FBI Defend Raids On Texas Datacenter

Aryden writes "Wired Reports: 'The FBI on Tuesday defended its raids on at least two data centers in Texas, in which agents carted out equipment and disrupted service to hundreds of businesses. The raids were part of an investigation prompted by complaints from AT&T and Verizon about unpaid bills allegedly owed by some data center customers, according to court records. One data center owner charges that the telecoms are using the FBI to collect debts that should be resolved in civil court. But on Tuesday, an FBI spokesman disputed that charge.'"

Comments

April 7, 2009

[Anonymous Coward]

I know Slashdot is sometimes slow to report on news, but come on...

Article is from 2009

[harmonise]

This article is from April 7, 2009 and is old news. It's already been covered on Slashdot and other tech news sites a long time ago.

Breaking news: Oracle has made an offer to purchase Sun Microsystems. Will it be approved by regulators? Stay tuned!

Not news, and not a simple debt collection, either

[mr_mischief]

This was not recent. This was not a debt collection, either.

The guy's stuff wasn't grabbed by the FBI because he didn't pay his bills.

The guy's stuff was grabbed because he never intended to pay his bills himself, and he committed fraud in order to get the colocation space and bandwidth in the first place.

The guy got credit references from people who didn't exist. He forged receipts from other telecom companies. He altered documents to show he'd paid bills that other people had paid. He used a maze of twisty little business names, all different.

He did all of that to secure credit from these folks to allow him to start service with them without a hefty deposit. Then he ditched the bills like they would have expected he might had he not forged the credit-worthiness paperwork.

Fraud is not simple insolvency. It is a felony.

There was every reason for this to be investigated and prosecuted as a criminal offense.

There was also every reason for it to be newsworthy last year when it was news.

Here's follow up from a few months ago..

[l0ungeb0y]

A very interesting read for those who are interested in finding out what came of this:
http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2010/Mar/142

Re:Here's follow up from a few months ago..

[ogl_codemonkey]

Found a clean copy of the text; have restored the embedded links here:

Hello, this is CygonX. Our Hosting Data Center has suffered a major disaster: Namely the FBI storming the Data Center and the company's owner's home (that's me). The FBI took an entire data center, hundreds of servers, routers, switches, UPS system, cabinets, monitors, printers, and even power strips...as evidence.

You would expect this kind of totalitarian storm-trooper activity in the name of the war on drugs, the war on terror, or etc. But the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation actually did NO investigation in this particular case. They took the statements of an ex-employees of the company, which was fired for drug use.

What were they looking for? Well that’s a tricky question, and I am not even sure they know, but the short answer is $6.1 Million Dollars. Hang in there, the story gets more interesting.

As many of you may know I have played the role of Administrator for the UWWWB forum, AKA CygonX for many years. Truthfully, CygonX was a lot like Santa Claus, and has actually been played by many people over the years in order to manage the site, but I am the original and current owner. My real name is Mike Faulkner, and I have hosted the Network Security forum and community at this domain name since sometime in early 2002.
I was the CEO of a small tech company when I took over the site, and I hosted it off my own network on a pair of T1s. That company went under, taking most of my money with it, and UWWWB was actually hosted off a cable modem for a period of time from an equipment rack in my home. This is my forum and community that I have nourished for years.

Over the years, I have bought, sold, and built a large number of small tech companies. I worked my way up, with 100 hour work weeks, and by taking almost no money out personally for many years. For the past few years I have been a very active venture capitalist. Investing in various small technology businesses, and using them to support each other. My VoIP Companies used my Hosting Companies, which leased space in my Data Centers, and etc. This was the Crydon Capital Corporations family of companies.
Crydon Technology, was the data center and hosting company that the FBI raided in Dallas March 12th, 2009. UWWWB was tucked away on a tiny server in the data center for years, and we never even got a single complaint from RIAA, or MPPA, or anyone. This is not just about UWWWB, although the FBI certainly is holding it against me for running a security site.

Here's what happened: March 12th, 2009, at about 5:AM in the morning, my home alarm system went off. I get up to see what’s going on, on maybe 3 hours of sleep, and my wife points out there are two people with flash lights in my back yard. Now, this may not be unusual for everyone, but I lived in a fairly nice home in Southlake Texas, the United States highest per-capita income city for 2008. A very nice community, virtually no crime, and excellent schools. That is to say, I did not live in a shack in the hood, this is nice suburbs, and not where the FBI usually does raids.
So I run out the back door of my home, thinking I was about to confront some crackheads trying to steal the copper off my AC unit or something. And although I couldn’t quite see them yet I heard the very authoritative voice of what appeared to be law enforcement officers, with the radio noise to go with them. They proceeded with the expected dialogue, "stop", "show me your hands", "hands in the air" etc. They didn't shoot me, and sadly that really was the highlight of my day. I assumed my alarm had triggered by itself and the cops had been called, as we had problems with the alarm system before. They handcuffed me, while I was telling them I was the home owner. No big deal, they’ll figure it out in a second, right?
It wasn't a false alarm on my home security system, the FBI had cut my phone lines.

When they brought me around to the front of my house, there was a very

Update on the Case

[BBCWatcher]

Michael Blaine Faulkner, his wife, and others allegedly fled to Mexico shortly after the 2009 raid. A federal grand jury handed down several felony indictments in January, 2010 (or possibly late 2009). Mexican authorities captured Faulkner and his associates in January, 2010, in Cancun where allegedly they were living under assumed names. They were extradited back to Texas. Faulkner petitioned for release pending trial, but that request was denied in March. The trial date was set for October, 2010, but I've seen no information on any trial yet.

Re:Not news, and not a simple debt collection, eit

[mr_mischief]

The problem was they seized computers and networking equipment at his address that he was being paid to hold for others. If you are under investigation and a warrant is issued for all computer equipment and networking gear at your address to be seized as evidence, that is likely what will happen no matter what agent of what agency is in charge of the investigation.

What would you have the FBI do? You want them to raid the guy's colo facility, take his stuff, and leave his customers' equipment running on unpaid circuits inside an unpaid leased room? You want them to tip off his customers to the raid before it is executed? There is no good solution here.

The best one could hope for is that the customers did a little more due diligence for mission-critical applications like 911 service and credit card processing about the kind of colocation service they were getting and the integrity of the business.