Friday, October 03, 2025

Scam Compound Operators: Members of The Four Great Families sentenced to death in China

(photo from BBC article "China sentences 11 members of mafia family to death")

On Monday this week, Chinese authorities sentenced to death 16 members of "The Four Families" for the multitude of crimes they committed while operating scam compounds in Northern Myanmar near the Chinese border. This was the culmination of an investigation that has been on-going since July 2023 and that we have been tracking primarily through Chinese Telegram channels that discuss the scam compounds.  Thirty-nine criminals were sentenced in the hearing. Eleven will be immediately executed, while five others have a two year reprieve, during which their sentences might be commuted to life in prison. Eleven more received life sentences, while the rest received sentences of between five and twenty-four years.  But who are The Four Families?  Read on . . .

The Incident at Crouching Tiger Villa - October 20, 2023

In Myanmar this is referred to as the "1020 Incident."  Crouching Tiger Villa, which is also called "Wohu Mountain Villa" was a telecom scam compound that covered 200 acres, and encompassed hotels, shopping malls, and buildings full of high tech equipment.  Ming Xuechang, who was the richest man in the Kokang Autonomous Region had a private army of 2,000 men to help patrol and protect the area. On October 20th a large group of prisoners, forced to work as cyber scammers, rioted and attempted to escape.  In the ensuing chaos, Ming's troops began to fire into the crowd, killing at least 60 (some say 70.) Rumors indicate that some of those killed were undercover Chinese police officers, but some say this is based on the plot of a Chinese movie with a similar theme.  

As a result, on November 12, 2023, the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security issued a reward notice, offering a cash incentive for four leaders of the Myanmar Kokang group headed by Ming.  Within just a few days, all four had been arrested! 

Ming Guoping, Ming Julan, and Ming Zhenzhen were turned over to the Chinese police


Myanmar hands over 10 crime bosses to the Chinese - January 30, 2024

The Record: Crime bosses behind Myanmar cyber 'fraud dens' handed over to Chinese government

(image from: X.com/johnwSEAP )

On December 10, 2023, China issued arrest warrants for Bai Suocheng and ten other key leaders of the Kokang Autonomous Region's telecom and internet fraud rings.  Working with Myanmar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, six of the ten were arrested and on January 30, 2024, sent to China to answer for their crimes. 

These are the ten in the China Warrant according to the Irawaddy


Two leaders of the Bai Family were among those sent back to China. The Bai family operated many casinos around Laukkaing, especially "the Silver Palace." They had many construction and logistics firm that served their own needs and those of the other families. Bai's most famous brand was the "Yum! Brands" which operated several other casinos that served as scam compounds as well. 

Bai Suocheng -白所成
Bai Yingcang - 白应苍

The Wei family was led by Wei Chaoren ( 魏朝仁 ), operating chiefly from Kongyang Township.  They were significant players in telecom infrastructure and provided SIM Pools for the use of the families.  The Henry Group was the chief company of Wei Chaoren, as well as The Xiaozhu.

Arrested: 
Wei Huairen - 魏怀仁 

Remaining at large from the Wei family were: 
Wei Rong
Wei Qingsong 

The Liu family also operated from Kongyang and other nearby border towns. The Liu family came to wealth in the mining industry and control most of the mining in Kokang.  They were significant players in money laundering. Liu's primary casinos were operated under the name "Fully Light Group." Liu Guoxi has also been linked to organ trafficking. Liu Zhengxiang was the founder of the Fulilai Group back in 1992 which operates a number of casinos in the area. His predecessor, Liu Abao, was known to be a significant drug trafficker.

Arrested: 
Liu Zhengxiang - 刘正祥
Liu Zhengmao - 刘正茂

Remaining at large from the Liu family was: 
Liu Zhengmao 

Ministry of Public Security - May 27, 2024

Ministry of Public Security spokesman Li Guozhong gave a major update on the strategy "Four Specializations and Two Joint Efforts" and their results.  He said that over the past five years, they had worked 1.945 million telecom network fraud cases and that for eight months in a row, they had significant declines in fraud as a result of their efforts.  The operation, which began in July 2023, had specifically targeted the "Four Major Families" ( “四大家族” ) in Kokang and had brought to justice members of the Bai, Wei, Liu, and Ming families. 

In this press conference, Li mentions that Ming Zhenzhen ( 明珍珍  ) had also been taken into custody. 

Myanmar's Cooperation with China's Ministry of Public Security 



September 28, 2024 - The Ministry of Public Security announced that they had made key arrests in Yangon and Mandalay, and that 20 "telecom network fraud crime group leaders and key members" had been arrested and were being handed over the China.  These included Chen Mouwei ( 陈某卫 ) and Yang Mou ( 杨某 ). The press release at that time said that Chen and Yang had "relied on the Four Great Families" of Myanmar's Kokang region, as well as criminal groups "such as Xu Laofa ( 徐老发 )" in order to "control armed forces, set up telecom fraud dens, and carry out telecom network fraud crimes targeting Chinese citizens.  They were also said to be suspected of intentional homicide, intentional injury and other serious violent crimes. 

The Crouching Tiger Villa arrests - December 30, 2024

"Tracking down and investigating the truth! The story of the investigation into the Mingjia criminal group in northern Myanmar.  Chinese people are being "traded" in northern Myanmar.

On December 30, 2024, China's Supreme People's Procuratorate published the first round of charges under the headline "Exposing the Northern Myanmar Mingjia Criminal Group's Fraud, Murder, and Drug-related Activities" ( 揭露缅北明家犯罪集团诈骗杀人涉毒解密数宗罪 ).  At that time, the Wenzhou Municipal court in Zhejiang Province charged 39 defendants, calling the Mingjia criminal group "one of the four major families in northern Myanmar.

They interviewed many victims, who told stories of the promises made to them by the "snakeheads" (a Chinese term for a human trafficker) and the reality they faced when they arrived.  One victim, Li Mouqian, from Guangdong, was sold to the Ming family and told he could buy his freedom for 300,000 Yuan. At Crouching Tiger Villa, he was expected to make 100 phone calls per day and to land three new victims of cyber scams each day.  If he failed to do so, he was beaten.  When he tried to escape with a colleague, he was beaten with steal pipes and his accomplice in the escape was beaten to death. 

The Ming family at that time was led by Ming Zhenzhen (明珍珍 ), the granddaughter of their founder Ming Xuechang (明学昌). Xuechang had been a part of Myanmar's Shan State legislature, representing the Kokang Self-Administered Zone as a member of the Union Solidarity and Development Party.  He was also in charge of the local police.  He controlled a personal army of at least 2,000 men. During a previous cross-border police action against Ming Xuechang, he shot himself rather than being captured, and died in the hospital leaving his granddaughter in charge. 

Between July 2023 and December 2024, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security managed to repatriate 53,000 telecom and internet fraud suspects from northern Myanmar. 


Tuesday, September 30, 2025

New Smish: New York Department of Revenue

 As I was visiting SmishTank to report the most recent SMish that I had received (an iMessage from a +27 South African telephone number claiming to be from ParkMobile) I noticed there had been many recent submissions from the New York Department of Revenue. SmishTank is operated by Professor Muhammad Lutfor Rahman, a colleague of mine from our time at UAB, and his student Daniel Timko from California State University San Marcos. 

SmishTank.com is a great resource for recent SMish!


Pennsylvania and Connecticut "Department of Revenue" also observed
The Utah State Tax Commission and the State of California Franchise Tax Board also seen

SMish that Hide from Wrong Browsers

If you visit any of the URLs that are reported by these "Tax Refund" phish, you'll find that they fail to resolve unless you are visiting from a phone. Researchers easily bypass this by using a "User Agent Switcher" which allows a browser, such as Chrome, to claim to be another device with a different browser.  By setting myself to be an "Android KitKat" version of Chrome, the pages render on my Windows PC just fine.  The User Agent Switcher also allows you to enter your own customer User Agents.  Today, this is the one I used ... 

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 4.4.2; Nexus 4 Build/KOT49H) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/34.0.1847.114 Mobile Safari/537.36

New York Department of Revenue Mobile Phish (SMish)

After switching my browser agent, I chose to visit "revenue.refundjpt[.]cc/notice" to get samples of the phish. The first thing that stands out is that despite the SMish all claiming to be the "New York Department of Revenue" the phishing website calls itself "Department of Taxation and Finance" and makes no reference to any specific state. 



The "Address" page of the phish starts by asking for a Social Security Number, which makes sense if you are interacting about taxation.  With most "bank" phish, that would be an immediate Red Flag, but people who are interacting about taxes would not be alarmed by this.  In the USA, your SSN is the primary identifier for taxes.  Although the "State" is pre-populated to "New York" the footer still references the California Penal Code. 



The next page tells me they would like to refund me $1120 and asks which Credit Card or Debit Card I would like to send the funds to.  The "Bank Routing" option is unavailable, apparently due to "system maintenance." 



The website is using the Luhn algorithm to confirm that the credit card number is valid.  Type any 16 digits starting with a 4 or a 5, then rotate the final number until it stops saying "invalid card number" in red and accepts the number.  My made up number was 4381 6621 8355 371_ and when I changed the last digit to a "6" it became an acceptable Credit Card number.  (I looked it up later, as this was entirely fictitious, but 438166 would mean my card was a Visa Credit Classic issued by Multicredit, S.A., in Guatemala.  Oops!  Its ok, the Chinese scammers didn't care.) 

After this, the criminals sent a text message to the burner phone that I had provided in the Address block. This is a CRITICAL PART OF THEIR STRATEGY!

The "SERCURTITY" verification (yes, securTity) asks for my 6-digit code.  While they say this is because they want my tax refund to be secure, this code is actually the 2-Factor Authentication that allows them to add MY CREDIT CARD to THEIR PHONE's WALLET!




Unfortunately, Guatemala Multicredit SA must have let them know that my credit card didn't really exist, as it booted me back to the credit card page and asked for a different card. This actually happens even if you enter a VALID card.  Why?  The criminals are not interested in sending you a tax refund. They are interested in loading your debit and credit cards onto their phone in Bangkok (or wherever their "machine room" full of spam-sending phones is located.) If you will give them two cards, they will load two.  If you will give them three cards, they will steal all three.  

How does the Stolen Credit Card get used? 

They then deploy "Shoppers" to begin making purchases using your credit card which is now "Tap to Pay" ready on their phone!  The phone is in Bangkok?  No problem.  They use the software "X-NFC" to "remote tap" transmitting the card loaded on the wallet in Asia to the phone standing at the payment til at the Apple Store in Burbank.


I'm attaching a promotional video that the author shares on his Telegram channel.  In the video, the criminal has two phones "above" his Point of Sale device.  He links the NFC capability of one of the top phones to the bottom phone.  He then taps the top "linked phone" to an iPhone holding a credit card in his wallet.  The image of the card is transferred to the bottom phone, which he can then successfully tap on the Point of Sale device.  


In practice, the "bottom phone" would be somewhere in North America.  The person using that phone would call a collaborator in Asia to say they are ready to make a purchase.  The remote agent then taps one of the phones where your Phished credit card is loaded.  That card is now "usable" on the phone in North America, who taps the phone locally to make a payment using the credit card 7500 miles away! 

What Registrars, Hosts, and Domains are part of the current New York campaign?

These iMessage and RCS phish are part of a deployment server where criminals pay a monthly fee to use the phishing sites.  Each criminal can choose how and where they register their domains and how and where they host the phishing websites.  Because they are all renting access to the same catalog of phishing website, the sites may look identical while having very different hosting and registration models.

In this case, the main set of domains is registered at "Dominet (HK) Limited" while the hosting is more difficult since they are hiding behind Cloudflare's Reverse Proxy service.  The bulk of that group's domains for this campaign were registered on September 27, 2025. 

The New York campaign used the hostname "revenue" with URLs using this pattern: 

hxxps://revenue.refundyt[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refundql[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refundmj[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refundrm[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refundet[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refundjc[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refundyt[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refundxu[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refundxe[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refundvs[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refunduw[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refundte[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refundsz[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.refundrm[.]cc/notice

Another group of domains, which was first seen on September 26th and includes 28 domains, some of which were registered today, was also registered at Dominet (HK) Limited and also hiding behind Cloudflare uses the pattern: 

hxxps://revenue.paybds[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paydjr[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paydqo[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payeoc[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payfgm[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payfkv[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paygaa[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payhqe[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payidx[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payjjt[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payjok[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paykah[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paykdr[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paylsn[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paymnk[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paymtj[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paynds[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payono[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payque[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payquh[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payryc[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paysbv[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paytia[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payvem[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payvik[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paywar[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payyks[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payzlr[.]cc/notice

And yet another domain pattern, also registered at Dominet (HK) Limited and also hiding behind Cloudflare uses this pattern: 

hxxps://revenue.paybds[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paydjr[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paydqo[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payeoc[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payfgm[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payfkv[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paygaa[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payhqe[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payidx[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payjjt[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payjok[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paykah[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paykdr[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paylsn[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paymnk[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paymtj[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paynds[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payono[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payque[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payquh[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payryc[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paysbv[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paytia[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payvem[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payvik[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.paywar[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payyks[.]cc/notice
hxxps://revenue.payzlr[.]cc/notice


refundfg[.]cc was actually a State of Florida tax refund scam, began about 11 days ago.  That campaign differed from this one in that it was hosted openly at TENCENT (AS132203, IP: 170.106.160.91) and shifted to using a different domain pattern: 
revenue.refuAXCV[.]cc
revenue.refuREWJ[.]cc
revenue.refuDZSA[.]cc

pivoting on that IP address, we can use Zetalytic's ZoneCruncher to look at the passive DNS and find many other domains.  Our TenCent phisher who is doing the New York Tax phish is clearly also doing Pennsylvania, and Minnesota! The Passive DNS also shows us other host and domain patterns for New York. 



Sunday, September 28, 2025

SMS Pools and what the US Secret Service Really Found Around New York

 Last week the United Nations General Assembly kicked off in New York City.  On the first day, a strange US Secret Service press conference revealed that they had seized 300 SIM Servers with 100,000 SIM cards. Various media outlets jumped on the idea that this was some state-sponsored sleeper cell waiting to destroy telecommunication services around New York.  Like me, you may have immediately wondered why some of the photos showed sophisticated racks of servers on shelves while others showed a hodge podge of devices strewn about the bare floor of an otherwise empty apartment. 

photos extracted from USSS reporting

SIM Pools on Telegram 

Beginning in late 2024, every cell phone in the USA started getting hit hard with annoying messages claiming to be informing us of undelivered packages. In early 2025, this morphed into the famous "Toll Road" phishing messages which started off with messages supposedly about unpaid tolls in Massachusetts Easy Pass and now imitate every toll road system in America. Because the goals of these SMishing messages were to load credit cards onto phones and use them to steal money, DarkTower spent quite a bit of time studying the infrastructure, which is primarily advertised and sold in Telegram channels that we call "Chinese Guarantee Syndicates." I've conducted several briefings about these systems, and have mentioned previously in this blog how they sell SMS-blasting telecom equipment (See: Chinese SMS Spammers Go Mobile ).

The devices found around the NYC tri-state area are a slightly different application of SMS-blasting.

The most famous of the Chinese Guarantee Syndicates, Haowang Guarantee, is part of the US-sanctioned Huione Pay, "The Largest Illicit Online Marketplace" according to Elliptic and WIRED. Haowang has shifted their business to Tudou Danbao, but their vendors continue to offer SMS Modem Pools and associated hardware and software as part of their Crime-as-a-Service empire.  Here's an ad for one such vendor (with its translation):



Let's look at the Telegram channel of Annie, a China-based seller of SMS equipment.  (In Chinese, these are called "Cat Pools" -- I'll explain why at the bottom of this article.)  Most of the posts I'll show are from Chinese-language Telegram channels, so I'll include an English translation.

@Annie068a operates a channel dedicated to selling SMS Gateway equipment

Annie offers SMS Modem Pools in a variety of sizes

SMS Modem Pools have a variety of configurations.  The most basic has 8 modem ports with slots for one SIM card each. On the opposite end of the scale, is a 64 port modem with capacity for 512 SIM cards. (Many of those found by the USSS seem to be 32-port modems with 256 SIM cards.) When there are more SIM cards than modem ports message sending rotates between SIM cards. 

What does Annie suggest you might use your SMS Pool for?  Mostly "Marketing."

The concept, as Annie explains, is that you can route messages from anywhere in the world and have them sent from an SMS pool sitting in the United States and being sent from a US-based SIM, thus having a US telephone number displayed in the caller id.

SMS Pools for Fraud and Phishing

Other Telegram channels are more blatant with suggesting the type of "Marketing" that one might do with the ability to send Bulk SMS messages to other countries.  The Telegram channel "Mini Bulk SMS" provides examples, such as imitating the Irish bank AIB to send phishing emails, or imitating BMF in Austria, Binance in Italy, or doing an Apple refund scam in the US. In SouthEast Asia a major use of Bulk SMS is advertising to gamblers. 

An English-speaking Bulk SMS provider, KathyBulkSMS, also is quite blatant about the criminal nature of the messages she suggests.  Her service also has the ability to send using "Short Message Code" caller IDs. She particularly recommends imitating Coinbase if spamming in the US and says that her recent campaign, sending 170,000 such messages via Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, was "very effective."


Kathy gives other examples, such as imitating Binance and National Australia Bank for the Australian market, but her channel has suggestions for many countries, including Netflix and Crypto campaigns for:  🇬🇷Greece 🇵🇹Portugal 🇦🇹Austria 🇮🇪Ireland 🇯🇵Japan 🇸🇰Slovakia 🇰🇷South Korea and 🇪🇸Spain.
 

Cheap SMS Modem Pools and Cheaper SIMs

Not to bust the "Nation-state" theories too hard, but this gear is ridiculously cheap. You can buy most of it used on places like eBay, but the various business-to-business services like "Made In China" have great prices.  Here are a couple examples: a 16-modem 512 SIM-slot 4G SMS Gateway is $1,000.  A 64-modem 512 SIM-slot 4G/3G/2G offering send and receive SMS can range from $2,400 to $4,000 depending on the configuration and software included.


But what about the SIM cards? Don't worry, there are many Facebook groups, and many more Telegram channels that will hook you up. The Telegram user @Zoom557 posts to many Facebook groups using the new criminal-friendly "Anonymous Poster" service. On Telegram he is excited about the new $5 SIM cards offered 

BaronLiu also uses Facebook to push his Telegram SIM card offerings. 
Here are a few of the Facebook groups (all in Chinese) that specialize in SIM card selling. Notice the sizes: 2500 members, 3600 members, 6400 members, and 8700 members. Most of these groups also offer mass account creation and social media spamming services. 


One Telegram vendor of SIM cards was proud to be supplying a variety of US SIM cards.


The same vendor shared the photo below.  This isn't USSS in New York.  This is a deployment in Thailand using a SIM pool to provide Thai-WhatsApp numbers to customers around the world. 



Do eSIMs change the game? Durov has you covered: 

Never one to shy away from offering anonymized criminal services to the masses, Pavel Durov has announced that you can now buy world-wide eSIMs from a special app inside Telegram called @Mobile. After choosing your region and country, you choose the eSim you want, and then can purchase it paying with Pavel's built-in cryptocurrency, TON, or a credit card if you want to be easily traced by law enforcement.


What about those SMS Cats? 

One of the earliest "famous" SMS-phishers who was doing Toll Road phishing was "Darcula." When Darcula's server was unavailable in the summer of 2024, he recommended people use the server "magic-cat.world" to upgrade their software.  Darcula also used a cat as his Telegram profile image.

Darcula was well-and-truly doxed by the excellent researchers at Mnemonic.io -- Erlend Leiknes and Harrison Sand.  I've spoken to them both and they did a great job tearing apart Darcula's code and mapping out the credit card theft associated with it!  

While Darcula was certainly a major player, "Little Gray Cat" was my favorite SMisher at the beginning of our work.  He loved to show off his "Machine Room" full of iPhones all sending automated (and end-to-end encrypted) Toll Road and Package non-Delivery phish.

It wasn't until recently I realized the story of why our SMS phishers have so many "Cat-named" things has to do with the slang for the word "modem." The Chinese term for modem is 调制解调器 (tiáo zhì jiě tiáo qì). Because that's quite a mouthful, young techies began to refer to their modem simply as 猫 (māo).  Here are some of the "Cat" terms I've learned in this research:


A "Cat Card" is a SIM card.  This is the term to search on Chinese Telegram to find people selling SIM cards and related services. 

An "SMS Cat" is device hosting an SMS number either for "marketing/phishing" or for "verification farming." (Verification Farming uses the destination-country SMS number to receive authentication codes. Group-IB's excellent "SMS Pumping" article mentions that "In late 2022, Elon Musk revealed that Twitter was losing around $60 million per year due to SMS pumping fraud. The activity was attributed to 390 telecom operators that allowed bot accounts to exploit Twitter’s two-factor authentication (2FA) system, generating fake SMS traffic to inflate their own revenue.")

A "Cat Control Platform" is the software, hosted on Windows or Linux, that connects to the 

A "Cat Number" is a virtual number ... it may be in an SMS Pool, but it might also be a Google Voice number or other virtual number. 

A "Cat Pool" as we've already discussed, is an SMS Modem Pool.

Friday, September 26, 2025

Postal Thief Arrested in Oregon

The case caught my eye with the headline in the Oregon Live trumpeting:  "Mail theft suspect in Portland made daring 13th-floor balcony escape, later arrested" and saying that the suspect's apartment contained ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY POSTAL KEYS!   But Michael John Peters is not the type of mail thief that I am accustomed to seeing in our investigations.  Most of the check thieves that DarkTower investigates are street gang members and self-proclaimed Hip Hop artists who peddle their checks in Telegram channels.  I wasn't expecting the case to be about a college-educated white male who ran an art gallery in Hawaii! 

https://mauiguide.com/michael-john-peters/

On his YouTube channel, Peters tells how he "reinvented himself" during COVID, creating a painting process he calls "Four Phases Painting" which is actually quite interesting!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPmWA6Y1qNE

The Check Theft Case

This case began when the US Postal Inspection Service received complaints from a resident in the Arbor Vista apartments in Portland, Oregon that their 27-slot "cluster mailbox unit" (CBU) had been broken into and left unlocked during the night. The complex had video surveillance of a man, later identified as Michael John Peters, entering the apartment complex at 3:33 AM on May 7, 2025. He appeared to use a key to open the CBU.  Several additional complexes in the area also had video surveillance of a similar looking man accessing their apartment buildings at odd hours and stealing their mail.  

Photos from Arbor Vista, Collins Circle, McKenzie Lofts, Sitka Apartments, and Waterfront Pearl all appear to show the same person - a white male usually wearing a backwards baseball cap, carrying a gray backpack, and often with an electric skateboard. 

Images from the USPIS Criminal Complaint

Comparing the stills from video surveillance to online photos, USPIS agents believed that the man in their images was likely Michael John Peters, with matches to his Hawaiian Drivers License.  A still from the video above is also included in the affidavit. 

In one incident, on July 18, 2025, Peters abandons his backpack where agents found three counterfeit postal keys.  One was etched with "GH" which likely referred to Goose Hollow, the neighborhood where Arbor Vista and Collins Circles housing complexes were located. Another key found later was etched "SLAB" which referred to the Slabtown neighborhood of Portland. Of high interest was the presence of a Flipper Zero in the backpack.  The Affidavit from USPIS notes "which can be used to gain access to secured doors and buildings." By laying an access card near a Flipper Zero, a digital recording of the card can be made, which can later be replayed allowing doors to be opened.  (Students of mine used a proof of concept to clone campus access cards at two universities after borrowing my own Flipper Zero.) 


Searching postal records, Peters address in Beaverton, Oregon was found and at least 12 packages were found in their records as having been delivered to either Mike Peters or Michael Peters at that address between October 2024 and July 2025. 

A search of his criminal history showed that he had convictions from 2023 in California for "felony Possession of Identification of Ten or More Persons with Intent to Defraud" and for "Making a Fictitious Check."  He also had a 2023 conviction in Hawaii for 28 felony counts for Unauthorized Possession of Confidential Personal Information, Fraudulent Use of Credit Cards, Theft of Credit Cards, and Theft.

Additional Surveillance images of Peters

Mail Theft Search Warrant Executed 

On September 23rd, based on the extensive video evidence and the probable identification, a search warrant was conducted at the residence of Michael John Peters.  In the US Attorney's press release, it mentions that "In the apartment, investigators found evidence of identity theft including approximately 300 pieces of U.S. mail that were not addressed to Peters, false identification documents, stolen identity documents, and counterfeit checks."

https://www.justice.gov/usao-or/pr/portland-man-charged-stealing-mail

The local media shared more interesting details ... Oregon Live's telling of the story says: 

"In the unit, investigators found more than 170 postal keys, 15 fake identification cards in his name, about 300 pieces of mail, 15 gift cards and check printers" which they credit as being explained by Assistant U.S. Attorney William Narus.  

Peters was arraigned on September 24th and is now in custody pending trial following a detention hearing where he was described as a "serious flight risk" citing an outstanding warrant, a substance abuse problem, and his prior criminal history.