If you are using a Windows PC, your privacy and security are nothing short of a myth, and this incident proves it.

US authorities have arrested former Canadian Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding, ending a years-long international manhunt for a figure investigators describe as a major cocaine trafficker who relied on cryptocurrency to move and conceal illicit profits.

Wedding, 44, was taken into custody in Mexico late Thursday and transferred to the United States on Friday, according to US officials.

The former athlete, who competed for Team Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, had been listed among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted fugitives, with a reward of up to $15 million offered for information leading to his capture.

Former Olympic Snowboarder Faces US Charges in Global Drug Case

US Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wedding, whom she described as a “onetime Olympian snowboarder-turned alleged violent cocaine kingpin,” will face federal charges in the US related to drug trafficking, murder, and operating a criminal enterprise spanning multiple countries.

FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the arrest in a post on X, crediting cooperation with Mexican authorities for locating Wedding after more than a decade on the run.

UPDATE: After landing in LA today to transfer Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitive Ryan Wedding, our FBI/DOJ teams are now landing in Charlotte, NC to transfer another – Alejandro Castillo – the Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitive arrested one week ago today in Mexico.

Castillo’s quick return… pic.twitter.com/wsrS3eWa2k

— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) January 23, 2026

Investigators allege that Wedding played a senior role in cocaine distribution networks tied to Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, overseeing shipments from Colombia into the United States and Canada.

According to US officials, the operation generated more than $1 billion annually in illegal proceeds at its peak.

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Wedding in November, accusing his organization of using cryptocurrency to move and launder drug profits.

In its notice, the Treasury said digital assets were used to obscure the flow of funds and conceal large sums derived from narcotics trafficking.

Mexico’s Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch said Wedding voluntarily surrendered at the U.S. Embassy before being handed over to the FBI.

Patel later told reporters that Wedding had been hiding in Mexico for over 10 years and was believed to be under cartel protection.

Wedding arrived Friday at Ontario International Airport in Southern California, where federal officials held a press conference following his transfer.

Authorities said they seized firearms, luxury vehicles, artwork, and other assets connected to the alleged criminal enterprise, and indicated further arrests may follow as the investigation continues.

Ryan Wedding’s Earlier Cocaine Case Predates Latest US Charges

This is not Wedding’s first encounter with US law enforcement. In 2008, he was arrested in California in a cocaine trafficking sting involving a Vancouver-based operation.

He was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to four years in prison, before being released around 2011.

The arrest comes as crypto-related crime remains a growing concern. According to Chainalysis, illicit cryptocurrency addresses received a record $154 billion in 2025, a sharp increase from the year before.

In another case, US prosecutors have charged a 23-year-old Brooklyn resident, Ronald Spektor, with stealing roughly $16 million in cryptocurrency from around 100 Coinbase users through an alleged phishing and social engineering scheme.

The post FBI Arrests Former Olympic Snowboarder and Top Cocaine Trafficker in Crypto-Linked Case appeared first on Cryptonews.

The FBI served Microsoft a warrant requesting encryption recovery keys to decrypt the hard drives of people involved in an alleged fraud case in Guam.

A federal judge today ordered the US government to stop searching devices seized from the house of a Washington Post reporter. It may be only a temporary reprieve for the Post and reporter Hannah Natanson, however. Further proceedings will be held on whether the search can resume or whether the government must return the devices.

Natanson herself isn't the subject of investigation, but the FBI executed a search warrant at her home and seized her work and personal devices last week as part of an investigation into alleged leaks by a Pentagon contractor. The Post filed a motion to force the return of the reporter's property, and a separate motion for a standstill order that would prevent review of the seized devices until the court rules on whether they must be returned.

"Almost none of the seized data is even potentially responsive to the warrant, which seeks only records received from or relating to a single government contractor," a Post court filing today said. "The seized data is core First Amendment-protected material, and some is protected by the attorney-client privilege."

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FBI agents searched the home of a Washington Post reporter on Wednesday morning as part of an investigation into a government contractor accused of illegally retaining classified government materials.

The Post reported that federal agents seized a phone, two laptops — one work and one personal — and a Garmin watch from reporter Hannah Natanson, who was at her home in Virginia at the time.

The government’s action raised questions about whether Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who bought the Post in 2013, will step in in any way.

CNN’s Brian Stelter wrote in his Reliable Sources newsletter Wednesday morning that several staffers told him “they’re wondering what, if anything, Bezos will do to defend Natanson and the Post from this aggressive government action.”

Natanson covers the federal workforce and has been a part of Post’s “most high-profile and sensitive coverage during the first year of the second Trump administration,” according to the newspaper. But she is not the focus of the probe.

A warrant said that law enforcement is investigating Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a system administrator in Maryland who has a top-secret security clearance and has been accused of accessing and taking home classified intelligence reports that were found in his lunchbox and his basement, according to an FBI affidavit.

Natanson wrote a compelling first-person account in December of her time covering the Trump administration and the hundreds of government workers she’d been in contact with as sources.

Bezos’ influence at the Post has come into focus in recent years. In February he shook up the newspaper’s opinion pages by refocusing the section on supporting and defending what he called “two pillars” — personal liberties and free markets.

That action came in the wake of his decision in 2024 to end the newspaper’s tradition of endorsing candidates for president — including a reported spiking of the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. The action cost the Post more than 200,000 digital subscribers and a wave of backlash during the contentious run-up to Trump’s re-election.

After Trump’s re-election, Bezos joined other tech leaders in expressing a willingness to work with the administration. Bezos was among those who attended the presidential inauguration.

The North Korean state-sponsored espionage group Kimsuky has targeted government organizations, think tanks, and academic institutions.

The post FBI: North Korean Spear-Phishing Attacks Use Malicious QR Codes appeared first on SecurityWeek.

A 25-year-old Bigfork, Montana man, Jeremiah Daniel Starr, used over 50 phone numbers and a VPN to harass a victim he called his "best friend," even staging a fake shooting. Learn more about the FBI investigation that traced 1,100 IP addresses to bring him to justice.

The Secret Service is aiming to boost its ranks by thousands of officers over the next two years, part of a still swelling recruiting push across federal law enforcement agencies.

The Secret Service is aiming to hire 4,000 new employees by 2028, an agency spokesman confirmed. That would bring the Secret Service’s ranks to 6,800 law enforcement personnel and 10,000 total employees.

The Secret Service currently employs about 8,300 staff, according to agency budget figures. That includes 3,200 special agents and 1,300 uniformed division officers, per the Secret Service website.

“Last year, the agency launched a dynamic recruitment strategy aimed at both reducing inefficiencies in the hiring process and increasing the visibility of agency jobs to audiences with the requisite knowledge, skills and abilities to perform the mission,” the  Secret Service spokesman said. “We are focusing on targeting our recruitment efforts to individuals with a demonstrated track record of excellence, teamwork and trustworthiness — this includes former military, law enforcement, and top university graduates.”

The agency is also aiming to retain retirement-eligible agents, the spokesman added. Group retention incentives are being offered to special agents, uniformed division officers, cybersecurity professionals and specialty teams.

The Secret Service has long struggled with morale and attrition issues. A 2021 National Academy of Public Administration study found the agency’s mission demands have grown, while staffing levels have not kept up, requiring agents and officers to work longer hours.

But the Secret Service has been unsuccessful in previous attempts to grow its ranks to 10,000 employees.

The agency is now focused on streamlining the hiring process, including through new Accelerated Candidate events. The Secret Service says the events reduce the time to job offer by up to 120 days. The current average from application to entry-on-duty is 326 days for special agents and 256 days for the uniformed division.

The Washington Post first reported on the details of the Secret Service’s hiring goals.

The Secret Service’s recruiting drive comes amid a governmentwide law enforcement hiring push. The Trump administration is giving higher pay raises to federal law enforcement officers compared to most other government employees. 

In a post on X Tuesday, FBI Director Kash Patel said 2025 was a “huge year” for recruiting.

Patel didn’t cite how many employees the FBI hired. But he said the agency received 45,000 special agent applications and 30,000 professional staff applications in fiscal 2025.

He also said the FBI expanded the Reserve Service Program for retired FBI special agents to work as criminal investigators in field offices.

“These RSP-Special Agents will fill critical field office needs with experienced investigators – the first group will begin their assignments in January 2026,” Patel wrote.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security this week announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has already hired more than 12,000 officers and agents over the last 11 months. The recruiting drive, backed by billions in funding from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, has spiked ICE ranks from 10,000 to 22,000 law enforcement personnel, DHS said.

Though the Trump administration’s original goal was to hire roughly 10,000 new ICE agents, DHS said this week that ICE is continuing to accept job applications.

Customs and Border Protection is also on a recruiting drive, aiming to hire 5,000 customs officers and 3,000 border patrol agents through 2029. Both CBP and ICE are offering massive recruitment and retention incentive packages.

The widespread recruiting push across federal law enforcement agencies is expected to put a strain on classes at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. FLETC itself announced in September it was hiring 100 new instructors to support the “onboarding of thousands of new law enforcement officers nationwide.”

The post Secret Service touts hiring goals amid major law enforcement recruiting push first appeared on Federal News Network.

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Editor’s Note (Updated): This article has been edited to reflect clarifications provided by Resecurity, including the company’s December…

 

Interview transcript:

Terry Gerton You’ve done an interesting report recently. You revealed that senior officials at the FBI were granted waivers for polygraph exams. Let’s start at the beginning. Really, is this normal? And if it’s not, what is normal?

William Turton It’s not normal. You know, the people we spoke to who’ve worked at the highest levels of the FBI have told us that to grant waivers for people like the deputy director, Dan Bongino, the congressional liaison, Marshall Yates and the executive assistant to the director Kash Patel — a woman named Nicole Rucker — granting them polygraph waivers is unprecedented. We spoke to one person who said that they can only recall one waiver being granted, to an outside expert, and that was the only one they knew of in about a seven-year period.

Terry Gerton Are senior leaders at the FBI normally required to pass a polygraph exam?

William Turton All FBI employees are required to pass a polygraph exam. And that’s been the case since 1994. So just to become an FBI employee, you must pass a polygraph. And then as you gain more clearances or access to more sensitive information, some employees have to pass multiple polygraphs.

Terry Gerton And what does a waiver, then, of the polygraph signify?

William Turton We would love to know more about why they were granted waivers. When you take a polygraph at the bureau, based on the people that we spoke to, you get asked all sorts of questions ranging from illegal drug use to foreign contacts. Anything in the spectrum there can potentially cause issues with your employment. We didn’t report any details as to why these people were granted waivers, but we’d love to know more.

Terry Gerton So who has the authority then to grant the waiver?

William Turton We reported that Kath Patel, the director of the FBI, granted the waivers to all three of the employees that I mentioned earlier.

Terry Gerton Is there any requirement to give a justification for that, or was there any transparency around why those waivers were provided?

William Turton The Bureau didn’t disclose that the waivers were granted. The only reason we know that is because we spoke to sources with knowledge and we ended up reporting it. But there was no sort of disclosure or justification from the Bureau as to why the waivers were granted. When we went to the Bureau for comment, one of the things that they told us was that, well, these employees are Schedule C political appointees, so therefore they don’t have to take a polygraph. We spoke to four experts who specialize in security clearances and polygraphs who told us that’s not true. Being a Schedule C or political appointee doesn’t preclude you from having to take a polygraph. And for the record, I went and checked the Plum Book; only one of the three employees that I previously mentioned, Nicole Rucker, is listed as a political appointee.

Terry Gerton One of the reasons that you might expect an FBI official to take a polygraph is to make sure there isn’t any compromising information in their background. But one of the other reasons is to secure that top secret clearance. What kind of information might these folks be exposed to and what is the impact of not having a clear polygraph test and clearance?

William Turton As we reported in this story, the deputy director of the FBI receives some of the most closely guarded secrets that the American government has to offer. People have told us that the deputy director would routinely receive the president’s daily brief, which is a summary from all across the intelligence community of some of the most pressing threats to the country. They also get access to SCI, or special compartmented information, where people are read in and read out of various programs, where a very small amount of people have knowledge of that program. There’s also secure spaces within FBI headquarters. For example, on the seventh floor where the director of the FBI works, the entire director’s suite is what’s known as a SCIF, or secure compartmented information facility, meaning it’s designed to protect against electronic eavesdropping, you can’t bring personal devices inside and you need clearance that is granted, in part, by passing your polygraph to access those spaces.

Terry Gerton I’m speaking with William Turton. He’s an investigative reporter with ProPublica. So what does all of this mean in terms of national security and public trust, if these folks don’t have the proper clearances or haven’t been properly vetted and have access to these important secret information?

William Turton I think one of the most immediate impacts that this has could be on the morale of other FBI employees. It’s important to note that Mr. Patel, the director of the FBI, has used the polygraph on his own workforce in order to see if negative comments have been made about him personally or if there have been leaks to the media. And so I think it presents a sort of immediate double standard that hasn’t really been explained by the Bureau, where top officials close to Patel don’t have to take a polygraph; at the same time Patel will use the polygraph to try and ferret out leaks or negative comments about his leadership.

Terry Gerton What’s happening in terms of oversight here? Has the Department of Justice said anything or the congressional oversight committees?

William Turton  Sen. Durbin, who is the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is the main congressional oversight body of the FBI, raised this issue before Kash Patel when he testified before Congress. This actually happened before our story published, but Durbin mentioned senior members of Patel’s staff, and didn’t at that time explicitly name the deputy director. So this is on Congress’s radar, and when Kash Patel was asked about this, he didn’t engage in the question directly and deflected.

Terry Gerton So this feels a little bit like a tree falling in the forest. If no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Is this really a big deal? And if it is, what is going to happen in terms of broader implications, policy changes or even maybe a shakeup?

William Turton The former senior FBI officials and other government officials we spoke to thought it was a big deal. They thought it was a reflection of the fact that the FBI is being run by people who wouldn’t be able to, in their view, pass the minimum requirements to become an agent, much less the deputy director. So I think there’s a question of security, absolutely, people are concerned about. There’s a question about keeping information confidential and secure. And then there’s open questions about the motivations of the people running the Bureau. Officials that we spoke to wondered whether this was an example of prioritizing personal loyalty to the Trump administration and the director, rather than the kind of policies and procedures that are typically in place for FBI employees.

Terry Gerton Have you heard anything from Sen. Durbin or his staff or the committees about moving forward with additional hearings or additional oversight or possibly even future reforms of this process?

William Turton We haven’t, really. I think the story got lost in the news a little bit. There’s been a lot of news about the Bureau of late. I’m keeping my ears open; I think there’s a lot more to this story. And I have a feeling that it’s just scratching the surface.

Terry Gerton If it is eventually to generate some kind of reform, what do you think would be most likely? Would it be tightening clearance rules or codifying the polygraph requirements, as an example?

William Turton I’m not sure what avenues for reform there are, because as I understand it, the director and the president basically have unilateral authority to grant waivers for polygraphs or to grant, in some cases, clearances. So I think I don’t think anyone is eager to change that level of authority that rests with the president or the director of the FBI.

Terry Gerton Do you see any parallels between how the FBI has approached the polygraph and maybe what’s happening in the Department of Defense?

William Turton I think the most obvious parallel to me in writing the story —  I’m a little bit biased because I did some reporting on this earlier this year —  but what was happening at DHS, where employees were regularly being polygraphed for questions about media leaks or if employees had criticized leadership. It was kind of the exact same thing that we’ve been hearing at the FBI happening to rank-and-file staff.

The post At the FBI, a national security safeguard was quietly dropped for top leadership first appeared on Federal News Network.

© Getty Images/iStockphoto/allanswart

US authorities have charged Zahid Hasan with running TechTreek, a $2.9 million online marketplace selling fake ID templates. The investigation, involving the FBI and Bangladesh police, uncovered a global scheme selling fraudulent passports and social security cards to over 1,400 customers.

The FBI and international police have shut down E-Note, a cryptocurrency exchange that laundered over $70 million for cybercriminals. Read about the indictment of a Russian and how the global task force ended his decade-long operation.

A Nigerian national has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for his role in a massive darknet fraud scheme that intended to cause over $6 million in losses, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Using various online aliases, Kaura led a global network selling stolen payment card data, using cryptocurrencies like […]

Law enforcement authorities from over a dozen countries in Europe and North America have taken part in disrupting the activities of the Hive ransomware group, the U.S. Justice Department and Europol announced. Hive is believed to have targeted various organizations worldwide in the past couple of years, often extorting payments in cryptocurrency.

Captured Decryption Keys Helped Hive Victims Avoid Paying $130 Million in Ransom

Ransomware network Hive, which has had around 1,500 victims in more than 80 countries, has been hit in a months-long disruption campaign, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) revealed. A total of 13 nations participated in the operation, including EU member states, the U.K. and Canada.

Hive has been identified as a major cybersecurity threat as the ransomware has been used by affiliated actors to compromise and encrypt data and computer systems of government facilities, oil multinationals, IT and telecom companies in the EU and U.S., Europol said. Hospitals, schools, financial firms, and critical infrastructure have been targeted, the DOJ noted.

It has been one of the most prolific ransomware strains, Chainalysis pointed out, which has collected at least $100 million from victims since its launch in 2021. A recent report by the blockchain forensics company unveiled that revenue from such attacks has decreased last year, with a growing number of affected organizations refusing to pay the demanded ransoms.

According to the announcements by the law enforcement authorities, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) penetrated Hive’s computers in July 2022 and captured its decryption keys, providing them to victims around the world which prevented them from paying another $130 million.

Working with the German Federal Police and the Dutch High Tech Crime Unit, the Bureau has now seized control over the servers and websites that Hive used to communicate with its members and the victims, including the darknet domain where the stolen data was sometimes posted. FBI Director Christopher Wray was quoted as stating:

The coordinated disruption of Hive’s computer networks … shows what we can accomplish by combining a relentless search for useful technical information to share with victims.

The Hive ransomware was created, maintained and updated by developers while being employed by affiliates in a ‘ransomware-as-a-service’ (RaaS) double extortion model, Europol explained. The affiliates would initially copy the data and then encrypt the files before asking for a ransom to decrypt the information and not publish it on the leak site.

The attackers exploited various vulnerabilities and used a number of methods, including single factor logins via Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), virtual private networks (VPNs), and other remote network connection protocols as well as phishing emails with malicious attachments, the law enforcement agencies detailed.

Do you expect police authorities around the world to dismantle more ransomware networks in the near future? Tell us in the comments section below.

A former doctor will be imprisoned for 8 years for trying to hire a killer from the “dark web”.

It all started in February 2021, when a visitor to a website for ordering killer services under the nickname Scar215 addressed the administrator of the site in a personal letter with a desire to order an attack on his colleague. The customer sent full information about the victim (name, address and photo) and an amount of about USD 2,000 (approximately the same amount of money was used to buy the assassination of the colleague).

This was not the last order from the anonymous person. In early April 2021, Scar215 sent letters to three administrators of similar sites with a detailed description of his order. He wanted to order the kidnapping of his wife because she had started the process of divorce from him. The text of the task stated that she had to be kidnapped and held for one week, the victim had to be injected with heroin twice a day to induce addiction, and the task was accompanied by a list of goals for which the mercenary would receive a “nice bonus”. If we count all the “bonuses” and the initial amount specified in the text of the task, we will get the amount of USD 60,000, which is the amount for which the customer planned to organize the “re-education” of his wife. During the discussion of the details, the customer allowed the mercenary to use any methods to achieve the goal, and the goal was to return the wife to the customer and complete the divorce procedure. Scar215 paid for his two orders with bitcoin, probably to remain completely anonymous.

All the illegal actions could not go unnoticed. While analyzing the blockchain, the FBI noticed some strange transactions, and they contacted the exchange (Coinbase, because it was from an account registered on this exchange that strange transactions for a rather large amount were made) to obtain information on these transactions, which led them to a man named Ronald Craig Ilg, who lived in Spokane, Washington. Ronald was then detained. In the morning, on April 11, 2021, he was interrogated, during which Ronald confessed that he intended to hire killers to kill himself, but investigators did not believe him, so a search was conducted at the suspect’s home. The police were interested in a safe in the man’s bedroom. Access to it was provided by the owner of the house. Inside the safe, investigators found a lot of records and notes. On April 13, 2021, using the found records, law enforcement agencies gained access to the Scar215 user account on the dark web, as well as to correspondence with administrators of sites providing “specific” services.

Ronald Craig Ilg confessed to ordering the attacks on his colleague and ex-wife and was sentenced on August 10, 2022: 8 years in prison in a general regime colony. If you think that’s all, you’re wrong, on January 24, 2023, the court ordered the prisoner to pay the victims compensation in the amount of $125,000.

“That was the only path through this darkness,” says U.S. prosecutor Zia Faruqui. “The darker the darknet gets, the way that you shine the light is following the money.” In “Tracers in the Dark,” Andy Greenberg, a senior writer at Wired, takes a historical look at what he calls Bitcoin’s “siren song: the promise of […]

Unfortunately, you've probably already heard the cliche that "cybercrime abhors a vacuum"...

This article by Davey Winder exposes how breaches in 2019 cost $3.5 Billion for nearly 500,000 people and organizations.