Booter Takedown - Affidavit For Seizure Warrant

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Case 2:18-mj-03329-DUTY *SEALED* Document 1 *SEALED* Filed 12/17/18 Page 1 of 22

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United States District Court


___________CENTRAL_ ___ DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA_______ ________
In the Matter of the Seizure of
(Address or Brief description of property or premises to be seized)
APPLICATION AND AFFIDAVIT
The following Internet Domain: FOR SEIZURE WARRANT
defcon.pro
CASE NUMBER: 2:18-mj-3329

I, Gabriel F. Andrews, being duly sworn depose and say:

I am a Supervisory Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) and have reason to believe that in the
EASTERN District of PENNSYLVANIA
there is now concealed a certain person or property, namely (describe the person or property to be seized)

The following Internet Domain: defcon.pro

which is (state one or more bases for seizure under United States Code)

subject to seizure and forfeiture under 18 U.S.C. §§ 982(b)(1) and 1030(i)(1)(A),

concerning a violation of Title 18 United States Code, Section(s) 1030(a)(5)(A).

The facts to support a finding of Probable Cause for issuance of a Seizure Warrant are as follows:

Continued on the attached sheet and made a part hereof. X Yes No

_____________________________________________
Signature of Affiant

Sworn to before me, and subscribed in my presence

Los Angeles, California


Date City and State

Hon. Maria A. Audero, U.S. Magistrate Judge


Name and Title of Judicial Officer Signature of Judicial Officer

AUSA Jonathan Galatzan:aa


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AFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF SEIZURE WARRANT

I, Gabriel F. Andrews, being duly sworn, hereby depose and

state as follows:

I. TRAINING AND EXPERIENCE

1. I am a Supervisory Special Agent (“SSA”) with the

Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) and have been so

employed for approximately eight years. I am currently assigned

to the FBI’s Cyber Division, where I specialize in the

investigation of computer and high-technology crimes, including

computer intrusions, denial of service attacks and other types

of malicious computer activity. During my career as an FBI

Special Agent and SSA, I have participated in numerous cyber-

related investigations. In addition, I have received both

formal and informal training from the FBI and other institutions

regarding computer-related investigations and computer

technology.

2. I am familiar with the facts and circumstances

described herein. This affidavit is based upon my personal

involvement in this investigation, my training and experience,

and information obtained from various law enforcement personnel

and witnesses, including information that has been reported to

me either directly or indirectly. This affidavit does not

purport to set forth my complete knowledge or understanding of


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the facts related to this investigation. Unless specifically

indicated otherwise, all conversations and statements described

in this affidavit are related in substance and part only. All

figures, times, and calculations set forth herein are

approximate.

II. SUMMARY OF RELEVANT COMPUTER AND INTERNET CONCEPTS

3. The information provided below regarding relevant

computer and internet concepts is set forth based on my training

and experience:

a. “Internet Protocol address” or “IP address” is a

unique numeric address used to identify computers on the

Internet. The standard 1 format for IP addressing consists of

four numbers between 0 and 255 separated by dots, e.g.,

149.101.10.40. Every computer connected to the Internet (or

group of computers using the same account to access the

Internet) must be assigned an IP address so that Internet

traffic sent from and directed to that computer is directed

properly from its source to its destination. Internet Service

Providers (“ISPs”) assign IP addresses to their customers’

computers. ISPs typically log their customers’ connections,

allowing them to identify which of their customers was assigned

1
IP version 4, or “IPv4”, is the version of IP most commonly used today, and
is the version described above. A newer version of the protocol, “IPv6”,
wholly different in appearance to IPv4, is sometimes used, but does not
pertain to this request, and will not be referred to further.

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a specific IP address during a particular session.

b. “Domain Names” serve to identify Internet

resources, such as computers, networks, and services, with a

text-based label that is easier to memorize than an IP address.

A domain name consists of one or more parts (or “labels”) that

are conventionally concatenated and delimited by dots, such as

example.com. The right-most label conveys the top-level domain;

for example, the domain name www.example.com belongs to the top-

level domain com.

c. “Server” is a centralized computer that provides

services for other computers connected to it through a network.

The computers that use the server’s services are sometimes

called “clients.” Server computers can be physically located

anywhere. For example, it is not uncommon for a network’s

server to be located hundreds, or even thousands of miles away

from the client computers.

d. “Name Servers” are server applications which

function like a phonebook. Name Servers will accept queries for

domain names (such as example.com) and return an IP address

associated with the domain, much as the name John Doe might be

looked up in a telephone book to determine the corresponding

telephone number.

e. “Registries” are companies responsible for

managing the assignment of domains to IP addresses within a top-

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level domain. For example, the registry for the “.com” and

“.net” top-level domains is VeriSign, Inc., which has its

headquarters at 12061 Bluemont Way, Reston, Virginia.

f. “Registrars” sell domain names, and thus act as

the intermediary between the registry and the purchaser of a

domain name, who is known as the “registrant.”

g. “Distributed Denial of Service” attacks, or

“DDoS” attacks, are a type of network attack in which multiple

Internet-enabled devices are used to attack computers for the

purpose of rendering them inaccessible to legitimate users or

unable to communicate with the Internet. One form of DDoS

attack used in this investigation is the flooding of a website

or server with internet traffic which makes the targeted website

unable to be accessed by legitimate users or customers.

h. “Booter” or “Stresser” services are a class of

DDoS attack tools characterized by their accessibility and

affordability. These attacks are so named because they result

in the “booting” or “dropping” of the victim targeted website

from the Internet. As described in more detail below, these

attacks operate by flooding the victim targeted website with

tremendously high volumes of unsolicited traffic, effectively

preventing the victim targeted website from responding to normal

traffic and from using the Internet.

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III. SUMMARY AND PURPOSE OF AFFIDAVIT

A. SUBJECT DOMAINS

4. This affidavit is presented in support of applications

for warrants to seize the following domain names (collectively

referred to as the “SUBJECT DOMAINS”):

a. anonsecurityteam.com

b. critical-boot.com

c. defianceprotocol.com

d. ragebooter.com

e. str3ssed.me

f. bullstresser.net

g. quantumstress.net

h. booter.ninja

i. downthem.org

j. netstress.org

k. torsecurityteam.org

l. vbooter.org

m. defcon.pro

n. request.rip

o. layer7-stresser.xyz

5. This seizure shall be effected by associating the

authoritative name servers for the SUBJECT DOMAIN names to FBI-

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controlled name servers, 2 as described in detail within

Attachments A-1 through A-6.

6. The SUBJECT DOMAINS are associated with specific Top

Level Domains (“TLDs”) and corresponding registry organizations.

Where the SUBJECT DOMAINS’ TLDs are associated with United

States-based registries, they are as follows:

a. “.com” & “.net”:


VeriSign, Inc., 12061 Bluemont Way, Reston, VA 20190
b. “.ninja” & “.rip”:
Dog Beach, LLC, c/o Donuts Inc., 5808 Lake Washington
Blvd, Suite 300 Kirkland, WA 98033
c. “.org”:
Public Interest Registry, 1775 Wiehle Avenue, Suite
100, Reston, VA 20190
d. “.pro”:
Afilias USA, Inc., Building 3, Suite 105, 300 Welsh
Road, Horsham, PA 19044
e. “.xyz”:
XYZ.com, LLC, 2121 E. Tropicana Ave., Ste 2, Las
Vegas, NV 89119

7. The following SUBJECT DOMAINS are associated with TLDs

corresponding to non-U.S. registries, but have U.S.-based

registrars serving as intermediaries in the sale of the domain:

a. Str3ssed.me:
Namecheap, Inc., 11400 W Olympic Blvd Ste 200, Los
Angeles, CA 90064
8. As detailed in Attachments A-1 through A-6, each of

the above-described registries is capable of setting the

2 Thus the FBI will be providing the “phone book” that others will use when

connecting to the SUBJECT DOMAIN NAMES, ensuring that most visitors will be
routed to the FBI-controlled splash page.

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“authoritative name server” for domains within their TLD group.

For example, VeriSign can set the authoritative name server

information for example.com, or any other domain ending in .com.

9. Similarly, each of the above-described registrars are

capable of setting the “authoritative name server” of domains

for which they serve as registrar.

B. Background of FBI Investigation into Booter and Stresser


Services

10. The FBI is investigating the use of “booter” and

“stresser” services to direct floods of misappropriated Internet

traffic to unwitting victims for the express purpose of

preventing the victims from properly using the Internet, in

violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections

1030(a)(5)(A) (Unauthorized Impairment of a Protected Computer)

and 1343 (Wire Fraud), and conspiracy to commit the same, in

violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371.

11. Based on my training and experience, booter-based

DDoS attack tools represent an effective advance in Internet

attack technology because they provide a relatively low barrier

to entry. These booter services accept common payment methods

such as PayPal, Google Wallet, and Bitcoin. 3 Previous work by

3 Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies are types of digital currency in which

transactions are made without governance by any central bank, and encryption
techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of currency and to
verify the transfer of funds. Based on my training and experience, I know
that this type of currency is often used to conceal the identities of the
parties involved in a financial transaction.

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law enforcement and private sector partners has reduced the

ability of these booters to use payment services such as PayPal

as effectively, and so the most common payment method is now

Bitcoin or similar cryptocurrencies.

12. Based on my training and experience, the rates charged

to customers by booter services vary according to the specific

service, the desired “bandwidth” or attack size, the attack

type, and the number of “concurrent” attacks allowed. For

example, a premium, or “VIP,” account on a given booter service

might cost $100 a month and allow access to ten or more attack

types, a peak attack bandwidth of 30 Gbit/s, 4 and the ability to

attack up to four IP addresses at one time. A “basic” plan

might cost $25 to $35 a month and provide a more limited number

of attack types, while allowing the customer to attack only a

single IP address at a time.

13. Investigating agents have interviewed many of the

preeminent experts in the field of Internet attack technology,

including those at domestic ISPs who often observe thousands of

attacks a day. From these interviews, we have learned that many

domestic ISPs utilize a form of networking hardware known as an

“aggregator” to bundle downstream customer accounts; that one

4 Gbit/s, or Gigabits per second, is a volumetric measure of network data. An


average US domestic cable Internet subscriber might experience speeds of 10-
50 Megabits per second (Mbit/s). One Gigabit is equivalent to 1000 Megabits.

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common network implementation results in up to 10,000 domestic

ISP customers downstream of a single aggregator; and that many

aggregators can only sustain incoming Internet traffic volume of

40 Gigabits per second (Gbit/s) and below. Internet traffic

exceeding 40 Gbit/s thus can result in the inability of an

aggregator to route any further traffic.

14. As described below, the FBI conducted testing of

numerous booter/stresser sites as part of this investigation.

While testing the various booter services, the FBI usually

purchased the cheapest attack plans available, merely to

determine whether their attack functionality could be verified.

That testing showed that these services could achieve attack

volumes up to 25 to 30 Gbit/s. However, many of the services

advertised the ability to perform much higher volume attacks,

typically in the range of 50 Gbit/s but sometimes as high as 200

Gbit/s. Even at the lower volumes verified, the simultaneous

use of two such services, at a combined cost of under $50 month,

could result in an Internet outage for up to 10,000 ISP

customers, for as long as the attacker wanted to implement the

attack.

15. Booter services advertise their attack capabilities

publicly, on web pages, criminal forums, chat platforms, or with

video services such as YouTube. In some cases, what appear to

be distinct booter services (with different names and branding)

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are merely different front ends for the same underlying attack

architecture.

16. Based upon my training and experience, I know that of

the types of DDoS attacks offered by booter sites, among the

largest, in terms of sheer volume, tend to be Reflective

Amplification Attacks (“RAA”). RAA DDoS attacks function as

follows:

a. First, the attacker learns the victim’s IP address.

This can be done through a variety of methods, including

“resolvers” offered by the DDoS-for-hire sites themselves.

These resolvers can, for example, discover the true IP

associated with a web server so that an attack can bypass anti-

DDoS defenses such as Cloudflare, determine on which IP address

a given website or domain is hosted, or determine an IP address

associated with a given Skype username.

b. Second, the attacker chooses a “protocol,” i.e., a

type of communication between computers, which enables the

attacker to send a very small request to a neutral third party

and get a very large response. There are several Internet

services which – though created for legitimate purposes - are

commonly misused by booter services to craft large RAA DDoS

attacks. Examples include SSDP, also known as Simple Service

Discovery Protocol, which allows for the advertisement and

discovery of network services; NTP, or Network Time Protocol,

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which allows clock synchronization between computer systems;

DNS, or Domain Name System, which facilitates the translation of

domain names to IP addresses; and Chargen, or Character

Generation Protocol, which facilitates testing and debugging.

c. Third, the attacker crafts and sends such a request,

but in doing so “spoofs” the request’s origin: rather than using

the attacker’s own IP address, the attacker falsifies the

victim’s IP as the source, thus ensuring that the victim, rather

than the attacker, receives the resulting flood of data from the

protocol request.

d. Fourth, the neutral third party receives the request,

and is tricked by the “spoofed” origin IP – the third party

returns its much larger response not to the attacker, but to the

victim.

e. The attacker then replicates this process many times a

second, often using many different third parties to reflect and

amplify the attack, hence the name “Reflective Amplification

Attack.”

f. As a result, the victim receives an overwhelming

amount of unsolicited Internet traffic, saturating its ability

to communicate, and effectively taking it offline for the

duration of the attack.

17. RAA DDoS attacks, as described above, are

characterized by amplification factors - the size of the

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response data relative to the given query. For example, issuing

the command “dig ns fbi.gov”, a single line of query, results in

approximately 20 lines of text returned from the third party

“reflector” service. This command/query can thus be said to

have an amplification factor of approximately 20. Using similar

procedures, RAAs magnify the bandwidth available for attack by

factors of 10, 20, 100, and even more. By doing so, RAAs

appropriate bandwidth resources from the third-party reflectors,

resources that the attacker does not pay for, and which far

exceed “normal” use of those third parties, offloading the costs

of RAAs to those third party servers and their upstream

providers.

18. Further, as described above, an additional essential

component of RAA is fraudulent misdirection. It does the

attacker no good if the requested data is directed back to the

attacker. The “spoofing” of the victim IP address is a central

component of the attacks conducted by the booter services being

investigated by the FBI.

19. The last component of an RAA is one of distribution.

Instead of issuing the query to a single third party reflector,

the query may be issued to hundreds or thousands of such third

party reflectors simultaneously, each of which return with

“amplified” responses. The resulting deluge of attack data

saturates the network connection of the victim target website,

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and often negatively affects many other Internet users or

servers that stand between the attacker and the victim.

20. It should be noted that most, though not all, booter

services that I have reviewed will offer some token language

within their Terms of Service which attempts to absolve the

booter service from responsibility for attacks launched by their

customers. This language may include statements such as “Under

this license you may not intentionally send a DDoS flood to an

IP address not owned by yourself.” Based on my training and

experience, I believe this language is essentially a pretense.

Because RAA DDoS attacks by definition rely upon external

services to act as “amplifiers,” they must flood traffic to

those external services en route to the victim, impairing and

degrading the capacity of those services, for which they have

received no permission. Furthermore, many of the booter

services I studied offered services known as “resolvers” – the

purpose of which is to obtain the IP address of a victim; such

resolvers would be entirely unnecessary if any customer was

targeting their own infrastructure.

21. During the course of this investigation I have studied

the effects of these attacks, as well as those targeted by DDoS

attacks. Over the last several years, databases from booter

services have been leaked online, and/or have in other instances

been obtained lawfully by law enforcement. These databases can

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contain data on attack targets and the individuals that ordered

them, as well as the subjects involved in the day-to-day

operation of the services. I have examined several leaked

and/or seized booter databases. The data contained within those

databases indicates that DDoS attacks affect every district in

the United States, and that customers of these services exist

all over the United States and in other countries. I have also

learned through my investigation and review of these databases

that booter services are responsible for attacking large numbers

of sensitive targets, among them websites belonging to federal,

state, and municipal government, military websites, websites

belonging to the media, and websites belonging to universities

and secondary schools.

IV. APPLICABLE LAW

22. There is probable cause to believe that the SUBJECT

DOMAINS are subject to seizure and forfeiture to the United

States pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §§ 982(b)(1) and 1030(i)(1)(A)

because the SUBJECT DOMAINS constitute personal property used to

facilitate the commission of attacks against unwitting victims

for the express purpose of preventing the victims from properly

using the Internet, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5)(A)

(Unauthorized Impairment of a Protected Computer). A protective

order under 21 U.S.C. § 853(e) may not be sufficient to assure

the availability of the property for forfeiture because there is

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reason to believe that the property is under the control of the

targets of this investigation, who cannot reasonably be relied

upon to abide by an order to maintain the property in

substantially the same condition as it is at the present time,

in order to ensure that it will be available for forfeiture.

More particularly, providing notice may allow the targets to

frustrate further efforts of law enforcement by transitioning

their enterprise and infrastructure to jurisdictions beyond the

reach of United States law enforcement.

V. STATEMENT OF PROBABLE CAUSE

23. Between June and December 2018 the FBI visited

approximately 60 “booter” sites purporting to offer DDoS attacks

for sale, including each of the SUBJECT DOMAINS. Some of these

booter sites would offer test DDoS attacks for free; some

required a paid subscription in order to send DDoS attacks.

During repeat visits, it became obvious that many of these

booter sites were inconsistently available, up one day and down

the next; therefore, the FBI focused on and created user

accounts at approximately 40 sites. From those 40 sites, the

FBI further narrowed its focus to the sites that were

consistently available, and proceeded to purchase and test DDoS

service packages at those sites.

24. The FBI evaluated approximately 20 such booter

services to verify that they functioned as advertised (with the

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permission of the targeted “victims”). Most such services

offered a selection of attack protocols, including protocols

which I recognize as commonly associated with RAAs, as described

above, including NTP, DNS, CHARGEN, and UDP (a category of

protocols including, but not limited to, the first three). In

each case, the test attacks were either initiated from or

targeted protected computer systems located within the Central

District of California. The testing of an attack would be

considered successful if it was observed at the “victim,” and/or

at one of the third party reflectors used by RAA DDoS attacks.

25. I know from the testing of these services, and from

previous investigations and consultation with other agents and

Internet security experts who specialize in booter services,

that many such services have poorly functioning Application

Program Interfaces (“APIs”). As a result of the poorly

functioning APIs, not all booter services function properly with

100% consistency, nor are they certain to deliver the promised

attack volumes and types. Therefore not all testing was

expected to be successful, nor was it. If a booter service

could not be verified to generate attacks, it was not included

in the list of SUBJECT DOMAINS to be seized.

26. While true volumetric testing of DDoS attacks can

require highly specialized software and hardware, based upon

their training and experience, and based on conversations with

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private sector experts and other FBI colleagues, the testing FBI

agents were able to observe whether or not a booter service in

fact generated attack traffic when an attack was requested.

Through this testing, the FBI narrowed the original list of

approximately 60 domains associated with booter services to the

15 SUBJECT DOMAINS, each associated with DDoS services which

were functioning and capable of delivering, either solely or

through concurrent use of other such services, sufficient attack

volume to saturate a typical commercial Internet connection.

This indicates a sizeable attack volume, as the bandwidth of a

typical commercial Internet connection usually exceeds that of a

residential connection.

27. Below is a screenshot from the May 30, 2018 testing of

the downthem.org service. Each of the SUBJECT DOMAINS is

functionally similar to this example, but with cosmetic

variations in their user interfaces. The website depicted below

is configured such that a user enters the IP address of the

intended victim target website, in this case identified by the

“Server IP Address” field. The user then enters a port number

(“Port”), duration (“Interval Time”), type of Internet Protocol

to be used in the attack (“Method”), and initiates the attack

(“Start operation”).

28. At the bottom of the screenshot are several tools

designed to better facilitate a user’s ability to conduct DDoS

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attacks. As described above, these services, known as

“resolvers,” assist the attacker in learning the victim’s IP

address. The first such tool attempts to resolve Cloudflare

IPs, that is, discover the true IP associated with a web server

so that the DDoS attack can bypass Cloudflare defenses. The

second resolver takes a given website or domain and determines

on which IP address it is hosted. The third attempts to

determine an IP address associated with a given Skype username.

Investigating agents are familiar with all of these resolving

tools and know them to be part and parcel of criminal DDoS

services.

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29. Each of the tested services at each of the SUBJECT

DOMAINS contained similar user interfaces and attack tools.

Therefore, combined with the data generated through the testing

of each of these domains, I believe that each SUBJECT DOMAIN is

being used to facilitate the commission of attacks against

unwitting victims to prevent the victims from accessing the

Internet.

VI. CONCLUSION

30. For the reasons stated above, I submit there is


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probable cause to believe that the SUBJECT DOMAINS are subject

to seizure and forfeiture to the United States pursuant to 18

U.S.C. §§ 982(b)(1) and 1030(i)(1)(A) because the SUBJECT

DOMAINS constitute personal property used to facilitate the

commission of attacks against unwitting victims for the express

purpose of preventing the victims from properly using the

Internet, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5)(A)

(Unauthorized Impairment of a Protected Computer).

//

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31. A protective order under 21 U.S.C. § 853(e) may not be

sufficient to assure the availability of the property for

forfeiture because there is reason to believe that the property

is under the control of the targets of this investigation, who

cannot reasonably be relied upon to abide by an order to

maintain the property in substantially the same condition as it

is at the present time, in order to ensure that it will be

available for forfeiture. More particularly, providing notice

may allow the targets to frustrate further efforts of law

enforcement by transitioning their enterprise and infrastructure

to jurisdictions beyond the reach of United States law

enforcement.

______________________________
GABRIEL F. ANDREWS
Supervisory Special Agent,
Federal Bureau of Investigation

Subscribed to and sworn to me


this __ day of December, 2018

______________________________
United States Magistrate Judge

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