Crime

If You Had 'DOJ Charges Senior Pentagon Official With Running Dogfighting Ring And Executing Pups With Jumper Cables' On Your Bingo Card, Then Congratulations!

Wait... what?

By  
on

laptop shocked surpriseThe DOJ puts out a lot of press releases from its various outposts around the country, but this one from the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland took readers on quite the journey.

Frederick Douglass Moorefield Jr., the Deputy Chief Information Officer for Command, Control, and Communications, for Office of the Secretary of Defense, has been charged with running a dogfighting ring. According to the affidavit accompanying the Complaint, he was encouraging associates to move all communications to Telegram because “Use Telegram not WhatsApp because telegram is encrypted.”

So he apparently brings that C3 expertise to every endeavor!

Surely Telegram kept everything locked down tight…

Using MOOREFIELD’s contact information, I discovered a Telegram account that belonged to MOOREFIELD, although he did not maintain any profile pictures. I further learned that, at the time of this writing, MOOREFIELD last accessed his Telegram account on or around September 6, 2023. After reviewing Telegram message records, I understand that MOOREFIELD accessed the Telegram app to communicate with his dogfighting associates because I located multiple Telegram accounts for his dogfighting associates with the contact numbers MOOREFIELD maintained for each of them. All of the accounts I observed had activity during the same timeframe that MOOREFIELD was last using Telegram.

Oops. Encryption doesn’t really work when there are enough breadcrumbs that the FBI starts seizing phones.

As horrifying as it may be to force dogs to fight — often to the death — the charging documents also claim that a search of his house discovered:

Sponsored

a device consisting of jumper cables attached to an electrical plug (see Attachment A-6), which, based on my training and experience, is used to electrocute a dog after losing a fight.

The Washington Post spoke with a Pentagon spokesperson who said Moorfield “is no longer in the workplace, but we cannot comment further on an individual personnel matter.”

Per the DOJ press release, Moorefield faces “a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for possessing, training, or transporting animals for participation in an animal fighting venture.”

Two Anne Arundel County Men, Including Department of Defense Deputy Chief, Charged with Facilitating Dog Fighting Ring [DOJ]

Sponsored

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Topics

,