Verizon Gave a Woman’s Phone Data to an Armed Stalker Who Posed as Cop Over Email
Joseph Cox, reporting for 404 Media:
The FBI investigated a man who allegedly posed as a police officer
in emails and phone calls to trick Verizon to hand over phone data
belonging to a specific person that the suspect met on the dating
section of porn site xHamster, according to a newly unsealed court
record. Despite the relatively unconvincing cover story concocted
by the suspect, including the use of a clearly non-government
ProtonMail email address, Verizon handed over the victim’s data to
the alleged stalker, including their address and phone logs. The
stalker then went on to threaten the victim and ended up driving
to where he believed the victim lived while armed with a knife,
according to the record.
The news is a massive failure by Verizon who did not verify that
the data request was fraudulent, and the company potentially put
someone’s safety at risk. […] As the complaint against Glauner
notes, this “search warrant” was not correctly formatted and did
not include an additional form that is required for search
warrants in North Carolina. That, and the Cary Police Department
confirmed that no such Steven Cooper is employed with the agency,
the document says. The judge who allegedly signed the document,
Gale Adams, was shown the document and told investigators the
signature was not hers either. Most obviously of all, the document
was sent with a ProtonMail email address, which is “not an
official government email address,” the complaint says.
Disgraceful.
★
Joseph Cox, reporting for 404 Media:
The FBI investigated a man who allegedly posed as a police officer
in emails and phone calls to trick Verizon to hand over phone data
belonging to a specific person that the suspect met on the dating
section of porn site xHamster, according to a newly unsealed court
record. Despite the relatively unconvincing cover story concocted
by the suspect, including the use of a clearly non-government
ProtonMail email address, Verizon handed over the victim’s data to
the alleged stalker, including their address and phone logs. The
stalker then went on to threaten the victim and ended up driving
to where he believed the victim lived while armed with a knife,
according to the record.
The news is a massive failure by Verizon who did not verify that
the data request was fraudulent, and the company potentially put
someone’s safety at risk. […] As the complaint against Glauner
notes, this “search warrant” was not correctly formatted and did
not include an additional form that is required for search
warrants in North Carolina. That, and the Cary Police Department
confirmed that no such Steven Cooper is employed with the agency,
the document says. The judge who allegedly signed the document,
Gale Adams, was shown the document and told investigators the
signature was not hers either. Most obviously of all, the document
was sent with a ProtonMail email address, which is “not an
official government email address,” the complaint says.
Disgraceful.