SAN DIEGO - American authorities say the chief executive of a Vancouver-area company has pleaded guilty to aiding narcotics traffickers around the world by providing encrypted communications devices designed to thwart law enforcement.
Vincent Ramos, CEO of Phantom Secure, was arrested March 7 in Bellingham, Wash., near Seattle, following a years-long undercover operation that included several American, Australian and Canadian agencies.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the southern district of California says Ramos and his co-conspirators were able to disguise the physical location of its servers and to remotely wipe information from devices seized by law enforcement.
The officials say they also used digital currencies, including Bitcoin, to facilitate financial transactions for Phantom Secure to protect users' identity and to launder criminal proceeds.
They say Ramos has agreed to forfeit C$102.7 million in cash, personal assets worth tens of millions of dollars as well as server licences and more than 150 internet domains used by Phantom Secure.
Ramos is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 17 in San Diego, Calif.
“The Phantom Secure encrypted communication service was designed with one purpose - to provide drug traffickers and other violent criminals with a secure means by which to communicate openly about criminal activity without fear of detection by law enforcement,” U.S. Attorney Adam Braverman said in a statement issued Tuesday.
“As a result of this investigation, Phantom Secure has been dismantled and its CEO Vincent Ramos now faces a significant prison sentence.”
A partially blacked-out affidavit by an FBI special agent attached to the warrant to arrest Ramos alleged that Phantom Secure's technical team modified BlackBerry handsets by removing the microphone, GPS navigation, camera, internet and messenger service and then installing encryption software on an email program routed to its servers.
The affidavit also includes a transcript of an exchange between an undercover RCMP agent posing as a drug trafficker and an unidentified Phantom Secure employee who wiped supposedly incriminating data from a modified BlackBerry.
