Case Studies

Murder in a Small Town

A murder occurred in a small town in Northern California. �Since violent crime is relatively rare in this community, police detectives were anxious to solve this one. �And they had a suspect. �The problem was they didn't have enough evidence to make an arrest.

Detectives then developed an informant who was willing� to record conversations with the suspect. �But the suspect was looking for body wires and detectives were not able to get the informant close to the suspect wearing a body wire. �So detectives contacted Orion Systems for a LETS line.

Using LETS and an ordinary cell phone, the informant began recording conversation with the suspect. �Since the informant was not wearing a body wire and the cell phone was a plain unmodified cell phone, the suspect never discovered that he was being recorded.

After collecting a series of recordings, detectives arrested the suspect. �Using the information obtained from the recordings, the detectives were able to contradict the lies told by�the suspect in the interview room and eventually the suspect confessed to the crime.

Gang Confusion

In Sacramento California, the FBI and local PD were investigating a local gang. The FBI obtained the cooperation of one of the gang members who agreed to record telephone conversations with other gang members. Using a LETS line, the gang member was provided with a cell phone and told his phone calls were going to be recorded. For a while, call were recording, evidence collected and everything went along as planned. Then the cooperating gang member decided to stop cooperating. He was arrested and brought into a law enforcement facility. The FBI asked for their phone and when the gang member handed it to them, it was completely dissassembled. When asked why he had taken the phone apart, the gang member said that he was trying the find and turn off the recorded in the phone. And since LETS uses plain unmodified cells phones, there was nothing to find in the phone.

This cooperating gang member never did figure out exactly how his phone calls were being recorded.

Record Yourself

Another FBI story. An FBI undercover was sitting at a table in a bar with a drug dealer. The undercover was attempting to setup a buy with a bigger supplier. The undercover asked the dealer to call the supplier to setup the buy and told the dealer he would even pay for the call using his calling card number and pin code. The dealer, using his own cell phone dialed using the undercover's calling card number and pin code. This was actually the LETS number and pin code. The dealer actually recorded himself and the supplier setting up the buy.

Unblock Me

The California Department of Justice was investigating a case involving the illegal tranfers of goods from another state into California. The CalDOJ agent developed an informant willing to record phone coversations with the target. However, the CalDOJ agent suspected that the out-of-state target was part of a much larger operation. To pursue the investigation, the CalDOJ agent wanted to pull a pen register of the target's phone. Here was the problem; the target used two cells phones and only made dirty calls from his cell phone with a blocked caller ID.

The CalDOJ agents arranged for a LETS line. He then forwarded the informant's phone into the LETS line, which unblocked the caller ID of the target allowing the pen register to be pulled.

Really, Really Bad Guys

The ATF began investigating a 33 member gang on reports of weapons violations, but soon realized this gang was into armed robbery, drug manufacturing and distribution and murder-for-hire. The ATF sent 3 agents undercover using LETS collect evidence on the gangs activities. Since LETS can record phone conversations using ordinary cell phones without the need for attached recorders, the ATF agents were able to record phone conversations to and from gang members, often making and receiving phone calls in the presence of other gang members.

The ATF arrested all 33 members of this gang and they are now awaiting trial.

Broken Wire

A small city in the San Francisco Bay Area had a problem. There were reports of prostitutes operating out of a businessman's hotel near a family oriented mall. The local PD wanted to setup a prostitution sting to address the situation, but the body wire they usually used was broken. The $6000 to replace the body wire was not in the budget, so they contacted Orion Systems to set up a LETS line. Using LETS, recorded calls were made to setup meetings with prostitutes. Again using LETS and a cell phone with a speakerphone as a wire, one of the detectives met with the prostitutes and recorded the transaction negotiations while a patrol car listened in to the wire and secured the perimeter. In the room next door, a cover team also listened in to the cell wire for the trigger word.

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