Extortion and Death Threats
CASE STUDY
Digital Forensics Investigation for Death Threats
Tags
Digital Forensics, Account Recovery, Extortion, Protection, Investigation, Law Enforcement Referral
Background
A private investigator retained the Maryman team to aid their client, a recent widower. The widower lost their spouse and several adult children in a tragic accident. Several weeks after the accident, while still grieving, the widower received a text message from their deceased spouse’s cell phone number, which itself was extraordinary since the cell phone was destroyed in the accident.
The message was an extortion demand of over one million dollars. If this demand wasn’t met, the criminals threatened to kill the surviving children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, all named individually. When the widower refused, the criminals then compromised the widower’s cell phone number, email accounts, financial accounts, and mobile carrier accounts. The criminals then proceeded to threaten the remaining family members from the widower’s and deceased spouse’s phone numbers.
Scope
The Maryman team were engaged in a multi-phase effort. The first stage was to regain control of all accounts. The second stage was to gather forensic evidence to identify the criminals. The third stage would be to deliver the information to appropriate law enforcement to support their investigation.
Stage One
We then systematically regained access to the accounts and locked out the attackers. We reconfigured all the multi-factor authentications to the new phone number and new devices to ensure that the attackers did not regain their foothold. Additionally, we were informed by the affiliated businesses that the attackers attempted to regain access to the accounts via social engineering, so the preemptive notification was critical to ensure that the attackers were locked out.