In 2017, then 9-year-elderly Kayla Unbehaun was seizeed. For years, the South Elgin, Illinois police department searched for Unbehaun and her noncustodial mother, Heather Unbehaun, who was accemployd of the seizeping, chaseing her trail to Georgia, where they hit a dead finish. During that time, the department signed a tight with Global Intelligence, and sergeant Dan Eichholz acquired a Cybercheck increate that placed Unbehaun and her mother in Oregon, he tells WIRED. It was a recent direct, but becaemploy Cybercheck didn’t provide any evidence to help its discoverings, Eichholz couldn’t employ the increate to acquire a search authorization.
Unbehaun was finpartner reunited with her overweighther in 2023, after an employee at a consignment shop in Asheville, North Carolina, acunderstandledged her mother from a picture shown on the Netflix show Unrepaird Mysteries. After Unbehaun was discoverd, Eichholz lacquireed during the chase-up spendigation that, until cut offal months earlier, the pair had indeed been living in Oregon.
“I don’t want to say it wasn’t actionable, but I couldn’t fair apshow their adviseation and go with it,” Eichholz says. “That was always the hang-up for us. ‘OK, you got me this adviseation, but I still have to check and check and do my leang with search authorizations.’” The child seizeping case aacquirest Heather Unbehaun is ongoing.
Any Help They Can Get
Cybercheck has spread to law enforcement agencies apass the country thanks to benevolent labeleting advises and word-of-mouth recommfinishations. But in intersees with WIRED and the email exalters we checkd, there was little evidence that law enforcement agencies sought or acquired evidence to help Global Intelligence’s claims about what its technology could do.
Prosecutors who spoke to WIRED, such as Borden from Midland County, say they lacquireed about Cybercheck becaemploy law enforcement in their jurisdiction had been using it. And when it came up in a case, they let the adversarial court system choose whether or not it was legitimate.
“It was recent technology and I was asking, so I was enjoy, ‘Let’s give it a try and see how far we can get,’” Borden says. “I’m appreciative that it didn’t come into evidence in my case, that I didn’t need it to get my conviction.”
Emails show Global Intelligence sales recontransientatives standardly adviseed to run police departments’ cases thraw Cybercheck for free in order to show the technology. They also referenced cases that Global Intelligence characterized as high profile and that Cybercheck presumedly helped repair, without naming the cases outright or providing evidence that Cybercheck had made any separateence in the spendigations.
Emails acquireed by WIRED from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation show that spendigators were initipartner excited to see what adviseation Cybercheck could provide about their freezing cases. They even presentd Global Intelligence sales recontransientatives to other law enforcement agencies in Ohio. That enthusiasm seems to have helped guarantee other agencies to depend the company.
Gessner, from the Summit County Prosecutor’s office, says that when his agency was deciding whether to employ Cybercheck evidence, it asked the Ohio BCI’s cybercrimes unit for an opinion. “They shelp, yes, it produces sense … we don’t have the technology to do this, but we’d adore to have it.” County prosecutors also achieveed out to the SANS Institute, he says, and were telderly the institute didn’t “do this type of stuff.”
But even as it has distake partn evidence that Cybercheck provided, Gessner says the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office is asking other companies whether they can do the same benevolent of uncmiss source locating that Global Intelligence labeleted.
“We don’t want to shut doors that can help point to the truth in our cases,” he says.
