In 2017, Kayla Unbehaun, then 9, was kidnapped. For years, the South Elgin, Illinois, police division looked for Unbehaun and his noncustodial mom, Heather Unbehaun, accused of the kidnapping, following her path to Georgia, the place they hit a lifeless finish. During that point, the division signed a contract with Global Intelligence and Sergeant Dan Eichholz acquired a Cybercheck report inserting Unbehaun and his mom in Oregon, he tells WIRED. This was a brand new lead, however as a result of Cybercheck offered no proof to assist its findings, Eichholz couldn’t use the report back to receive a search warrant.
Unbehaun was lastly reunited together with her father in 2023, after a consignment retailer worker in Asheville, North Carolina, acknowledged her mom from a picture proven on the Netflix present. Unsolved mysteries. After Unbehaun was positioned, Eichholz discovered throughout subsequent investigations that, till a number of months earlier, the couple had truly lived in Oregon.
“I do not need to say there wasn’t something that may very well be achieved about it, however I could not simply take their info and run with it,” Eichholz says. “This has at all times been the issue for us. ‘OK, you gave me this info, however I nonetheless should examine and confirm and do my job with the search warrants.’” The little one abduction case towards Heather Unbehaun is ongoing.
Any assist they’ll get
Cybercheck has unfold to regulation enforcement companies throughout the nation due to beneficiant advertising and marketing provides and word-of-mouth suggestions. But in interviews with WIRED and e mail exchanges we reviewed, there was little proof that regulation enforcement sought or acquired proof to assist Global Intelligence’s claims about what its know-how might do.
Prosecutors who spoke to WIRED, like Borden of Midland County, say they discovered about Cybercheck as a result of regulation enforcement of their jurisdiction had used it. And when it got here to a case, they let the adversarial justice system resolve whether or not it was reliable or not.
“It was a brand new know-how and I used to be curious, so I believed, ‘Let’s attempt it and see how far we are able to get,’” Borden says. “I’m grateful that it did not turn into proof in my case, that I did not want it to get my conviction.”
The emails present that Global Intelligence gross sales representatives commonly provide to deal with police departments’ circumstances by Cybercheck at no cost to reveal the know-how. They additionally referenced circumstances that Global Intelligence known as high-profile and that Cybercheck had supposedly helped resolve, with out brazenly naming them or offering proof that Cybercheck had made a distinction within the investigation.
Emails obtained by WIRED from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation present that investigators had been initially excited to see what info Cybercheck might present about their chilly circumstances. They even launched Global Intelligence gross sales representatives to different regulation enforcement companies in Ohio. This enthusiasm seems to have helped persuade different companies to belief the corporate.
Gessner, of the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office, says that when his company was deciding whether or not to make use of the Cybercheck proof, it requested Ohio BCI’s cyber crimes unit for recommendation. “They mentioned, yeah, it is sensible… we do not have the know-how to do it, however we might prefer to have it.” County prosecutors additionally approached the SANS Institute, he says, and had been advised that the institute did not “do these kinds of issues.”
But even because it retracted the proof offered by Cybercheck, Gessner says the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office is asking different corporations if they’ll do the identical sort of open supply localization marketed by Global Intelligence.
“We do not need to shut doorways that might assist uncover the reality in our circumstances,” he says.
