Mexican man arrested for sale of surveillance services including the hack of WhatsApp

A Mexican man arrested for managing a company that facilitated the sale of spyware and advanced surveillance tools to organizations in the United States and Mexico.

The man named Carlos Guerreo had sold phone interceptions, location tracking, WiFi interceptors, WhatsApp hacking tools, signal jammers, IMSI catchers and other hacking services from firms in Israel and Italy.

Mexican man arrested for illegal activities

As per the case files, Gerrero’s surveillance activities have been active from Aug 2014. Since then, Guerrero and Daniel Moreno, business partner were selling hacking products of an Italian company.

“After entering this agreement, Defendant and Moreno, through Elite by Carga, earned commissions brokering the sale of Company A‘s interception devices to the Mexican state governments of Baja and Durango. To facilitate the sales, Defendant repeatedly arranged for Elite by Carga employees to transport Company A representatives and devices between San Diego and Mexico.” –Carlos Guerrero

The hacking services operated by Guerrero include geolocation tracking, cell phone interception and eavesdropping for around $25,000. The convict is also aware of the purpose behind procurement of the hacking services, and it is stated that the services are used for both political and law enforcement purposes.

“Defendant knew this, in part, because Defendant arranged for the Mayor of a town in the Mexican state of Morelos to gain unauthorized access to the U.S.-based Twitter, Hotmail, and iCloud accounts of a political rival.” –Carlos Guerrero

Furthermore, Gurrero seems to have used the hacking services for his own business reasons to spy on his business competitors. With the initial sales, Guerrero expanded his business ‘Elite by Carga’ in 2016 and 2017 building new partnerships with multiple spyware vendors.

And this is when he started re-selling WiFi interception tools, signal jammers, IMSI catchers, and services to hack WhatsApp messages. The services were delivered from firms in Italy, Israel and some unknown countries.

“For example, in February 2017, one or more Elite by Carga employees agreed to hack the phone and email account of a Florida-based sales representative of a large Mexican business in exchange for an approximately $25,000 payment from the Mexican business.” – Carlos Guerrero

Guerrero accepts the crimes and pleads guilty

After investigating the case, US authorities said the defendant accepted his crimes and please guilty for the crimes. Carlos Guerrero faces five-years of imprisonment and a fine of $250,000.

The US authorities also sent a high-warning message to individuals and businesses that are practicing such illegal acts will not be tolerated and will be charged immediately on Cyber Crime, said the Special Agent of HSI San Diego, Mr. Chad Plantz.

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