The US Justice Department (DoJ) reported a Mexican businessman named Carlos Guerrero admitted guilt in federal court for peddling spyware/hacking tools to clients in the United States and Mexico.
Authorities accused Guerrero of facilitating the sale of monitoring and surveillance technologies to both Mexican government users and private customers for commercial and personal purposes. Guerrero "knowingly arranged" for a Mexican mayor to obtain access to a political rival's email and social media accounts, according to the investigators. Guerrero also utilized the technology to listen in on the phone calls of a rival from the United States who had been in Southern California and Mexico at the time.
Guerrero is also suspected of assisting a Mexican mayor in gaining unlawful access to his rival's iCloud, Hotmail, as well as Twitter pages, according to the Department of Justice's news release. A sales representative's phone and email data were hacked in another case, so he had to pay $25,000 to regain the information. The accused also utilized the gadgets to listen more into his rival's phone calls in Mexico and South California. Guerrero's company, Elite by Carga, imported surveillance technology and espionage tools from unknown Israeli, Italian, and other companies.
Guerrero operated as a broker for an undisclosed Italian business, referred to only as Company A in the accusation, which offered bugging devices and tracking tools between 2014 and 2015. The organization is thought to be Hacking Team, a bankrupt Milan-based maker of offensive infiltration tools which was also breached in 2015 and had leaked emails leaked online, including a cache of Guerrero-related messages.
Pegasus, strong mobile spyware created by Israeli corporation NSO Group which can acquire near-complete permissions on a target's smartphone, is among the most prominent and reported keylogging software used in Mexico. Over the last two decades, Mexico has spent $61 million on contracts, primarily targeting journalists, activists, and human rights defenders. According to a leaked list of phone numbers suspected to be NSO surveillance targets, Mexico has the most targets — around 700 phones — of any country on the list, which NSO has consistently denied.
Guerrero's information director Daniel Moreno, who is often mentioned in the hacking team's emails, is scheduled to file a similar pleading in the coming weeks.
