A drone swarm operated by a criminal gang foiled an FBI hostage raid last winter, illustrating just one of the ways drones are being used for increasingly elaborate crimes, law enforcement officials say.
The high-tech intrusion occurred on the outskirts of a big U.S. city where an FBI hostage rescue team had set up an observation post — and then suddenly got buzzed by small drones, the head of the agency's operational technology law unit revealed at a tech conference in Denver, Defense One reported.
"We were then blind," Joe Mazel told the conference, referring to the term that means the group lost awareness of where their target was. "It definitely presented some challenges."
Mazel would not divulge details of the incident, but told the conference it showed how criminal groups are using small drones for more complicated crimes.
Some criminal organizations have begun to use drones as part of witness intimidation schemes — continuously surveilling police departments and precincts in order to see "who is going in and out of the facility and who might be co-operating with police," he told the conference, Defense One reported.
Drones are also playing a greater role in robberies and house break-ins, Defense One reported — targets that criminals can spot security gaps and determine patterns of security.
Andrew Scharnweber, associate chief of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told the conference criminal networks are also using drones to watch Border Patrol officers, identify their gaps in coverage, and exploit them.
"In the Border Patrol, we have struggled with scouts, human scouts that come across the border," he said, Defense One reported. "They're stationed on various mountaintops near the border and they would scout . . . to spot law enforcement and radio down to their counterparts to go around us. That activity has effectively been replaced by drones."
He added cartels are able to move small amounts of high-value narcotics across the border via drones with "little or no fear of arrest."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.