The FBI Files include everything from violent crimes to espionage and fraud.
Many of the cases the agency looks into are quickly solved, but others remain cold
cases for decades, or take years of careful investigation before they are finally solved.
Number 5
In the early-2010s, Bayrob Group was high on the FBI Most Wanted hackers list. They had stolen
millions of dollars from people across the US and were cloaked with an anonymitywith anonymity
the FBI and computer security companies were struggling to break.
It was only in 2013, when one of the members made a small mistake, that the authorities got an
ingot an “in” to take the whole organisation down. Bayrob Group started in 2007 with a simple
eBay scam. They would place a car for sale on the site but, when people bid on it,
take down the advertisement saying someone had already purchased the vehicle.
A short while later, they would email the bidders saying the deal had fallen through and they were
planning on putting the car up for auction again. These emails would feature a sideshowslideshow
of images of the vehicle. A follow up email with a link to a new listing would come next.
But clicking the link wouldn’t take users to an actual eBay listing. The sideshow of images
included a piece of malware which would redirect the link to a fake replica of an eBay page.
From there, the criminals were able to take tens of thousands of dollars at a time,
and there was no way of tracing them. By the time their victims realised they had been scammed,
the money had already been moved from US bank accounts through a series of money mules.
As the years went on the group developed.
The malware they planted would give them more control of their victims computer, and they were
able to track key strokes which would give them access to the victim’s online banking.
They could simply take whatever money they wanted direct from the bank account,
then use the computer to mine for cryptocurrency and send spam emails to the victim’s contacts.
By it’s peak, the group had infected more than 400,000 computers.
The criminals used two proxy layers to hide their location.
Unfortunately for them, one of these proxies began leaking information, and the FBI and
cyber security company Symantec were able to track the group’s movements while they used it.
But the group were careful to keep their personal information separate from their
schemes, and they never accessed anything that would even hint at their personal identities.
That was until 2013, when Radu Miclaus (Rah Doo Mc Koss)accessed his personal email through the
proxy. With that, police had a name. They were able to identify some of Miclaus’ associates,
but they didn’t have enough evidence that they were involved in the scheme.
One of these was Tiberiu Danet (Tee Burr You, Dah Net), an incredibly intelligent young man
who had recently graduated from one of Romania’s best universities for
mathematics and computer sciences. He had won several international computer science contests
and could have had a successful career if he had started a legitimate company.
As it was, police suspected he was the one who had created the malware.
When he travelled to the US to visit a friend, authorities enacted a search warrant
to secretly search his phone. They found all the evidence they needed that Danet, Miclaus,
and a third man named Bogdan Nicolescu were the Bayrob group.
Working with the Romanian authorities, the FBI managed to apprehend the trio.
Danet pleaded guilty, but Miclaus and Nicolescuthe third man went to trial
where they were both found guiltguilty of fraud, money laundering and identity theft.
Number 4
John Shannon Simpson boasted a 20 year career as a Marine and was running a charity to help
send Marine families to Disney theme parks or to their loved ones’ boot camp graduations.
So when he approached Cathy Wells for a donation, she was more than happy to give. Cathy was the
mother of Lance Corporal Skip Wells, who had passed away in the line of duty in an attack
on a Tennessee military installation. She donated $75,000 of her own money and encouraged others to
give to the charity, called Marines and Mickey. But one of her friends became suspicious and
contacted authorities. That’s when an FBI file was opened on Simpson and the charity.
In reality, Simpson’s career in the Marines had lasted less than five years.
He had served for about three years before he went AWOL for a year in 1996 and 1997.
After that he was given a bad conduct discharge. He hadn’t been a Master Sergeant,
Drill Instructor, or anything else he had claimed. And more than 80% of the money Marines and Mickey
raised was going into his pocket. The charity operated between 2014
and 2016 and raised more than $480,000. Most of those who donated had a military background, often
active duty marines who had recently finished boot camp. Sometimes it would be a one off donation,
but Simpson would also take reoccurringrecurring payments directdirectly from their bank accounts.
It advertised that 100% of the money went to sending Marine family’s to Disney,
or so families could see their loved ones graduate from boot camp in California or South Carolina.
But only about $90,000 went towards the trips Marines and Mickey waswere supposed to support.
The rest of the money went to supportingsupport Simpson’s life, including rent for his home in
Florida, $8,000 for his business and a tax payment for his ex-wife’s business.
As the FBI investigated, authorities in Florida were working on entirely different crimes Simpson
was suspected of. In 2017, he was arrested for multiple offences, including burglary, stalking,
and violating a domestic violence injunction, for which he received a nine year sentence.
After that case was finished, he was extradited to South Carolina
to face the FBI’s wire fraud charges, for which he received a four year sentence.
Number 3
The FBI has always had espionage high on its list of priorities, and today there’s one FBI
file that is taught at the academy to highlight how a resourceful spy might get his information.
That’s the cast of Marian Zacharski. Zacharski was born in Poland in 1951
and grew up in the city of Sopot. He studied business at a Warsaw college
and took great pride in his country. At some point, he joined the Polish intelligence service.
As Poland was part of the Eastern Bloc at the time, the intelligence service had ties to the
Soviet’s KGB, and was working on trying to steal aerospace technology from its Cold War enemies.
In 1975, Zacharski moved with his wife and daughter to the United States. Officially,
he was the president of the Polish American Machinery Corporation. It was a role he was
very successful in, selling machinery to American companies and showcasing his business skills that
would come in useful after the Cold War. But when he wasn’t at work,
he was developing a friendship with William Bell. Bell was an aerospace engineer at Hughes Aircraft.
He had a lot of debt, was recently divorced, and struggling to get his life back on track. He lived
in the same condo complex as Zacharski and the two became friends, playing tennis together.
Zacharski had been manipulating Bell all along though. It started out with just
asking Bell to get him connections at Hughes Aircraft company, for his machinery business.
Then he proposed Bell share his knowledge on engineering matters as a paid consultant.
Slowly, Bell progressed to sharing company secrets with Zacharski.
At this point, he had been provided with a high resolution camera to take photos of secret plans
and concealed devices like a tie rack to gather more confidential information. He realised
he had become a spy, but continued to supply Zacharski with information in return for money.
Eventually the FBI figured out what was going on. They tailed Bell and confronted him in 1981.
Bell confessed and agreed to wear a wire in his next meeting with Zacharski.
Both men were arrested and charged with espionage.
Bell pleaded guilty, while Zacharski was sentenced to a full life sentence. He was later released
as part of an exchange of prisoners, and became a successful businessman in Poland.
Number 2
Stolen shoes may not sound like something that would get its own FBI file,
but when it came to possibly the most famous footwear in movie history it’s a different matter.
In 2005, a pair of ruby slippers on display at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids were stolen.
The shoes were worn in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, and insured for $1 million.
While not quite able to transport people with a click of the heel, the real life ruby slippers
have had an interesting story of their own. It’s not known exactly how many pairs were
created for the film. At least four are known, but it’s possible more than six sets were created.
Costume designer Kent Warner was responsible for cataloguing the shoes and sending them to auction
after the film finished shooting, but he told the auction house only one pair had been created.
He kept the rest himself and tried to quietly sell them before he passed away in 1984.
One set was eventually acquired by memorabilia collector Michael Shaw, who loaned the shoes to
the Judy Garland Museum. The museum wanted to store the shoes in its safe overnight, but Shaw
didn’t want them to be handled that often, and was sure the usual museum security would suffice.
It wouldn’t. Early the morning of August 28th, 2005, someone broke into the museum,
smashed the case the slippers were being kept in and stole the item. The alarm
was triggered, but it didn’t alert the police. An extensive local investigation got underway, and
a reward of $250,000 was offered for information. For a while, it was thought Shaw might be behind
the robbery for the insurance, but that was eventually found to not be the case. The case went
cold and another piece of the legend was added to. Then, in 2017, someone came forward claiming
to know where the shoes. The individual approached the company that insured the shoes,
but it quickly became clear they were just trying to extort the company for money.
At this point the FBI got involved. The extortion attempt have investigators a lead. After a year
of careful planning to ensure the shoes were not damaged, the FBI led an undercover
operation in Minneapolis to recover the items. The shoes were compared with a pair held at the
Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History to ensure these were
authentic. The museum confirmed that, not only were these the real shoes, but the travelling
pair, as they had become known, and the pair the museum held were actually mismatched twins.
Number 1
It was just days before Stella Lintemuth’s 90th birthday
when she was violently attacked in April 1980. She was found in the bedroom of her Big
Rapids home having been attacked with a bladed weapon. After the intruder had taken her life,
they wrapped the cord from a light fixture around her neck.
Police were stumped as to who would have done something like this to Stella.
She had no known enemies, no problems with any neighbours, and nothing of value was
stolen from her home. There was also no sign of a break in, but it was also discovered
Stella usually left her doors unlocked, so it didn’t mean Stella necessarily knew her attacker.
There was a railway line that ran behind Stella’s home. Police believed her attacker
may not have been anybody local at all, but a transient person who got of the train behind
the house to commit the attack at random. They feared the attacker would be well on
their way by the time Stella was even found. The culprit hadn’t been particularly careful,
and had left finger and handprints in the house. In particular, a set of prints found
on the base of the light fixture that had been used in the attack were very clean.
The examiner that collected the prints said as he did so that, if they found who
they belonged to, they would find their culprit. They were so good, in fact, that they were later
used in Michigan State Police training for years. But there were no matches in the local database
and, at the time, there was no way to cross check the prints with other databases.
Stella’s case quickly went cold. Nine years later, another elderly woman’s
life was taken in a similar attack. Mary Pine was 79-years-old when someone broke into her home.
Like in Stella’s case, she was attacked with a sharp object and had a cord wrapped around her
neck after she had already passed away. Most concerning of all was the fact the crimes had
both taken place in Big Rapids. In this case, her car and some items of jewellery were stolen,
but there were enough similarities for authorities to believe the same person
might be responsible for both crimes. There was only one problem. Investigators
eventually closed in on a man named Mark Bailey for Mary’s case. Bailey was only
10-years-old in 1980, so it was unlikely he had been responsible for taking Stella’s life. His
prints also didn’t match those found on the lamp in Stella’s home, or anywhere else in the house.
Investigators had to conclude Mary and Stella’s lives had been taken by different criminals,
and it was back to square one in Stella’s investigation.
Finally, in 2006, an investigator at the FBI put the prints into their Integrated Automated
Fingerprint Identification System, which had been created a few years earlier. And they got a match.
Scott Graham had been arrested in California some years earlier and his prints were put in
the system. He was in a state hospital when he was charged with taking Stella’s life,
as he was suffering from schizophrenia. He was eventually brought back to Michigan to face trial
and was found guilty after just a few days. The team that eventually located Graham were
awarded with the FBI’s first Latent Hit of the Year award.