Episode 137 of the Public Key podcast is here! Traditional financial crime has evolved from robbing banks to now draining crypto wallets and law enforcement is expected to keep up with this lightning quick and cutting edge technology to combat transnational criminals. This week we spoke to Special Agent Jason Conboy of Homeland Security Investigations about his team’s collaboration with the RCMP in Canada and their take down of a drug trafficking operation involving crypto and darknet markets, as part of Operation Hackstone.
You can listen or subscribe now on Spotify, Apple, or Audible. Keep reading for a full preview of episode 137.
Public Key Episode 137: The Cyber Avengers: Transforming Crime Fighting with Technology and Partnerships
Traditional financial crime has evolved from robbing banks to now draining crypto wallets and law enforcement is expected to keep up with this lightning quick and cutting edge technology to combat transnational criminals.
In this episode, Ian Andrews (CMO, Chainalysis) speaks with Jason Conboy, a Special Agent for the Cyber Investigations Liaison team of Homeland Security Investigations. Jason was on stage to accept a Chainalysis customer award for his team’s collaboration with the RCMP in Canada for their efforts to take down a drug trafficking operation involving crypto and darknet markets, as part of Operation Hackstone.
Jason illustrates the critical role HSI plays alongside agencies like the FBI and CIA in tackling crimes that span borders and explains the nuances of fighting modern crimes in a digital era, spotlighting the hurdles and triumphs in using advanced technology to combat cybercriminal activities.
He also emphasizes the indispensable nature of public private partnerships as well as multi-agency collaborations in building effective defenses against evolving criminal strategies.
Quote of the episode
“HSI has been involved with the public private partnership for many years, whether it’s with cyber or financial investigations and beyond. Working with financial institutions, casinos, money service businesses, you know, companies like Chainalysis and being able to put all of our resources together, to combat this big monster of cross border cybercrime.” – Jason Conboy (Special Agent – Cyber Investigations Liaison, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI))
Minute-by-minute episode breakdown
2 | Jason’s experience working in law enforcement battling cyber crime and darknet markets
4 | Exploring the role of Homeland Security Investigations in combating cybercrime and transnational organized crime
7 | Evolving criminal tactics and law enforcement’s technological adaptation
9 | Cross-border collaboration in combating transnational crime and protecting USA/Canada border
14 | Challenges for investigators, judges and juries when it comes to crypto based investigations
17 | Recruiting Technologically Skilled Agents for Homeland Security Investigations
20 | Public-Private Partnerships and the role they have in fighting cyber crime and money laundering
23 | Multi-agency initiatives to take down crypto and transnational organized crime
26 | HSI’s expansion of the cybercrime center and portfolios in the network intrusion and darknet market space
Related resources
Check out more resources provided by Chainalysis that perfectly complement this episode of the Public Key.
Speakers on today’s episode
- Ian Andrews *Host* (Chief Marketing Officer, Chainalysis)
- Jason Conboy (Special Agent – Cyber Investigations Liaison, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI))
This website may contain links to third-party sites that are not under the control of Chainalysis, Inc. or its affiliates (collectively “Chainalysis”). Access to such information does not imply association with, endorsement of, approval of, or recommendation by Chainalysis of the site or its operators, and Chainalysis is not responsible for the products, services, or other content hosted therein.
Our podcasts are for informational purposes only, and are not intended to provide legal, tax, financial, or investment advice. Listeners should consult their own advisors before making these types of decisions. Chainalysis has no responsibility or liability for any decision made or any other acts or omissions in connection with your use of this material.
Chainalysis does not guarantee or warrant the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability or validity of the information in any particular podcast and will not be responsible for any claim attributable to errors, omissions, or other inaccuracies of any part of such material.
Unless stated otherwise, reference to any specific product or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by Chainalysis. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Views and opinions expressed by Chainalysis employees are those of the employees and do not necessarily reflect the views of the company.
Transcript
Ian Andrews:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Public Key. This is your host, Ian Andrews. Today we’ve got a special one for you with special agent, Jason Conboy of the Cyber Investigations Team within the Homeland Security Investigations Bureau. Jason, welcome to the program.
Jason Conboy:
Thanks for the invite. Pleasure’s all mine.
Ian Andrews:
It’s pretty amazing when we get someone on the show with your experience. You’ve been with HSI for over 17 years, working as a special agent in a number of different capacities. Maybe just start with an overview of some of the work that you’ve done throughout your very impressive career.
Jason Conboy:
Oh yeah, that’s great. It’ll actually be 17 years next month. Not that I’m counting the many years until I have to retire, but yeah, I started as a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations in 2007. I say I kind of lucked out right out of college, went to UCF in Orlando, wanted to go kick in doors and arrest bad guys, and HSI seemed to be the fit. Got the call, lucky enough to get HSI Miami as my first field office. Assigned to the airport for narcotics smuggling, ended up ending my career in Miami chasing drug smugglers from the Bahamas is pretty cool and is a lot of fun and a lot of good work down in Miami. So at this point in my career, knew nothing about cyber. There was a different team that did that.
Fast forward to 2012, had an opportunity to open up an office in west North Carolina, just south of Asheville in Hendersonville, and going from an office of 400 agents to four agents, you don’t get a choice, it’s whatever comes across your desk. Found a niche in working child sexual abuse material cases, or what we call child exploitation. So in our world now, it’s like quasi-cyber, going after cyber criminals using and abusing the internet, peer-to-peer networks, a little bit of the tour at that time to sexual abuse kids online and share that stuff. So, pretty horrible crimes and very satisfying work out there. Worked a lot of investigations for seven years.
And then 2015, learned what a Bitcoin was from someone at our FinCEN, our financial crimes enforcement network at a training. Still didn’t know what a Bitcoin was but knew that criminals used it to facilitate many of crimes, especially using dark net markets. So started working in that space a lot, did some online undercover with crypto. The dark net, Asheville was kind of a unique place where there’s no real port of entry, just a regional airport, so a lot of criminals were getting contraband through the mail, which is like our bread and butter. And we’re doing control deliveries and seeing that a lot of them were ordering it from dark net markets using crypto.
Left in 2019, took my skills and knowledge to the mothership in Washington DC area to our Cyber Crimes Center. Worked under our network intrusion section for two years, building out technology tools and training for ransomware investigations, going after initial access brokers, cyber intrusion, network intrusion, and then still kind of held onto that dark net and crypto. And been a dream to go international, lucked out and I arrived in lovely today, it’s sunny and what I consider warm, which is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, Ottawa, Canada, as what we call a HSI representative. So I worked out of the embassy for about two and a half years.
And then I’ve been in this new role as a cyber investigations liaison, assigned to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police National Cybercrime Coordination Center. I could put a bunch of acronyms behind that, for about a year now. So primarily my role now is to support those cyber dependent crimes, network intrusion, ransomware, cross-border cases, and still a little bit of the dark net in crypto because we know that’s a space that cyber criminals use and need to facilitate their crimes.
Ian Andrews:
Yeah, amazing, and I would imagine at this point people are maybe wondering, well, what is HSI, right? The FBI, the CIA, they get movies made about them, right? There’s big spy capers and books. I think HSI plays an incredibly important role, in terms of law enforcement at the federal level in the United States and obviously abroad, in terms of the liaison role you’re playing now. Maybe you can just give people the context on what the organization focuses on and how you fit into the overall landscape.
Jason Conboy:
Yeah, that’s an awesome question, and I do a lot of that liaison-ing up here. In Canada you’ve got the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the one federal agency along with their border police as well, the CBSA. So I always have to explain, it’s a little complicated in the US, we have over 60 US federal law enforcement agencies, all with special agent criminal investigators within that with different jurisdictions.
So we’re the second largest criminal investigative agency right behind our friends at the FBI, and the largest under the Department of Homeland Security. And we were kind of built out of the old Immigration Naturalty Services Agency and US Customs Service. So they both have different authorities to combat federal criminal laws, human smuggling, human trafficking. On the customs side, you’re looking at money laundering, cyber crime, narcotics, weapons trafficking. So post-9/11, kind of merged those agencies and we became HSI under DHS, and we never lost any of those authorities. So we have the authority to investigate over federal, or sorry, 400 US federal laws and have a huge international footprint. I think we’re in over 53 countries and 90 plus attache offices worldwide. So that’s a pretty big footprint to combat the transnational networks that cross the borders.
Ian Andrews:
Somebody obviously should be making movies about HSIs or maybe a TV show because-
Jason Conboy:
We were in, I believe the Netflix, The Punisher, that was an HSI agent and that was a weapons smuggling operation. So when the agents showed up at the DHS office with their HSI badge, and we’re like, yeah, there you go, that’s it.
Ian Andrews:
Nice. So any producers listening to the show, here’s your tip, go explore the HSI case files and you’ve probably got some great untapped material there.
I’m curious about, in terms of the focus of the agency, so you said there’s over 400 federal laws that you have the authority to investigate around. You mentioned cyber, you mentioned human trafficking. Are those the biggest areas or are there additional focus areas that you’re looking at?
Jason Conboy:
Yeah, every year our Executive Associate Director, EAD puts out the priorities for the agency and usually within those top three or five, it’s always victim-based crimes, that human trafficking, child exploitation, those are no-brainers within law enforcement. We want to help out victims who are getting used and abused by criminals. And then the national security aspects of the weapons and technology smuggling, HSI is on all the joint terror and task forces nationwide. And then when you throw in cybercrime, it seems like cyber and financial, those kind of portfolios touch on all those crimes because the majority of criminal organizations we deal with at HSI are using some sort of technology to facilitate crime, even if it’s just a cell phone or a website, and then they’re doing it for the purpose of illicit proceeds. So whether that’s bulk cash or bank transactions happening in real bank accounts, or they’re going to that kind of more anonymous, darker side of using cryptocurrency and tokens to facilitate their criminal activity. So really, you always see it every year it’s going to be those victims’ crimes, it’s going to be cyber financials touching on everything.
Ian Andrews:
Yeah. I’m curious, when you look back over your 17-year career, what’s changed the most from when you were tracking down drug smugglers in Miami, to where you find yourself today? And maybe what stayed the same about the criminal activity that you’re looking at?
Jason Conboy:
I don’t have a Nextel flip phone anymore. I thought that was really cool.
Ian Andrews:
It changes, yeah, yeah.
Jason Conboy:
In 2008, I thought it was the coolest thing, and then I got-
Ian Andrews:
Push to talk.
Jason Conboy:
… [inaudible 00:08:05] Blackberry phone too and I thought that was cool, so. But yeah, I mean, obviously the technology and the access we have to help our cases have excelled over the years. I used to type in reports on a black and green screen, now we have a whole high-speed case management system and iPhones and better vehicles and equipment to our job. But still, it’s the traditional police work that hasn’t changed, that surveillance, doing legal process, working together as a team and partnering with our other local, state, federal, international partners to combat transnational crime. Because when I started in Miami in 2008, there were drugs smuggling organizations and they’re still operating down there and nationwide and worldwide. I just think we’re better equipped now than we were 17 years ago.
The criminals have changed, they’ve embraced technology more. They don’t need approval to use emerging technologies, or a budget. They can just grab some illicit proceeds and buy a computer, get on the dark net, buy some crypto, and they’re off to the races. So it seems like they’re exploring a lot more emerging technologies and we are definitely changing as an agency to pivot to combat that.
Ian Andrews:
Yeah. What do you think the criminals have gotten very good at? I mean, you mentioned crypto, you started seeing it in 2015. Is that widespread, in terms of the cases that you’re investigating in or is it still an occasional element within the work you’re doing?
Jason Conboy:
Yeah, it comes up all the time. I mean, just my own personal dealings, it was kind of 2015, it was more related to dark net markets, not the most fraud schemes I was seeing at least across my desk. And as crypto got more accepted and it grew and there was not just a Bitcoin, there were all these alternative coins and privacy based coins and tokens and stable coins, then you kind of see them used and abused in the fraud schemes.
Just in my time here in Canada over three years, you see a lot of cross-border fraud schemes that’ll involve crypto changed to stable coins and cashed out, using exchangers and Bitcoin ATMs, and we’ve definitely seen that rise in the US as well, when it comes to those fraud schemes or extortion schemes as crypto is kind of always there. I think I haven’t personally had investigation but I’ve heard within our agency, even just your street gangs and transnational gangs are even dabbling in that space as well. So that’s interesting too, it seems like it’s not just the cyber savvy criminal using cryptocurrency for illicit proceeds, it’s kind of like whoever can get their hands on it and try it out.
Ian Andrews:
Yeah, we recently had a guest on the podcast, Jim Schrant, who recently left DEA after a 25-year career. And he mentioned one of the things that he had observed was how much cryptocurrency was being used in money laundering operations. So the Mexican cartels collaborating with Chinese criminal organizations who were collecting cash money collected in the US, swapping that into cryptocurrency, and moving that to Mexico. And taking what used to be a very expensive weeks to months process of cash crossing the border into relatively inexpensive and almost instantaneous, in terms of the transfer of the narcotics trafficking proceeds. Are you seeing that in your work as well?
Jason Conboy:
Yeah. I mean, one of our slides for the crypto training we put on, and I put on [inaudible 00:11:46], what’s the benefit of crypto? We can move it faster, further and cheaper. You don’t have to bring a duffel bag into a bank like the cartels used to do, and RHC has been involved in many of those cases and banks that are used for facilitating it whether knowing or unknowing. Now you can just use this digital currency that you can send anywhere really quick and really cheap. So, that’s always going to be tried by the criminals. They’re kind of always a step ahead of us in using those types of systems to move money.
Ian Andrews:
Yeah. I’m curious, now that you’re in Canada and working with the RCMP, how does the landscape in Ottawa differ from what you saw in your previous postings in the US, in Asheville and Miami?
Jason Conboy:
I always tell, especially working with the RCMP and the local police up here or the provincial police is, we’re seeing the same type of crimes. I mean, the US and Canada, here’s a jeopardy question for you, Ian, if you get it. The two countries that share the largest land border is the United States and Canada, which is no shocker why we have almost 30 employees through five offices in Canada. We work hand in hand with all of our law enforcement partners here, but really, yeah, it’s seeing those fraud schemes, seeing the contraband going north and south, whether it’s illicit proceeds, firearms, drugs, and then really working together to get that done.
Just speaking for my partners, that the RCMP have done a great job up here, especially in the crypto space with running a cryptocurrency investigations course. We’ve seen a lot of the police of jurisdictions up here, like the local police partner with the private sector, like you guys and setting up centers of excellence and really putting out that capacity, which is one of the things we do internationally as HSI is build capacity with our partners, whether we do on our own, with our other partners like the FBI and DEA and ATF, or with State Department, which is really the reason we’re here to work under the mission as well.
Ian Andrews:
Well, and I think that cross-border collaboration really has to be celebrated. We shouldn’t go on without mentioning earlier this year at the Chainalysis Trace DC event, you were awarded a Chainalysis Customer Award on behalf of HSI and RCMP for the work on operation Hackstone. Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about what Hackstone was and the outcomes of that effort.
Jason Conboy:
Yeah, now, a total surprise. It was great to jump on a plane and go to DC, I think it was a week before I went on home leave for a month back in North Carolina, but I couldn’t miss out on it. It was great and I caught up with a lot of folks from our cybercrime center there and field offices. Yeah, that was, I look at that as one of the many cases that myself and the other HSI investigators and our local investigators who work in the consulates and embassies work, is anything we’re working is cross-border and then we have to collaborate with our counterparts.
In that investigation per the RCMP press release, a dark net vendor moving opioids using the dark net, accepting cryptocurrency, Canada, Canada, and Canada to the US. So a true problem for both countries and just working together for a successful ending, and I can’t get to the nitty-gritty of the case, but it was definitely using a lot of unique and emerging investigative techniques, but it’s just going back to traditional law enforcement too. Doing the surveillance, having those honest meetings with each other and the expectations of the case and information sharing and realizing that we have to work together to put some of these problems to bed when it comes to transnational crime.
So that was a great case, but honestly, I could have stood on stage with the award for an hour speaking of the many of cases that all the agents within HSI Canada offices have worked with our counterparts. It’s just one of those, like one example and it’s definitely a, like everything’s team award up here with our counterparts and the people we work with.
Ian Andrews:
Yeah. Well, I mean, congratulations on the one specific success and on the other cases as well. I’m curious, is there one that maybe is a wrapped up case that you’re able to share a bit more details on some of the activity that was successful?
Jason Conboy:
Specifically since I’ve been in Canada or throughout the last-
Ian Andrews:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jason Conboy:
Let’s see, in Canada. I mean, we’ve had some. My heart’s always near and dear to those child exploitation cases, so having the ability to share information really quick and fast with our counterparts to have a look-out on somebody at the border, and then find some contraband or find out that they were actually traveling to the United States or to Canada to harm a child, those are always good. There’s a handful of specific ones we’ve done. There was actually a recent individual sentence in Georgia for 20-plus years for that. So that’s that relationship of, there’s certain things that have to move quick and fast for information sharing, whether it’s fraud schemes, cyber attacks, harm against children, national security issues.
So, can’t think of a specific one. I mean, I’ve been there three and a half years, court stuff takes a while. The majority of my case is done in the public sphere from Miami and Asheville. But yeah, just a lot of good success stories, not a specific one, it’s just a total double handful of them that we could talk about.
Ian Andrews:
Yeah. Well, it’s outstanding work. I’m curious, as your career has moved, as you described, from kicking in doors and arresting drug dealers to more cyber, has that made the job harder to take cases to completion? Right? As the evidence has gotten more technical in nature, it’s pretty easy to say, “Hey, I arrested this guy and he was holding this bag of narcotics.” That evidence I think anybody can understand to say, “Well, there’s this thing called the dark web, and the suspect used this thing called cryptocurrency, which is like magic internet money. And it was all anonymous, but we figured out how to make it not anonymous, and we believe it’s this individual.” That feels like a much harder case to make when you’re talking to a judge who’s maybe not a deeply technical, or to a jury even who’s, or even a prosecutor who’s on the same side as you are, just to help them understand the nature of the evidence in the case. What’s your experience been there?
Jason Conboy:
Yeah, so that’s an interesting question because I feel like years ago, I mean, being in this space now for almost 10 years, it was a challenge because you can have that investigator has the knowledge, and I will give a shout out to all the HSI agents who I’ve ever learned dark net crypto from because none of us are born out of the academy knowing this stuff right away. So you learn from each other and then you have to educate your prosecutors or assist the United States attorneys. And luckily, a lot of them now are specialized, they have cyber and financial attorneys, and then they can reach out to their headquarters at the Department of Justice.
But I remember the first time I wrote a federal search warrant as a violation of US 1960, illicit money service business. So an individual selling crypto for profit, not registered with FinCEN. And I wrote this very long affidavit taking in from other agents who have successfully done these, and I drop it off with my prosecutor in Asheville to a judge who’s only been a judge out in Asheville, so born and raised out there. And he’s like, “Come back tomorrow and we’ll get it signed.” And I remember talking to the prosecutor like, “He’s going to have a lot of Post-It notes on this affidavit. There’s going to be a lot of questions.” I explained the dark net cryptocurrency, the blockchain, how it works.
We walked in the next day and he looks me, he says, “Agent Conboy, put your hand on the Bible and go and swear to the affidavit.” And I looked at him, I said, “Your Honor, are you sure you don’t have any questions?” He says, “Nope, it was written perfectly.” So I think it’s-
Ian Andrews:
Amazing.
Jason Conboy:
I think it’s kind of how you sell it, especially when you get into the technical cyber crime investigations, those true hacking and ransomware. How are you going to write that into an affidavit to go get a search warrant to get evidence from a cyber criminal, or to get to that next level where you have enough evidence you have to get an indictment or a criminal complaint from an arrest warrant?
So I think it’s just being very transparent and explaining it in a way, which is a lot of what we do as far as training within HSI and I’ve done in Canada, is running these one day intro to dark net, intro to cryptocurrency investigations courses where it just starts from the ground up. Like, what is the blockchain? What is Bitcoin? And some of my favorite audiences are the people who’ve said, “I don’t know anything about this.” And I said, “Well, if you come in at a zero, you’re going to leave at a five. If you’re coming at a five, you’ll leave at a 10, but you’re going to learn something today.”
And I think now in 2024, push in 2025, it’s definitely a lot easier for an investigator than it was in 2015 to kind of sell a prosecutor or judge on a search warrant or arrest warrant or a seizure warrant when it comes to seizing crypto to say, “Hey, look, we’ve used these tools and we’ve used this open source blockchain to trace these illicit proceeds.” So definitely better than it was, but I always like a challenge. So even back then it was challenging, but still ending up in a lot of successful cases.
Ian Andrews:
Yeah. Do you see new agents coming in into the organization come in with more technological backgrounds than maybe when you joined 17 years ago?
Jason Conboy:
Absolutely. Our agency is always trying to get out there at job fairs and at colleges and universities and recruit those more technical agents. I always say our agents come from so many different walks of life. You go to the academy in lovely southeast Georgia, you get out, you get a gun and a badge, you get assigned to an investigative group, and then it’s kind of on your own. You want to get your own training within cyber or forensics, or you want to take some agency training. And we have certified computer forensics analysts. We have kind of a fairly new position, the cyber operation officer position, it was enacted probably about five years ago. I know they were working on the first round when I was at our cybercrime center, to kind of bridge the gap between the special agent, the criminal analyst, and handle some of these higher-end technical cases where you have big data log files, you have to create undercover websites on the clear note of the darkness. So having somebody with that technical capability to do those things, and we always have to recruit that type of talent.
Ian Andrews:
Well, I know you’re recruiting right now. I saw on LinkedIn you had a recent job posting for a cyber operations officer. When you’re… For people listening to the podcast who are maybe interested and want to pursue a career in law enforcement, what does that look like? If I want to come and work on your team, what skills do I need to have, besides obviously podcasting? What would you expect for someone who’s coming in the door, in terms of their knowledge and skill set?
Jason Conboy:
So let’s see, I applied in 2005, so I think the qualifications are still partly the same. Either education or combination of education, law enforcement background. I remember sitting the academy, I was 23 years old sitting next to a former Louisiana detective of 10-plus years, wearing the same blue polo, but I’m looking at this guy like he’s got way more experience than me. So I think it’s the variety and the depth of experience to become an HSI special agent. But I think the best part about it is you can work a wide variety of crimes, having different backgrounds is great.
And then we do have non-special agent positions, like you said, the cyber operations officer that I believe the opening’s still going on now. And those are in multiple offices in what we call the field offices, and then I think there’s a few at our cybercrime center. That’s also a great way in, it’s not a gun and a badge position, but you’re working side by side with special agents. We have criminal analysts, which we would call intel analysts who help for all of our cases. And then of course, the admin support that we need to run all of our field offices domestically, headquarters at international.
So I think we’re at anywhere from like 6,500 to 7,000 special agents, when you throw in non-agents within HSI, over 10,000 employees.
Ian Andrews:
Wow.
Jason Conboy:
Domestically, headquarters, and worldwide. So yeah, you go to usajobs.gov where you would apply for any position within the US government and you would type in just HSI or Homeland Security Investigations. You can put a little notification on there for special agents or for the COO position and get an email, and then you apply and you kind of go through the process. I know it took me over two years to get this job. I think it’s a lot quicker now than it was in 2005 because the speed of the internet and kind of how they onboard agents now.
Ian Andrews:
A two-year interview process sounds grueling. I know people complain when it’s more than a few weeks at my company. So two years, you got to be persistent and really want that job.
I’m curious-
Jason Conboy:
Oh, there was a hiring freeze, and-
Ian Andrews:
I’m curious about the idea of public-private partnerships. This is something, a term that I hear at a lot of the conferences that I go to where you have companies like Chainalysis and organizations like yours present. And at what role do you see non-government playing, in terms of supporting cast in the work that you’re doing? And where do you maybe see that working well and where would you like to see it improve between, that relationship between the public and private organizations?
Jason Conboy:
Yeah. HSI has been involved with the public-private partnership for many years, whether it’s with cyber or financial investigations and beyond. So that’s been a joy, at least ever since I’ve been an agent for 17 years, working with financial institutions, casinos, money service businesses, companies like Chainalysis, and being able to put all of our resources together to combat this big monster of cross-border cybercrime.
I even think recently, which I’ll send you a link for, there was a, I think it was last year, HSI and the ACAMS Association, of money laundry specialists put out a big report together on pig butchering, which you can’t get through a podcast Ian, these days without saying pig butchering, so I had to throw it in there. And I was reading it this morning, it’s a great piece put together by our folks at our financial crimes unit headquarters, field agents put in for that as the subject matter experts, and then partnering with the private sector of ACAMS to kind of put that together and put it out to the public.
So under that program, which we call the Cornerstone Program, our agents in the field, I used to do this in Asheville, we would go to banks and we talk to them. We say, “This is what you need to look out for for money laundering, and here’s my card.” You have somebody to call because it seems like sometimes the private sector is like if it’s ghosts, you call Ghostbusters, it’s pretty obvious. But it’s a cyber criminal just walked into your establishment and was talking about money laundering with his buddy and they walk out. Who do you call? 1-800-FEDS?
So getting out there into the public and really having that relationship. And I had a lot of that firsthand at our cybercrime center, especially during what we call the Operation Stolen Promise to combat cyber criminals using and taking advantage of the pandemic. We were talking to a lot of folks within the medical and private industry, taking down websites that were being stood up for malicious activity or fraud schemes, and there was no conversation of we can’t work together. It was, how can we work together more?
Ian Andrews:
Yeah, it seems so necessary. I mean, both the international government collaboration and the public-private sector collaboration, because the bad guys operate on a global basis, right? They’re certainly cross-border. And if we don’t work that way, it just gives the criminals such a huge advantage. Right?
Jason Conboy:
I mean, it goes back to the whole working in silos. And I’ve always been a part of a task force, even in Miami, I was in our border enforcement security task force, as far as the marine. So we had Miami-Dade police officers, City of Miami Border Patrol, and they would come to our office full time. So it really didn’t matter that your badge said something different, it’s that task force mentality.
And it happened out in western North Carolina. Up here we all work together no matter what our three letter or four letter agencies are. And so we see a lot of that partnering up and just getting all the resources. It was called, especially the cyber world, it’s like cyber Avengers. One Avenger can’t go and take down the bad guy by himself or herself, so you got to partner together and take everybody’s resources and put it towards it so the criminals, especially cyber criminals, know that, yeah, we do share information and we do partner together. And when your website is taken out and seized, it’s going to be 30 different badges and flags that show that we all worked together to take that site down.
Ian Andrews:
Yeah, it’s exciting to see, I think it’s a great operating model. Now, you did mention pig butchering, so I can’t leave that untouched, in terms of a topic. My friend Erin West, who’s been on the podcast a couple times has stood up Operation Shamrock, which is an attempt to pull together, I think people from all different areas, state and local, law enforcement and prosecutors, federal agencies, a number of different private sector companies, to really support the entire life cycle of victim support, training and education. I’m curious how you look at that project and if you’re, assuming you’ve got some familiarity with it, and is that the solution or are there other things that you think we should be undertaking collectively to try and stop this scourge of pig butchering?
Jason Conboy:
Yeah, I was reading up on Erin. I remember her, familiar name from Trace DC, and reading about her operation. And that’s what it takes, it takes somebody to stand up and say, “There’s a problem set. We’re going to pick the best and brightest and put them all together and just throw everything at it.” And that’s where we see a lot of our successes within our best task forces, those border enforcement security ones. We have, I think almost now, one El Dorado money laundering task force in all of our special agent in charge offices. Some of them specialize, say in pig butchering and fraud schemes. Some may also specialize, like in New York City we have a dark net crypto task force that kind of specializes in everything, dark net vendors, rug pull schemes, pig butchering. But it doesn’t take away from that one agent who say is in a small office in the middle of Oklahoma who’s working with the other state and local who wants to combat that problem set of say, pig butchering and then help the victims out.
But you definitely have to have everybody on board and develop a task force. Of course, you got to call it a fancy operation name and then enact that with some results that are going to hopefully put a dent in that area. So it’s a great way to combat that type of crime. And personally working in high intensity drug task forces and best task forces in my career, that’s where you have the best results and the best thing. For the end of those, everybody high-fives and everybody kind of gets what they want out of it. Right? It’s like a win-win-win model.
Ian Andrews:
Amazing. Well, my customary closing question is to ask people to look to the future a little bit and talk about what’s coming next. So I will put that question to you. What should we, the listeners, expect from HSI and your investigative focus maybe over the next year?
Jason Conboy:
Yeah, I mean, it gets bigger and better. Right? I was just talking to one of our program managers at our cybercrime center yesterday and just even hearing what we’re building out at the cybercrime center and expanding portfolios in the network intrusion space and the dark net crypto space or child exploitation. It’s really, it’s eye-opening.
And I still love the job every day and I think the younger agents who come on, I kind of wish they could have been with me in 2008 with the Nextel flip phone and the 2000 Grand Prix that leaked when it rained. So everything’s always going to get better, exponentially up and to the right, and crime’s not going to stop. But yeah, within HSI we’re very on innovation and definitely on training, and that’s the funnest thing I think in this job is doing trainings and building capacity and getting tools and software to help our agents domestically, headquarters, internationally, for the end goal of seizing assets and stopping crime.
Ian Andrews:
Well, that’s an amazing place to stop. Jason, thank you so much for the work that you do, that all your colleagues do. On behalf of all the listeners of the podcast, it’s very much appreciated.
Jason Conboy:
No, thank you. It’s been great. Thanks for the invite and we’ll talk again soon.
Ian Andrews:
I look forward to it.
