The Wire - May 16, 2025

//The Wire//2300Z May 16, 2025//
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//BLUF: CRYPTOCURRENCY EXCHANGE COINBASE HACKED, CUSTOMER DATA BREACHED. MASS GRAVE SITE FOUND IN MEXICO. CARTEL OBSERVATION POSTS DESTROYED ON USA/MEX BORDER.//

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-International Events-

Mexico: Earlier this week a mass grave and Cartel corpse processing center was discovered at an abandoned ranch roughly 40 miles west of Guadalajara. The discovery was made by local private citizens attempting to find the bodies of known Cartel victims, and this site had been known to serve in a variety of roles over the years by members of the CJNG Cartel.

AC: This site is not a new revelation; a hostage recovery operation was conducted at this exact compound last year. This ranch was formerly used as a hitman training site, but over the years was relegated to serving as an extermination camp. As this was a well known site, there was some speculation that the compound had probably been used as burial site as well. Because local authorities were not interested in investigating this, a small group of local citizens gained access to the compound to search for human remains, of which many were found. Local authorities (which have now been forced to acknowledge the site), have urged local citizens to help identify the clothing found in six mass graves found at the site. Due to the high-profile nature of this discovery, civil unrest has been reported throughout several cities in Mexico, as citizens express dissatisfaction with the Cartels engaging in this kind of brutality on an industrial scale.

-HomeFront-

Arizona: Two Cartel-affiliated Observation Posts were destroyed yesterday morning. The first OP was located west of Ajo, and the second was located near Nogales.

Washington D.C. - Scandal has emerged surrounding a post made by former FBI Director James Comey, in which he posted a photo on Instagram that contained a threatening reference commonly used as a coded incitement of violence against President Trump. Comey posted a photo containing the numbers "8647", which has become a term very commonly used by malign actors in the United States to express their desire to "86" (or dispose of) the 47th President, Donald Trump. James Comey has since removed the post and stated that he did not know what it meant.

USA: Another major scandal has emerged regarding a major cryptocurrency exchange failing to protect customer data. A few days ago Coinbase (arguably the biggest crypto exchange in the world) announced that they had been hacked. The hackers claimed to have accessed most private customer data on the site, and have demanded $20 million as a ransom for not posting this information on the internet.

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Analyst Comments: This morning, statements from Coinbase and the CEO have shed light on what really happened...and it doesn't look good. In short, Coinbase outsourced their customer support services to the Third World. As it turns out, when you hire employees from an impoverished nation and pay them peanuts while giving them unchecked access to private customer information...they might be inclined to accept a bribe to leak that data. Right now, this appears to be what happened. American politicians are also not entirely off the hook for this scandal either. The reason that there is so much data to steal in the first place is due to KYC or "Know Your Customer" laws that make privacy illegal. Many people who are not involved in the world of cryptocurrency do not know that it's not an anonymous experience by any means...buying and selling crypto is the hard part since 100% of crypto exchanges based in the United States and Europe have to abide by KYC laws that force customers to hand over their drivers license, bank account numbers, social security number, home address, IRS tax information, a series of selfie photos or a 3d scan of a person's head...pretty much all of t