Telegram CEO Arrested
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The Network: How a Secretive Phone Company Helped the Crime World Go Dark
Vince Ramos wanted Phantom Secure to be the Uber of privacy-focused, luxury-branded phones—flood the market with devices, and sort out the law later. Then the FBI investigated him.
www.vice.com
this is a fascinating story on it's own
Here's how federal prosecutors in San Diego did this guy, Vincent Ramos, who ran a smaller scale operation, Phantom Secure, if you remember the Blackberry BB days - but was for sure a pre cursor to Discord, Telegram, Signal.
What they needed to prove was that he was explicity aware that his devices and network were being used by drug trafficker/network. They ran an undercover to secure that up. So, once they had that, they could charge drug trafficking conspiracy. He was sentenced to 9 years in prison. for sure he cooperated to help the FBI too.
France has different laws. but similar to how they tried to prosecute the backpage founders for child sex trafficking, think that was under AG Kamala Harris, the results were mixed. They just didn't have enough. They couldn't pull it off.
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How One Movie-Obsessed California Drug Trafficker Was Brought Down in a Massive International Sting Operation
In the early morning of September 9, 2015, Owen Hanson opened his Louis Vuitton bag and stuffed it with bundles of cash and three cell phones. The money was for gambling during the round of golf he…
crimereads.com
this is a good one to read
also read a dozen articles and followed this from the day the news broke, September 2015, my boys Dad was indicted in this case too lol
Feds filed a RICO case in January 2016
but he's going to have a movie soon, working with Mark Walhberg, he made it into the major leagues, but is a douchebag, got a sentence reduction for his help in the Phantom Secure takedown
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I thought they said Grams Not Scams
Or something 2 that effect
Gah Damn
Or something 2 that effect
Gah Damn
Macron loves Telegram. French judges hate it.
France’s president is an avid user of the app and POLITICO saw he was online “recently.” That didn’t shield Telegram CEO Pavel Durov from arrest.
www.politico.eu
Macron loves Telegram. French judges hate it.
France’s president is an avid user of the app and POLITICO saw he was online “recently.” That didn’t shield Telegram CEO Pavel Durov from arrest.
Free article usually reserved for subscribers
Telegram is avidly used within political and media circles — including by French President Emmanuel Macron himself. | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
August 27, 2024 4:20 am CET
By Victor Goury-Laffont, Océane Herrero, Sarah Paillou and Elisa Braun
PARIS — Open the Telegram chat of anyone in the French political orbit and you’ll notice lawmakers, cabinet members and presidential advisers online or recently connected.
The encrypted messaging app is avidly used within political and media circles — including by French President Emmanuel Macron himself.
On Monday, while Telegram founder Pavel Durov was in French police custody, the president was shown as having been connected to the messaging platform “recently,” a former MP with the French president's number showed POLITICO on their phone.
Macron has been a Telegram user since the early days of his first presidential campaign. Nearly a decade later, the app remains widely used by both cabinet members and political officials of all ranks and parties, particularly within pro-Macron circles.
Durov, the Russian-born founder and CEO of Telegram, was unexpectedly arrested upon landing in France Saturday night. The precise reason for his arrest has not yet been communicated, but Durov’s custody has been extended.
The founder's arrest has been criticized by self-proclaimed free speech advocates, including X and Tesla owner Elon Musk, as well as Russian officials, including Senator Alexei Pushkov. On his own Telegram channel, Pushkov called France a “liberal dictatorship” that “does not tolerate individuals who claim freedom.”
In a post on X on Monday, Macron pushed back against these accusations. Durov's arrest was "in no way a political decision," he said. "France is deeply committed to freedom of expression and communication, to innovation, and to the spirit of entrepreneurship. It will remain so."
Durov's arrest took place as part of a probe into a series of charges including complicity in the detaining and sharing of child pornography, complicity in drug trafficking as well as organized crime laundering, the Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement. The probe was opened "against an unidentified person" and did not specifically target Durov.
According to a French justice official not working on the case but familiar with its background, Telegram had drawn frustration in France due to its reluctance to cooperate with authorities. "They have pissed off people with their refusal to give answers in dirty files," said the official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
In a statement following Durov's arrest, Telegram insisted that it “abides by EU laws” and that its CEO “has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe.”
“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner is responsible for the abuse of that platform,” the company added.
Lingering security concerns
Authorities have tried to curb Telegram's use in official circles over confidentiality concerns. In November of last year, then-Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne banned ministers and their teams from using WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal, stressing that “these digital tools are not devoid of security flaws and therefore cannot guarantee the security of conversations and information shared via them.”
Top officials within the French National Assembly also — unsuccessfully — urged lawmakers to “limit” their use of social media apps and messaging services, including Telegram. In both instances, MPs and cabinet members were encouraged to use lesser-known French alternatives.
But Macron’s own party, Renaissance, still uses a Telegram channel to send public communications to journalists in a private channel that includes 150 members of the press, as does the French interior ministry. Macron also has a public channel where statements and recent news are shared, followed by upwards of 30,000 subscribers, as does the French presidency.
During the 2017 presidential campaign, French security officials had already warned the Macron camp about their Telegram use. "They told us we were being watched, that we were at risk of hacking and that we had to be careful with Telegram, which is a Russian app," a Macron adviser was quoted as saying by newspaper Libération.
Eric Bothorel, a Renaissance parliamentarian who focuses on cyber-related issues, acknowledged the “persistent use of Telegram despite more or less legitimate warnings.”
Bothorel described Telegram's protection levels as “not the best, but not the worst,” while underlining that Olvid, a French encrypted messaging platform which the prime minister had asked cabinet members to use in lieu of Telegram, “offered more guarantees.”
“People don't want to start from scratch, to lose their conversations,” Bothorel told POLITICO about the continued use of Telegram in political circles, describing it as a “force of habit.”
“I don't use Telegram, only SMS and email — but I think it's used a lot [in the National Assembly]. I certainly miss things because I don't have it,” Christine Pirès Beaune, a Socialist MP and elected member of the French lower house’s administration, told POLITICO, adding that the institution would address the “issue of security.”
Call him Paul du Rove
The Telegram boss has a long-standing relationship with France.
Durov, born in Saint Petersburg, left Russia in 2014 after refusing to hand over the contact information of pro-democracy Ukrainian activists on VKontakte, a Russian social media platform he founded, during the Euromaidan movement.
He went on to obtain a series of other nationalities, including that of the United Arab Emirates, where Telegram operates, and France, in 2021. “As a French citizen, I agree that France is the best holiday destination,” Durov wrote in a Telegram post in June.
In April 2023, he changed his legal name in his French passport to “Paul du Rove,” a French adaptation of Pavel Durov — as recorded in the country's Official Journal.
The conditions under which Durov was granted French citizenship, however, are unclear. Obtaining citizenship for foreign-born individuals usually requires having lived in France, which was not the case for Durov, according to a Le Monde report released last year.
According to Le Monde’s report, Durov became a French citizen through a special procedure under which "a French-speaking foreigner who contributes through his or her outstanding work to the influence of France and the prosperity of its international economic relations" can be awarded citizenship at the government’s initiative.
What led Durov to obtain this status was not made public, and his French linguistic skills are unknown.
A spokesperson for the French presidency told POLITICO that the call to grant Durov citizenship had been made by the foreign affairs ministry. The foreign affairs ministry said it "does not communicate on individual citizenship procedures."
Durov sparked controversy in France in 2015 for claiming the French government was “as responsible as ISIS” for the series of attacks across the French capital led by the Islamic State group, which killed 138 people.
ADevilYouKhow
Rhyme Reason
Telegram Founder Charged With Wide Range of Crimes in France
Pavel Durov was arrested near Paris over the weekend as part of a broad investigation into criminal activity on the platform.
Daym
What u all been getting up 2
on that app?
Iv never used it before
Never really understood I just know people were tryna sell me cali weed on it
So it's a money laundering pedo and weapons selling app?
Mud teng
What u all been getting up 2
on that app?Iv never used it before
Never really understood I just know people were tryna sell me cali weed on it
So it's a money laundering pedo and weapons selling app?
Mud teng
Damn. So they are going for more procedural charges, with lower sentencing ranges, rather than major crimes crimes.
This is about obstruction and facilitation. As I only recently understood, cause I don't use any of that shyt, Telegram is not user to user encrypted. So the CEO not being cooperative in an investigation, or instructing subordinates to not be cooperative is what a lot of this is probably about.
This is about obstruction and facilitation. As I only recently understood, cause I don't use any of that shyt, Telegram is not user to user encrypted. So the CEO not being cooperative in an investigation, or instructing subordinates to not be cooperative is what a lot of this is probably about.
and if it's not user end to end encryption, why do so many criminal/criminal networks like it?
The thing with all those apps is, mostly those apps require some registration, or at least being downloaded on a phone, through the apple store, or whatever. Lots of people do this with a phone in their name. They think the APP gives them security.
People have this idea that talking on a phone, or using a Signal style app is like a reactive thing, where the police will start looking at you, when it's more proactive, as in your network gets infiltrated, and the informant shares the group chat, or the Telegram group, or the WhatsAPP group with the investigators, who then track, surveill and retain all the messages.
There's a case in San Diego that I know, where an enforcement team in Tijuana, Los Cabos, had a whatsapp chat, which they used to facilitate around 150 killings in 6 months, the feds saw all of it. Since almost none of the killings were US Citizens or in the US, they couldn't intervene.
Los Cabos allegedly employed rampant violence to ensure that CJNG maintained the ability to traffic drugs through Tijuana, Mexico, and into the United States through San Diego Indeed, in one approximately 6.5-month period of judicially-authorized interceptions of a group chat operated by leaders of Los Cabos, these individuals planned over 150 murders, the majority of which took place in Tijuana, according to the filings. Los Cabos’s bloody reign of terror included the murder of two teenaged United States citizens in Tijuana in November 2018, the government alleges. These teenagers were residents of Chula Vista. The government also alleges that Los Cabos targeted law enforcement in Tijuana, killing at least three police officers.
The thing with all those apps is, mostly those apps require some registration, or at least being downloaded on a phone, through the apple store, or whatever. Lots of people do this with a phone in their name. They think the APP gives them security.
People have this idea that talking on a phone, or using a Signal style app is like a reactive thing, where the police will start looking at you, when it's more proactive, as in your network gets infiltrated, and the informant shares the group chat, or the Telegram group, or the WhatsAPP group with the investigators, who then track, surveill and retain all the messages.
There's a case in San Diego that I know, where an enforcement team in Tijuana, Los Cabos, had a whatsapp chat, which they used to facilitate around 150 killings in 6 months, the feds saw all of it. Since almost none of the killings were US Citizens or in the US, they couldn't intervene.
Los Cabos allegedly employed rampant violence to ensure that CJNG maintained the ability to traffic drugs through Tijuana, Mexico, and into the United States through San Diego Indeed, in one approximately 6.5-month period of judicially-authorized interceptions of a group chat operated by leaders of Los Cabos, these individuals planned over 150 murders, the majority of which took place in Tijuana, according to the filings. Los Cabos’s bloody reign of terror included the murder of two teenaged United States citizens in Tijuana in November 2018, the government alleges. These teenagers were residents of Chula Vista. The government also alleges that Los Cabos targeted law enforcement in Tijuana, killing at least three police officers.
Scandalous 
Telegram isn't E2E by default. It still is encrypted in transmission but the servers have the keys for normal stuff like regular chats, channels, so on for sync purposes. You need Telegram to cooperate for decrypt. Secret chats are entirely E2E and don't even have a backup option in Telegram.
Telegram claims they don't cooperate with law enforcement since forever ago, and is suggested why the CEO is more or less unwanted in Russia for lack of cooperation.
As for why it is popular with XYZ, probably because it is the most feature rich client.
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
idk what it's like in the US because I haven't changed carriers in years but they even have my social lmao
In Europe like a decade or more ago they required your national id card or passport where I lived just to buy a phone I'm sure it's even more strict now
I'm sure there are still avenues around that but
