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U. S. investigators are hired under false pretenses through authoritarian governments to do their “dirty work,” the FBI said.
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By Benjamin Weiser and William K. Rashbaum
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The work that appeared through Michael McKeever’s online page was mundane, the kind of request he earned during his decades of work as a private investigator in New York City.
A foreign consumer sought his help in locating a debtor who had fled Dubai and was in Brooklyn. Sr. McKeever had to monitor a space and photograph other people coming and going. “Please be discreet as you are lurking,” he said.
McKeever and an associate took turns tracking, but didn’t realize another team was tracking the same address. They were F. B. I. agents, and one of them temporarily contacted with a warning.
“Your consumer is not who you think they are,” the agent said, according to M. McKeever. ” They’re bad people and they’re not doing anything good. “
McKeever, 71, would later be told that he had been used through Iranian intelligence agents in an alleged plot to kidnap Masih Alinejad, a prominent Iranian-American journalist who has spoken out about human rights abuses in Iran, discrimination against women and imprisonment. and torture of political opponents.
“We were afraid they would go out and get her and catch her, bring her home and probably kill her,” James E said. Dennehy, former head of the FBI’s counterintelligence and cyber department in New York, who now heads the bureau’s Newark office.
Across the United States, researchers are being hired through a new generation of consumers — authoritarian governments like Iran and China that seek to monitor, harass, threaten and even repatriate dissidents living legally in the United States, law enforcement officials said.
Federal indictments and court cases over the past two years detail instances in which personal investigators have engaged in such schemes in New York, California and Indiana, and F. B. I. officials. They say others have been too. Most appear to have been used without his wisdom and subsequently cooperated with the authorities; Some, however, have been charged.
Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said a government can hire an investigator as part of a system transaction to download detailed data about a person’s residence, mobile phones, social security number, business address and convey that wisdom. on a state security agent device.
“This happens to me to be low-cost, low-risk state terrorism in the twenty-first century,” Hoffman said.
The tactic comes amid a broad wave of repression, officials said, which has included poisonings of belligerent parties of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Britain and elsewhere; Saudi Arabia’s involvement in luring Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent critic, to its consulate in Istanbul, where it brutally murdered and dismembered in 2018; and Turkey’s persecution of perceived enemies in at least 31 countries, according to a 2021 report through Freedom House, which promotes democracy around the world.
In the case involving Ms. Alinejad, federal prosecutors in Manhattan filed kidnapping conspiracy charges in July 2021 against an Iranian intelligence official and three associates, all in Iran. None will likely be detained if they remain there, but officials said the goal, beyond protecting potential victims, is to publicize and deter plotted conspiracies at the degrees of a foreign government.
To the more personal eyes, day-to-day painting is far from the glamorous depictions of film and literature, with jobs coming from law firms, insurance companies, and aggrieved spouses. Today, many missions are conducted over the Internet, without face-to-face. facial contact.
“If you have someone on the other side, an intelligence professional who can lie and create smoke and mirrors, it’s hard to control clients well,” said Wes Bearden, a Dallas-based personal investigator and officer with the World Detective Association, which has about 1,000 members.
Many personal investigators, some of whom have experience in law enforcement, are decidedly old-school. Mr. McKeever’s carries the motto “Give the truth. . . with honesty and proof” and lists offers such as work background checks and “Marriage and Infidelity Investigation. “
Such street-level approaches can also provide the basis for an intelligence operation, one that foreign governments can conduct cheaply in one place.
“It’s their legal force that they use here on the floor in a very herbal way to do a lot of their dirty work,” M said. Dennehy of the F. B. I.
In Alinejad’s case, he said, Iranians sought to know her emotions, her mental state, even her reference language. Was she frantically on his shoulder or did she seem carefree?
McKeever said that after being briefed on Iran’s role, he secretly cooperated with the bureau, giving his email account: FBI. The government showed its cooperation. McKeever has not been charged with any crime and continues to operate his business.
While personal investigators are victims of the types of schemes they uncover, the FBI says they have contacted professional teams to warn them.
“The more attention we can draw on this, the more we hope that personal detectives and others will be informed to detect those red flags,” said Roman Rozhavsky, an F. B. I. agent. responsible for counterintelligence in New York.
Not all personal detectives have shied away from legal trouble. Michael McMahon, a 55-year-old retired New York Police Department Decomposition sergeant who has built a momentary career as a personal investigator, was arrested in 2020. He faces charges of acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government, harassment and two counts of conspiracy. Prosecutors say it was part of an effort to force a Chinese citizen living in New Jersey, known only as John Doe-1, to return to that country.
McMahon said he was stunned and didn’t know he was running for China.
“When I read the complaint against me,” he said in an email, “it hurt me. As my record shows, I have committed my life to upholding the law and have never committed a crime, and never will. “
McMahon said in an interview that in 2016 he took on the task of a woman who discovered him through her website. He said he realized he was calling a Chinese consumer who was looking for someone in New Jersey who had stolen cash from a Chinese. Structure of the company.
“We want to locate this user, is that something you do?” He remembered her request.
“‘I said, ‘yes, that’s what I’m doing. ‘”
McMahon said the woman claimed to own a translation company and paid with a check payable to the company. He said he conducted surveillance five times in New Jersey in 2016 and 2017, each time he reported to local police departments that he parked in front of a residence. That, Mr. McMahon said, is evidence that he had nothing to hide. He said he hired two other investigators, retired NYPD detectives, to help him.
McMahon said he woke up early one morning in October 2020 to his dog’s barking and someone knocked on the door of his home in Bergen County, New Jersey. Officers and police had come to arrest him.
Justice Department officials said Mr. McMahon and an organization of other defendants, adding some in China, were part of a competitive crusade by the Chinese government called Operation Fox Hunt. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Mr. McMahon was an integral component of the scheme.
“After several months of investigations through defendant Michael McMahon,” the indictment says, “the co-conspirators planned a fast-track operation to track down and repatriate John Doe-1 for mental coercion. “
Prosecutors said McMahon knew Doe-1 wanted through the Chinese government: While conducting surveillance, a link to a page directory of an English-language Chinese newspaper, the guy among a hundred fugitives wanted in an anti-corruption campaign, was emailed to him.
They also said McMahon, in a verbal exchange with a co-defendant, a Chinese citizen who had lived in Queens, showed up to harass John Doe-1 through the outdoor parking lot of his space to “let him know we were there. “
McMahon’s attorney, Lawrence S. Lustberg, said investigators are hired through private corporations to locate other people who are simultaneously wanted by authorities, and that his client’s harassment comment was just a suggestion that they interact in more open surveillance, which he says never before. Happened.
“I haven’t noticed any evidence, not a single one, that Mike had the idea that he was running in any way for the Chinese government,” Lustberg said.
The U. S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn declined to comment.
Mr. Lustberg said his consumer also had the opportunity to cooperate with investigators.
“There is never a moment before his arrest,” M. said. Lustberg, “where the federal government comes up to him and says, ‘Hey, do you realize what’s going on here?You are being deceived by the Chinese government. “
Iran, a theocracy facing a rising tide of protests at home, has also been tracking its critics for years and has taken credit for American detectives. In July 2020, Mr. McKeever won the email asking her to monitor the Brooklyn home that turned out to be Ms. Alinejad’s residence.
“I am communicating with you on behalf of a consumer from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, who fled to avoid debt payment,” the sender, Kiya Sadeghi, wrote, according to the indictment.
Ms. Alinejad, as a journalist in Iran, has exposed embezzlement and corruption, and has been threatened with arrest or worse for writing articles critical of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Her press pass was revoked and she was forced to flee in 2009. Since Brooklyn, he has remained very present in the media. In July, a man was arrested with a loaded AK-47 attack rifle outside his home.
Mr. McKeever said he knew nothing about Ms. Alinejad. Sadeghi’s email said his was necessary to monitor a “potential address” of the missing person, according to the indictment.
“I will want high-quality photos/videos of the other people living in the front and the cars they drive,” one email read. The visitor searched for “photos of faces and cars” and their license plate numbers and, “if possible a photo of envelopes in the mailbox,” Sadeghi wrote in some other message.
For McKeever, the task is simple: “I think it may just be a one-day job. “
The indictment identifies Mr. Sadeghi as an Iranian intelligence agent who sought out and hired investigators in the United States, Canada and Britain to provide surveillance to Iranian intelligence.
On July 22, 2020, Mr. McKeever emailed Mr. Sadeghi informing him that surveillance had begun and a photo of the house.
In August and September, he requested additional days of work, adding photos and videos. The visitor also searched for “photos of faces of everyone who visits the address, even if they are marketers and marketers,” one email read.
“Photos of everything and everyone,” M. Sadeghi wrote in the message. “The visitor needs a lot of content even if they think it has no value. “
In October 2020, Mr. McKeever won the F. B. I. award. He agreed to cooperate.
“I like it, hey, everything you need, I’m fine,” M said. McKeever.
Mr. McKeever said he continued to speak with Mr. Sadeghi with full knowledge of the FBI and conducted further surveillance in early 2021. At one point, Mr. Sadeghi asked if it was possible to park a car in front of the space. He was supplied with a camera to provide a live video stream. In total, McKeever was paid just under $6,000 for his services, according to the indictment.
In retrospect, he did not ignore the apparent red flags in Mr. S. ‘s repeated requests. But he admitted that he missed clues that might have aroused suspicion, such as the questions he had asked M. Sadeghi who never generated acceptable answers.
For example, he said he asked for the call from the alleged debtor, so he could ask if anyone with that call lived at the Brooklyn address. It was never said. He now believes the Iranians were looking to thwart any verification he might have done on his own.
“One of the things I could have done is go back to that space and say, ‘Who lives here?'” McKeeverAnd you may have Googled this woman’s name. If he had learned his name, he said, his reaction would have been, ‘Wow, wait a second. ‘
Alinejad, in an interview, said she was furious when she learned of the extent of the surveillance.
“Miles away from my homeland,” Ms. Alinejad said, “I am being watched and watched through who has been hired through the Iranian regime.
According to the indictment, the conspirators had sought routes between Ms. Alinejad’s home and the Brooklyn boardwalk, as well as strategies to take her by boat to Venezuela and Iran.
“There’s no doubt in my brain that they may have,” M. McKeever, adding, “I’m glad it didn’t work. “
During his many years as a personal researcher, M. said. McKeever, tried to be attentive when looking for the jobs he accepted. He didn’t think he was naïve, but he knew that consumers can simply lie. If there was one lesson for personal researchers, he says, it was to be careful not to be used.
“I’ve been used,” he said.
Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.
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