Five OH security guards charged in pirated police radio investigation
Stark County OH October 11 2019
Five suspects have been arrested and a sixth remains at large following a year-long investigation into the theft, pirating and resulting sales of active police radios being used by first-responders.
“There is a far-reaching impact of what could have happened here. They were hacking into the public safety radio system by creating the illegal templates for the radios and selling them,” said Stark County Sheriff George T. Maier.
Most of those charged are security guards working for different security companies.
Those arrested are Stephen K. Brown, 34, of 2707 Eaver St. NW in Lake Township; Donald L. Smith, 42, of 3211 11th St. SW in Canton; Scott R. Jones, 49, of 1437 St. Elmo Ave. NE in Canton; Jason M. Eggleston, 36, of 3915 Leander St. NE in Canton Township; and Robert J. Skropits, 77, of 2303 Demington Ave. NW in Plain Township.
Skropits worked as a road deputy under Sheriff Bruce Umpleby, retiring in 1995.
A secret indictment has been issued for the sixth man wanted in connection with the crimes. His name was not released.
Agents with the U.S. Marshals Violent Fugitive Task Force arrested the following men: Brown at 11 a.m. Tuesday at a business in the 1000 block of East Waterloo Road; Smith, Jones and Eggleston at each of their homes Tuesday morning.
Maier said Skroppits, who owned Gold Star Security, 4450 Belden Village St. NW in Jackson Township, surrendered to sheriff’s deputies about 1 p.m. Wednesday.
The others worked as security officers for other area companies, except for Eggleston, who is listed in jail records as unemployed.
All of the men are held without bond in the county jail Wednesday on charges of impersonating a police officer, engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, aggravated theft, unauthorized use of a computer, cable or telecommunications property and criminal simulation.
Deputies raided seven homes last year.
The sheriff told The Canton Repository last year agents with the U.S. Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives seized guns, computers, vehicles, cloned police radios and other items from the homes as part of the investigation into the illegal radios.
“Someone with templates of stolen or borrowed police or fire radios used those templates to hack into the public safety radio system by cloning the information and duplicating it onto police radios sold on the black market,” Maier said.
Motorola and the Ohio MARCS system assisted investigators in identifying anomalies in the system to find the pirated radios.
“The consequences of this … they could’ve been listening to calls on SWAT raids. … If these things get into the wrong hands, who’s monitoring what we’re doing? We were responding to emergencies where we could be compromised,” Maier said.
Investigators believe the men were using and selling the cloned radios for more than year before they were discovered a year ago.
Since then, investigators have recovered boxes containing hundreds of cloned radios.
“A lot of people had access to those radios. But the people that were reprogramming them were this small group. They reprogrammed it and sold them. We believe they probably sold them to criminals,” Maier said, adding that Motorola and MARCS radio system technicians were able to identify the radios being used illegally and have shut all of them down.
cantonrep.com