PJ Vogt

As the months went on, Anom, just like a legit tech company, kept adding more features.

Sometimes at the specific request of its biggest power user, Microsoft.

So the developers would do what Microsoft asked, put in a new voice feature, delete it when he decided it was a bad idea.

And Microsoft remained totally enamored with this new gadget.

It gave him a kind of criminal superpower, most of the time anyway.

In December 2020, Microsoft began to hit a biblical patch of bad luck.

With his lab destroyed, Microsoft is now down bad financially, which means he has to do more risky jobs in order to make his money back.

And then, one summer day, a law enforcement agent on the other side of the world, in San Diego of all places, holds a surprise press conference.

This U.S.

attorney, looking quite pleased, stands at a podium in a municipal law enforcement press room.

Yellow-looking veneer wood, bold blue curtains.

Behind him, several other law enforcement officers, each wearing a fabric COVID mask.

It's 2021.

They're here to announce the many arrests that are being made in the US and simultaneously in other countries.

So the phone company for criminals was being run by a United States law enforcement agency, by the FBI.

Oops.

After a short break, how the FBI came to start a criminal phone company preferred by the discerning international drug smuggler, and what the feds found on history's most ambitious wiretap.

Welcome back to the show.

Anam, the phone company used almost exclusively by criminals, designed exclusively for criminals, was a multi-year, very expensive FBI project.

The bureau cooperated with law enforcement in countries across the world.