maintenance and service on the equipment they have the system up and running again in a very short time.
It would be a considerable undertaking to rig up elaborate radio stations in such inhospitable conditions, and across such vast expanses, if it weren’t for the fact that these cartels are already out there. This is where they thrive, where they evade authorities, deep in backcountry. When the authorities discover equipment used in the illegal communication system they destroy it. Because the cartels already have people in the area including IT professionals who are needed to be kept close for maintenance and service on the equipment they have the system up and running again in a very short time.
When the Mexican Army orchestrated a 2011 bust on a Zetas network in Veracruz, officials razed 167 antennas and more than 150 repeaters, and confiscated 1,450 radios, 1,300 cellphones, and 1,350 NexTel gadgets. The kit comprised a communications network that spanned nearly 500 porous miles of Texas border and penetrated another 500 miles into Mexico’s brambly, mountainous interior
Reaching way back, among the longer technology-kidnapping mysteries in the border region is that of El Pasoan Saul Sanchez Jr. and his wife who went missing back in 1991.
As an 2013 El Paso Time's article that looks back at the case notes “Sanchez was a U.S. Navy veteran who had invented a device that could be used to monitor cell-phone conversations.”
Diana Washington Valdez”s report notes:
El Pasoan Saul Sanchez Jr. and his wife, Abigail, disappeared after heading out for a theater performance in Juarez the evening of May 24, 1994. Their children and other relatives never saw or heard from them again after that night.
Jaime Hervella, Saul’s godfather, created the International Association of Friends and Relatives of Disappeared Persons, and embarked on a long quest to find out what happened to the couple.
Sanchez was a U.S. Navy veteran who had invented a device that could be used to monitor cell-phone conversations. The device was successfully used to intercept the calls of drug-traffickers, Hervella said.
“The Mexican authorities also wanted Saul to help them set up an extensive communications network in Mexico,” Hervella said. “He was courted by all kinds of people who were interested in his inventions".
It took 70 computers to control the sprawling system, which covered three states: Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, and Tamaulipas.
Mexican authorities confiscated 76 antennas, 81 repeaters, 655 handheld radios, 400 cell phones, 391 NexTel devices, and 19 computers in Reynosa and Tamaulipas in 2011, according to the Associated Press. And in 2012, the Mexican Army and Navy destroyed seven antennas and 20 repeaters in Sonora, an antenna and a repeater in Chihuahua, 13 antennas in Veracruz, a pair of antennas and a repeater in Tamaulipas, and 50 meters of antennas and a repeater along the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway.
Mexican authorities confiscated 76 antennas, 81 repeaters, 655 handheld radios, 400 cell phones, 391 NexTel devices, and 19 computers in Reynosa and Tamaulipas in 2011, according to the Associated Press. And in 2012, the Mexican Army and Navy destroyed seven antennas and 20 repeaters in Sonora, an antenna and a repeater in Chihuahua, 13 antennas in Veracruz, a pair of antennas and a repeater in Tamaulipas, and 50 meters of antennas and a repeater along the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway.
It’s hard to say when “Radio Narco” went live. It was probably sometime in the mid to late 2000s, when the first reports of disappeared cell network workers began trickling out of Northeastern Mexico.
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| Saul Sanchez victim of tech kidnapping in 1991 |
As an 2013 El Paso Time's article that looks back at the case notes “Sanchez was a U.S. Navy veteran who had invented a device that could be used to monitor cell-phone conversations.”
Diana Washington Valdez”s report notes:
El Pasoan Saul Sanchez Jr. and his wife, Abigail, disappeared after heading out for a theater performance in Juarez the evening of May 24, 1994. Their children and other relatives never saw or heard from them again after that night.
Jaime Hervella, Saul’s godfather, created the International Association of Friends and Relatives of Disappeared Persons, and embarked on a long quest to find out what happened to the couple.
Sanchez was a U.S. Navy veteran who had invented a device that could be used to monitor cell-phone conversations. The device was successfully used to intercept the calls of drug-traffickers, Hervella said.
“The Mexican authorities also wanted Saul to help them set up an extensive communications network in Mexico,” Hervella said. “He was courted by all kinds of people who were interested in his inventions".
In 2009, in perhaps the most famous mass kidnapping of specialists, nine contracted cell tower workers vanished in the border town of Nuevo Laredo. The kidnappers, whoever they are, came back later for the crew’s vehicles and kit.
There was José Antonio Rebledo Fernández,José Antonio Rebledo Fernández, an engineer who was working for a construction company jointly owned by Mexican and American firms when he disappeared in January 2009. He was talking to his girlfriend on the phone outside a mechanics shop when he disappeared. Antonio worked for a constuction company that was partly owned by ICA, Mexico's largest construction company. Antonio’s family contacted the authorities, but were instead visited by a man claiming to be an ICA employee along with two Zetas. “They said they were going to help us, and that our contact would be ICA’s security chief,” said the kidnapped engineer’s mother. But the group’s message was implicit: Don’t pursue this, or else. The cartel members were later arrested, but Antonio never returned.
There was an IBM engineer, Alejandro Alfonso Moreno Baca, who was kidnapped while driving from Monterrey to Laredo, Texas, in January 2011. He hasn't been heard from since.
“The fact that skilled workers have been disappearing in these areas is no accident,” Felipe Gonzalez, head of Mexico’s Senate Security Committee said in 2012. “None of the systems engineers who disappeared have been found,” Gonzalez said. González, who left public office in 2012, said information about the conditions kidnapped hackers are kept in is classified.
Unlike Colombia, where drug traffickers control large amounts of territory and can keep hostages for many years, Mexico’s drug territory is more in flux. “When they need specialists they catch them, use them, and discard them,” said the father of one kidnapped engineer.
There are also instances of IT wizards willingly joining forces with the cartels. A Houston Chronicle report from back in 2009 notes that Jose Luis Del Toro Estrada pleaded guilty in Houston to drug trafficking and later told authorities about the technology secrets of the Gulf Cartel.
Court papers say he described a secret communications network of hand-held radios with a reach stretching from the Rio Grande to Guatemala. He also discussed booster transmitters mounted atop police stations and on massive steel radio towers and surveillance cameras hidden outside gangsters’ homes, stash houses and meeting places.
Court papers say he described a secret communications network of hand-held radios with a reach stretching from the Rio Grande to Guatemala. He also discussed booster transmitters mounted atop police stations and on massive steel radio towers and surveillance cameras hidden outside gangsters’ homes, stash houses and meeting places.
Some intel agencies and the US military, while acknowledging to back up their theories question the validity of the the IT wizards being kidnapped.
Motherboard reported that Robert J. Bunker, an adjunct research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, isn’t so sure the theory that cartels are kidnapping IT talent holds up. He couldn’t provide any definitive information on these incidents—not many people can—but said a cartel like the Zetas probably isn’t likely to enslave, or even hire mercenary IT talent because the gang can’t afford a whistleblower bringing the whole thing down.
Besides, Bunker said, “hackers tend to be prima donnas and anti-system types who don't function well in captivity. They would fall apart mentally if brutalized by cartel enforcers.”
Why kidnap people when you could make them voluntarily join your team? As the high-ranking intelligence official put it, “You can speculate without any limitation that due to the great corruption and co-optation capabilities of organized crime they can hire the best professionals and technicians in the world.”
Bunker said it would seem “‘buying talent,’ especially high tech talent, would be preferential to ‘enslaving’ it.” If a cartel is thinking strategically, he explained, it could pay for college-level computer science and computer security degrees for promising recruits and/or relatives of gang personnel. Funding four or five years for a bachelor’s in science, and a few more years for a master’s degree, would give you a functioning engineer or computer scientist. It’s yet another way for the cartel to secure talent and ensure loyalty to the gang, Bunker told me. Total initial investment? Under $250,000 for tuition, room and board, and stipend, he said, depending on the university. A small expense for gangs that bring in billions of dollars annually.
Besides, Bunker said, “hackers tend to be prima donnas and anti-system types who don't function well in captivity. They would fall apart mentally if brutalized by cartel enforcers.”
Why kidnap people when you could make them voluntarily join your team? As the high-ranking intelligence official put it, “You can speculate without any limitation that due to the great corruption and co-optation capabilities of organized crime they can hire the best professionals and technicians in the world.”
Bunker said it would seem “‘buying talent,’ especially high tech talent, would be preferential to ‘enslaving’ it.” If a cartel is thinking strategically, he explained, it could pay for college-level computer science and computer security degrees for promising recruits and/or relatives of gang personnel. Funding four or five years for a bachelor’s in science, and a few more years for a master’s degree, would give you a functioning engineer or computer scientist. It’s yet another way for the cartel to secure talent and ensure loyalty to the gang, Bunker told me. Total initial investment? Under $250,000 for tuition, room and board, and stipend, he said, depending on the university. A small expense for gangs that bring in billions of dollars annually.
DD note; I question Bunkers logic in believing that the cartels would spend $250,000 to educate a student when as one of the fathers of the kidnapped stated above that when the cartels need specialist they capture them, use them and discard them. It's a whole lot cheaper.
G, the former counternarcotics official with the Mexican government, said some specialists are still “obligated” to work for the cartels, disappeared against their wills and forced to service Radio Narco. But, increasingly, there are also those who are lured to work voluntarily for the cartels. “There’s not only kidnappings,” he said. “I certainly know that a lot of criminals are sending their kids, their nephews, family, young people to be educated.”
If you are kidnapped, though, G said whistleblowing would get you killed. Send a Mayday, and you’re done.
If you are kidnapped, though, G said whistleblowing would get you killed. Send a Mayday, and you’re done.
One thing is for sure: Radio Narco will stay on. G told about how quickly the cartels would reinstall radio kit after his people made busts and destroyed the gear. It was classic Whac-A-Mole. To stop the illegal installation of radio masts and repeaters, he said, “we need to have people in these areas, where these criminals are, all the time. That’s impossible.”
So, what happened to Filipe?
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Felipe was at Grupo Construgest, an active telecommunications company working on architectural drawings for cell towers. He had previously done similar work for other major mobile phone operators in Mexico, including Telcel, Unefon, and Movistar.
Filipe's wife, Tanya, said Felipe was a quiet man, through and through. In Monterrey, he played el bajo sexto, a 12-stringed guitar, in a traditional norteño band. Felipe was not aggressive, Tanya said. “Not at all.” Each day when he got home from work, the first thing Felipe did was spend time with his two children. Sometimes he’d take them to the park, other times he’d pull up videos for them on YouTube.
When he left that morning he had been tasked with returning to Monterrey with GPS coordinates for three potential cell tower installation sites. It was a routine assignment, though not without risk: Felipe was headed into the country, into the heart of Zetas turf, where the situation “is complicated,” Tanya said.
Felipe would get the job done as quick as possible then, and be on the road back to Monterrey before dusk.
“If I don’t find anything I’ll leave,” he told Tanya. Then he drove off.
Later, around 1 PM, Felipe phoned Tanya with an update: He’d found good land, ideal for installing towers. But, “there’s no one out here,” he told his wife. “I’m alone.”
After the day’s search, Felipe was set to make the two-and-a-half hour drive back to Monterrey. When Tanya called him around 3 or 4 PM to check in, his phone rang and then went to voicemail. When she tried again, shortly thereafter, his phone went straight to voicemail.
Tanya doesn’t know anything beyond that. “They never spoke to us about a rescue,” she explained, referring to what many citizens believe to be unwillingness on the part of local and national authorities to investigate kidnapping cases. She said the car is still missing.
Felipe was kidnapped, she said. “There’s simply no other logical explanation.”
We might never know just how many of los desaparecidos should be counted among the dead. An estimated 120,000 to 125,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, according to the Trans-Border Institute, and it’s anyone’s guess if Felipe is one of them.
So, what happened to Filipe?
Felipe was at Grupo Construgest, an active telecommunications company working on architectural drawings for cell towers. He had previously done similar work for other major mobile phone operators in Mexico, including Telcel, Unefon, and Movistar.
Filipe's wife, Tanya, said Felipe was a quiet man, through and through. In Monterrey, he played el bajo sexto, a 12-stringed guitar, in a traditional norteño band. Felipe was not aggressive, Tanya said. “Not at all.” Each day when he got home from work, the first thing Felipe did was spend time with his two children. Sometimes he’d take them to the park, other times he’d pull up videos for them on YouTube.
When he left that morning he had been tasked with returning to Monterrey with GPS coordinates for three potential cell tower installation sites. It was a routine assignment, though not without risk: Felipe was headed into the country, into the heart of Zetas turf, where the situation “is complicated,” Tanya said.
Felipe would get the job done as quick as possible then, and be on the road back to Monterrey before dusk.
“If I don’t find anything I’ll leave,” he told Tanya. Then he drove off.
Later, around 1 PM, Felipe phoned Tanya with an update: He’d found good land, ideal for installing towers. But, “there’s no one out here,” he told his wife. “I’m alone.”
After the day’s search, Felipe was set to make the two-and-a-half hour drive back to Monterrey. When Tanya called him around 3 or 4 PM to check in, his phone rang and then went to voicemail. When she tried again, shortly thereafter, his phone went straight to voicemail.
Tanya doesn’t know anything beyond that. “They never spoke to us about a rescue,” she explained, referring to what many citizens believe to be unwillingness on the part of local and national authorities to investigate kidnapping cases. She said the car is still missing.
Felipe was kidnapped, she said. “There’s simply no other logical explanation.”
We might never know just how many of los desaparecidos should be counted among the dead. An estimated 120,000 to 125,000 people have been killed in Mexico since 2006, according to the Trans-Border Institute, and it’s anyone’s guess if Felipe is one of them.
For now, Tayna, Filipe Perez's wife, waits for the phone to ring, hopeful her husband is still alive despite the time that has passed.
“I think they’re keeping him alive because he’s useful,” she said. “They’re all useful people.”
“I think they’re keeping him alive because he’s useful,” she said. “They’re all useful people.”