We have had the pleasure of retaining the services of Michael Roberts for the past few years and he has demonstrated time and again how unbelievably talented he is. Simply stated Michael is among the world’s best IT-Cyber investigators and he is a valued asset for our company and our clients. Michael has successfully tracked down numerous scam artists who preyed upon our clients through Internet scams mostly operating outside the United States.
Michael just shared with us that he received confirmation from a joint task force of US Marshals and the Maryland State Police that his investigative support led to the arrest of a murder suspect who had eluded law enforcement authorities and U.S. Marshal Service for two months. Earlier this week, Dinkue Brown age 27 who was on the run in connection with the murder of 26 year old Luis R. Rodriguez was apprehended by the U.S. Marshal Service thanks to Michael’s ingenious work. Maryland State Police called Michael on August 14, seeking advice on obtaining information from Google. Michael offered his technical and investigative assistance far beyond that scope. Michael and his team devised a pretext thus setting up a sting operation and then, after approval from law enforcement conveyed a message to one of the suspect’s family members. The message contained one of Michael’s proprietary forensic tripwire payloads attached to it. Subsequently, the tripwire transmitted numerous electronic footprints triggered by the fugitive, from behind anonymous proxy servers in an attempt to disguise his location.
Over the next few hours Michael and his team worked with the task force to circumvent the fugitive’s attempts to obfuscate his activities and location. As a result of the digital artifacts and intelligence collected by Michael and his team within a few hours they identified a cell phone number. It was allocated to a disposable SIM card in the possession of the fugitive, but it did not reconnect to the cell-tower network after Michael’s first discovered it — ergo triangulation was impossible. It appears that the fugitive purchased the SIM card to use once for an emergency and thereafter destroy it.
After obtaining a court warrant the U.S. Marshals were able to obtain the unique device identifier [UDID] that was associated with the one-time-use SIM card. A few days later the same UDID popped up again in association with a new disposable SIM card. The Marshals were then able to triangulate the fugitive who was in possession of that cell phone. The fugitive was found at the triangulated location in Indiana, was arrested, and is now in police custody. Brown waived his right to fight extradition and is being held in the Wayne County Jail without bail. The Worcester District Attorney’s office is making arrangements to transport Brown for his arraignment in Fitchburg District Court. Great work again Michael!!!