• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Snitching

Criminal Informant Law, Policy, and Research

  • Home
  • About
  • Litigation
  • Legislation
  • Families & Youth
  • Blog
  • Resources & Scholarship

Informant Crime

FBI informant ran enormous multinational scam while under FBI supervision

June 28, 2024 by Alexandra Natapoff

From Bloomberg News, an extensive investigation into the FBI’s risky reliance on an informant who one former FBI agent called “the Don Corleone of cybercrime.” According to the report, Gery Shalon was “charged with 33 federal counts, including hacking, securities fraud and money laundering, [and] he faced decades in a federal prison. Instead, he spent just 10 months in a New York jail.” Shalon cooperated with the FBI for over five years, working and traveling under agency supervision. But “according to police and prosecutors in Europe [] [t]hey have evidence that during his time as a US cooperator, Shalon continued to run a substantial criminal operation targeting tens of thousands of European victims.” From the story:

[T]he running of [Gery] Shalon, one of the most significant cyber cooperators in American history, now has the potential to turn into a debacle for both the FBI and New York’s Southern District, the most powerful US attorney’s office in the country.

The details of the case add fresh fuel to concerns about the way the American system of justice commodifies guilt, exchanging criminal punishment for aid with higher investigative priorities. And thousands of European victims will have questions of their own, about how a mastermind of their woes operated so freely on the US government’s watch.

Story here: “The FBI’s Star Cooperator May Have Been Running New Scams All Along.“

Filed Under: Informant Crime, International, White Collar

Violent FBI informant infiltrates Denver’s racial justice movement

February 9, 2023 by Alexandra Natapoff

From Trevor Aaronson at the Intercept, this profile of an informant used by the FBI to infiltrate, record, provide weapons to, and incite violence by Black activists in Denver: The Snitch in the Silver Hearse. Michael Windecker — who had prior convictions for sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl and weapons charges — was paid over $20,000 during the summer of 2020 at the height of Denver protests against the killings of George Floyd and Elijah McClain. Among other astounding things, Windecker drove an activist to the personal home of Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser (who was overseeing the prosecution of the police and paramedics who killed McClain) where Windecker affirmatively encouraged the activist to kill Weiser. The activist refused.

The FBI has a long sordid history of using informants to infiltrate and disrupt progressive political groups. See previous posts here. For more history, see Elizabeth Hinton, The Unsettling Message of Judas and the Black Messiah in The Atlantic, and Gary Marx’s classic book, Undercover.

Filed Under: Informant Crime, Political informants, Terrorism

Podcast with Law & Philosophy on the commodification of guilt

January 6, 2023 by Alexandra Natapoff

Listen to me and Max Diamond of the Harvard Law & Philosophy Society discuss how the informant market degrades our principles of guilt and culpability by buying, trading, and otherwise commodifying them.

Filed Under: Book events/media, Incentives & Payments, Informant Crime

Podcast with Adam Conover on Factually!

January 1, 2023 by Alexandra Natapoff

Great, hour-long conversation with Adam Conover about all that is shocking and bizarre about the informant system.

Filed Under: Book events/media, Incentives & Payments, Informant Crime, Innocence, Jailhouse Informants, White Collar

ABC News: “A Necessary Evil: The Cost of Confidential Informants”

October 25, 2022 by Alexandra Natapoff

This extensive investigation by KSAT ABC Channel 12 delves into the use of unreliable drug informants, planted drugs, lack of supervision, and a host of other debacles that led to the wrongful conviction of multiple people in San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas. You can watch the hour-long special here; for additional videos, interviews and resources, check out their Confidential Informant page.

This kind of large scale drug scandal happens more frequently than you might think. See these previous posts for additional examples in Florida, Tennessee, and Texas.

Filed Under: Drug-related, Incentives & Payments, Informant Crime, Innocence, Police, Reliability

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 8
  • Go to Next Page »

Copyright © 2025 Alexandra Natapoff · Log in · RSS on follow.it