Hacker working for Mexican cartel breached U.S. officials’ phones to find, kill informants

A Department of Justice audit found that hackers working for Mexican cartel kingpin “El Chapo” have tapped the phones of U.S. officials, which they used to track down and kill people working with American authorities.

An FBI informant in 2018 said the Sinaloa Cartel hired a hacker to crack into cellphones and other electronic devices being used by staffers in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, according to the DOJ’s Inspector General report released Friday.

The report said the hacker selected multiple “people of interest” for the cartel during a digital stakeout, including the FBI assistant legal attache.

The cartel’s computer wiz further accessed the FBI official’s call log and acquired their geolocation data in the breach.

The hacker then used Mexico City’s camera system to follow the attache around town and see who the attache met with, the report said.

“According to the case agent, the cartel used that information to intimidate and/or kill potential sources or cooperating witnesses,” the report said.

The DOJ audit did not identify the attache, the hacker or any of the victims who were singled out by the cartel.

Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman was extradited to the U.S. in 2017, and is serving a life sentence for a murder conspiracy and on more than two dozen drug-related charges for his role in running the Sinaloa Cartel.

U.S. officials blame the Sinaloa Cartel and its rival, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, for flooding the States with fentanyl. Mexican gangs produce and traffic the powerful synthetic opioid across the country that has resulted in a spike in overdose deaths.

The Trump administration has sought to cripple the cartels’ American enterprise by labeling them as foreign terrorist organizations.

The 2018 incident in Mexico City was covered in a report about how to protect FBI agents’ identity from being compromised by cell phones, street cameras, credit cards and other forms of technology.

The audit said improving commercial technology has made it easier for less-sophisticated nations and criminal enterprises to take advantage of the access it has to users.

“Some within the FBI and partner agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), have described this threat as ’existential,” the report said.