Russian Scheme to Infiltrate Secret Service Exposed

An American man allegedly concealed his company’s Russian ties to help with the plot.

A software company contracted by the U.S. government claimed it had no ties to Russia. That does not seem to be the case.

Oxygen Forensics CEO Lee Reiber and Russian national Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov were arrested and charged by the Department of Justice with conspiracy to commit wire fraud earlier this week.

Reiber allegedly advertised that his company, which provides forensic and archival services for electronic data, exclusively sold American-made software and had no foreign ownership.

Yet five Russian nationals, including Davydov, reportedly owned and controlled Oxygen Forensics through a holding company based in Cyprus, according to a criminal complaint released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. The company’s software, too, was Russian, the complaint alleged.

Several executive agencies were affected by the scheme: the Defense Department and components of the Department of Homeland Security, including the Secret Service, the National Computer Forensics Institute, Homeland Security Investigations, and the DHS Office of Inspector General.

The Secret Service specifically had signed a five-year contract with Oxygen Forensics in 2024.

The Virginia-based group allegedly concealed its true ownership after the U.S. imposed additional sanctions on Russia in early 2022 following its invasion of Ukraine. Months later, Reiber—of Boise, Idaho—was appointed the company’s CEO, president, and chairman of the board, while mentions of Russian ownership were stripped from the company’s public filings, according to the complaint.

Details released in the affidavit suggest that Reiber was well aware of the conspiracy. In November 2023, Reiber wrote to Davydov and the alleged Russian accomplices after a reporter asked about Oxygen Forensics’ connection to a Russian company. Reiber noted at the time that the reporting “could destroy” a pending contract with the National Computer Forensics Institute, and that the “current existence of this company hangs in the balance,” according to the criminal complaint.

Both Reiber and Davydov face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison if convicted.

Supreme Court Hands Trump Huge Win in Quest to Make Voting Harder

The high court will allow the Trump administration to use an immigration database to check state voter rolls.

The Supreme Court just brought Donald Trump’s immigration database back to life.

The nation’s highest judiciary sided with the Justice Department Friday, undermining a lower court’s ruling that stopped state officials from using sensitive personal data such as Social Security numbers to perform citizenship background checks.

The ruling effectively revives the Homeland Security Department’s redesign of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, also known as SAVE, an enormous database that has previously flagged eligible voters as noncitizens. The Supreme Court’s decision also allows the administration to utilize that tool in its quest to create indexes of adult citizens in each state.

SAVE was created out of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 to assist federal agencies in determining the status of immigrants and naturalized citizens applying for public benefits. Its form and purpose were distinctly different then: It........

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