Hacker for 'El Chapo' helped hunt informants
By: Michael Loria
USA Today
..... A hacker working for infamous Mexican drug loud "El Chapo" Guzman, tapped into an FBI agent's cell phone data and Mexico City surveillance cameras to find, intimidate and kill agency informants, according to a newly released federal report.
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The report from the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General details how in 2018 the Sinaloa Cartel enlisted a cyber agent to track the FBI's assistant legal attache in Mexico City working on the case against Guzman.
..... Guzman, considered responsible for the deaths of 34,000 people, was sentenced to life in prison in 2019 after covington on charges including running a criminal enterprise and murder conspiracies. The report, released June 26, [2025] sheds new light on the deadly tactics Guzman and the drug cartel employed to destroy resistance and cooperation with police.
..... Cartel members used information the hacker obtained "to intimidate and, in some instances, kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses," according to the report.
..... Efforts to hut the legal case against Guzman came amid his federal trial in Brooklyn in 2018.
..... the hacker for Guzman obtained information, the report says, by monitoring who was going in and out of the U.S. embassy in Mexico City: tracking phone calls made by the FBI agent working on the case; and tapping into the city's surveillance camera system to follow the agent and see who he was meeting. Legal attache agents are "highly trained investigators" who work with law enforcement in their host country, according to the FBI.