Private Jets and Sex Toys with a Secret: The FBI Got Free Access to the Most Guarded Criminal Secrets
Anom was sold as security, but resulted in handcuffs.
Anom was sold as security, but resulted in handcuffs.
The FBI's Operation "Trojan Shield," hailed as the largest sting on organized crime, has seen a new development following the publication of leaked materials from the US Department of Justice. The documents reveal how the agency convinced a judge to extend the collection of a massive trove of encrypted messages from thousands of phones worldwide.
At the center of it is Anom, a "secure" phone and app that the FBI secretly took control of, inserted an insider into the communications, and for years managed like a tech startup popular with criminal groups. The materials include initial Lithuanian court warrants and FBI justification packages; they were not intended for publication but were anonymously leaked online. Parts of them were previously reviewed by journalists from 404 Media and Finland's Yle, who confirmed the authenticity of individual fragments citing people familiar with the operation.
The context begins in 2018 when the FBI shut down Phantom Secure. Against this backdrop, a seller from Phantom Secure and another popular firm, Sky, offered US authorities a device under development – Anom. The agency took the project under its wing, organized a "ghost" contact into all group and private chats, and launched a pilot in Australia. The network then expanded to Europe, South America, and other regions, attracting cartels, biker gangs, hitmen, and money launderers.
To mitigate legal risks, the data collection server was placed not in the US, but in Lithuania: local authorities, by court order, regularly provided the FBI with bulk captured messages, and the American side sent requests for "continued assistance," backing them up with examples of criminal activity recorded on Anom.
These documents reveal the scale and "ingenuity" of the smuggling. The communications mention private jets with cocaine landing at small airports controlled by the groups, including in Germany. A sailing regatta is described, which was infiltrated by a team of drug traffickers: the boat would join the race, blend in with the participants, head to the Caribbean for a load, and return to the shores of Spain a couple of weeks later, where the cocaine was offloaded on the coast.
There were plans to hide methamphetamine between layers of solar panels and almost 60 kilograms of a cocaine and methamphetamine mixture concealed in 21 boxes of sex toys on a route from the UK via Singapore to Australia. Other episodes described cocaine paste in juice bottles on a route from Colombia to Europe and nearly identical schemes using energy drinks. A user with the nickname RealG discussed transport via sailboat, in containers with bananas and hides, and a "base" of cocaine hidden in fertilizer.
The individuals involved are big names in the criminal world. Maximillian Rivkin, nicknamed "Microsoft," whose Serbian OCG was estimated by investigators to have moved hundreds of kilograms of cocaine between South America and Spain, calculated regatta and "juice" schemes. Hakan Ayık, leader of the so-called "Australian Cartel" and a seller of "encrypted" devices, discussed in his correspondence sending 900 kilograms of cocaine to Australia via Malaysia, disguising the shipment as scrap metal, and requested meeting coordinates outside Indonesian waters. Both were subsequently detained by Turkish authorities, and Ayık was known in criminal circles as the "Encryption King."
The documents also mention Dutchman Giuliano Domenico Azzarioto: his group relied on private planes and controlled small airports, and in the chat, there were confident assessments of potential – according to interlocutors, to "lift" tens of tons per month in the future. Baris Tükel, a high-ranking member of the Comanchero motorcycle club, appears as a distributor of Anom devices and was later charged in the US; in his correspondence, he planned to hide methamphetamine and MDMA in marble slabs.
The messages weren't limited to logistics. According to the materials from Lithuania, chats discussed attacks on rivals, beatings, and shootings. In one episode, Comanchero member Simon Bekirri described, with ostentatious bravado, a violent assault on a competitor, and this correspondence was used to justify the extension of the interception. It was precisely such details – private jets, "regatta" disguises, vacuum-sealed packets in solar panels, the sex industry as a cover, and talks of violence – that the FBI used to convince the Lithuanian judge that continuing the data transfer would yield tangible results.
At its peak, Anom had about 12,000 devices, and the volume of intercepted communications reached tens of millions of messages. The network was shut down in June 2021, leading to hundreds of arrests across different continents. In September 2023, experts first openly linked Lithuania to the role of the "third country" through which the collection occurred. The US Department of Justice has still not formally acknowledged this, although the fresh leak of court orders and internal appendices details how law enforcement turned the criminals' "encrypted" messenger into a convenient channel for their own intelligence.
The FBI, 404 Media, and Yle have emphasized in their publications: the documents were supposed to remain sealed, but their appearance in the public domain sheds light on the "inner workings" of a global special operation – from the legal scheme of placing the server outside the US and regular requests to Lithuania, to the specific stories about yachts, regattas, private planes, and boxes that turned out not to be what they seemed.
