An excerpt from Joseph Cox’s “Dark Wire” exclusive to WIRED, the story of how a Swedish gangster, originally from Serbia, led the FBI straight to his multimillion dollar crimes. How did it happen? He wanted to monopolize not only the drug trade and production, but also by pushing a platform called Anøm for criminals to share details of their movement via this encrypted platform. Little did he know behind the offices at Anøm were FBI agents.
“Maximilian Rivkin more commonly went by his nickname, Microsoft. A Swedish gangster originally from Serbia, he was a heavyset 36-year-old man with short dark hair that gripped the top of his egg-shaped head. Some gray had started to appear in his thin beard, which showed the beginnings of a handlebar mustache. On his right forearm, he had a large tattoo of the three wise monkeys from folklore that hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil.
Microsoft’s travel companion, Butina, was an aging gangster from Malmö who had helped bring him up in the criminal underworld; Microsoft called him “uncle” even though they weren’t related. He would be Microsoft’s partner in pressing Anøm across Sweden. But as they returned from Turkey and entered an encryption turf war—mainly against Sky (a platform previously used by criminals to share messages)—it quickly became clear that Microsoft and Butina were at odds.
Butina, who had recently served a long prison sentence and had no intention of going back behind bars, wanted to sell Anøm phones out in the open, in shops, maybe even use an Instagram profile to generate publicity. It would give him a nice way to generate income without resorting to crime. Microsoft shut down that idea. Sales would be completely underground, from person to person. “We move Anøm like we move kilos,” he said.
[Anøm](https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-anom-phone-network-encryption-debate/), the visiting attaché said, was in fact even more of a honeypot than EncroChat had been. The FBI wasn’t just intercepting its messages. The FBI was secretly managing the whole company, under the code name Operation Trojan Shield. The people at the top of its pyramid scheme were actually a bunch of agents, furiously reading messages between criminals.”
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An excerpt from Joseph Cox’s “Dark Wire” exclusive to WIRED, the story of how a Swedish gangster, originally from Serbia, led the FBI straight to his multimillion dollar crimes. How did it happen? He wanted to monopolize not only the drug trade and production, but also by pushing a platform called Anøm for criminals to share details of their movement via this encrypted platform. Little did he know behind the offices at Anøm were FBI agents.
“Maximilian Rivkin more commonly went by his nickname, Microsoft. A Swedish gangster originally from Serbia, he was a heavyset 36-year-old man with short dark hair that gripped the top of his egg-shaped head. Some gray had started to appear in his thin beard, which showed the beginnings of a handlebar mustache. On his right forearm, he had a large tattoo of the three wise monkeys from folklore that hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil.
Microsoft’s travel companion, Butina, was an aging gangster from Malmö who had helped bring him up in the criminal underworld; Microsoft called him “uncle” even though they weren’t related. He would be Microsoft’s partner in pressing Anøm across Sweden. But as they returned from Turkey and entered an encryption turf war—mainly against Sky (a platform previously used by criminals to share messages)—it quickly became clear that Microsoft and Butina were at odds.
Butina, who had recently served a long prison sentence and had no intention of going back behind bars, wanted to sell Anøm phones out in the open, in shops, maybe even use an Instagram profile to generate publicity. It would give him a nice way to generate income without resorting to crime. Microsoft shut down that idea. Sales would be completely underground, from person to person. “We move Anøm like we move kilos,” he said.
[Anøm](https://www.wired.com/story/fbi-anom-phone-network-encryption-debate/), the visiting attaché said, was in fact even more of a honeypot than EncroChat had been. The FBI wasn’t just intercepting its messages. The FBI was secretly managing the whole company, under the code name Operation Trojan Shield. The people at the top of its pyramid scheme were actually a bunch of agents, furiously reading messages between criminals.”
Read the full piece here: [https://www.wired.com/story/inside-biggest-fbi-sting-operation-in-history/](https://www.wired.com/story/inside-biggest-fbi-sting-operation-in-history/)