Lee Reiber

Introduction

Lee Reiber is the American chief executive of Oxygen Forensics Inc., a Virginia-based digital forensics company whose software is used by law-enforcement and government agencies to recover and analyze data from mobile phones and other devices. On September 23, 2026, the US Department of Justice announced that Reiber and Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov, a Moscow-based Russian national, had been arrested on a federal criminal complaint charging them with conspiracy to commit wire fraud for allegedly concealing the company’s Russian ownership and the fact that its software was developed in Russia while selling it to US government agencies.

The case has drawn attention not only because of the charges against Reiber personally, but because the affected customers allegedly included components of the Department of Homeland Security — among them the US Secret Service — and the Department of War. Federal prosecutors stress that the complaint does not allege the software contained malicious code or that it was ever used to gain unauthorized access to customer systems; the alleged crime is the deception about who owned and controlled the company and where its software came from.

Background Information

Reiber, 55, lives in Boise, Idaho. According to the affidavit filed with the criminal complaint, he joined Oxygen Forensics in August 2015 as its chief operating officer, after Davydov — who co-founded the company’s Russian predecessor, Oxygen Software LLC, in 2000 and served as its chief technology officer — helped establish the US affiliate in Virginia in 2013. Oxygen Forensics sells software used by law enforcement to extract data from phones, computers, cloud platforms and drones, and counted agencies including the IRS, the US Army, DHS and the Justice Department among its customers.

What prosecutors say was hidden from those customers was the company’s true ownership structure: Davydov and four other Russian nationals allegedly owned and controlled Oxygen Forensics through a holding company based in Cyprus. The same five individuals also owned the Russian software company, renamed MKO Systems LLC in September 2022, whose developers actually wrote the forensic software. That Russian company reportedly sold the same software under different product names to customers that included the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the Russian Investigative Committee and the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

According to reporting on the case, Oxygen Forensics’ Russian roots were long known in the digital-forensics industry — one security journalist noted he had written about the Russian ownership as far back as 2016 — but the DOJ alleges the company actively misrepresented it to the US government in formal certifications.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Allegations, not adjudicated findings. Reiber and Davydov have been charged by criminal complaint and are presumed innocent unless and until convicted. The account below is drawn from the government’s complaint and affidavit and from reporting on it; the complaint itself notes it does not allege malicious code or unauthorized access to customer systems.

The alleged scheme began after the United States imposed expanded sanctions on Russia in early 2022 in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Prosecutors allege that Reiber, Davydov and the Russian co-owners agreed to conceal the company’s true ownership, and that Reiber was installed as CEO, president and chairman of the board in March 2022 while the Russian owners were removed from the company’s public corporate filings.

The arrangement was allegedly more appearance than reality. The complaint states that the Russian owners “continued to make significant decisions and set Reiber’s compensation, overruled him on payments, and held signatory authority over the company’s bank accounts” — a special agent quoted in court reporting said that in March 2022 Reiber and Davydov even arranged for software builds to run on US-based cloud infrastructure so Reiber could describe the work as done in the US while the code “continued to be written, reviewed, and managed by the team in Russia.”

From March 2022 onward, the affidavit alleges, the conspiracy’s purpose was obtaining federal contracts. Reiber allegedly certified to the US government in December 2022 and again in October 2023 that Oxygen Forensics had no “immediate or highest-level owner,” and in July 2024, at his direction, the company certified to the Department of War that no foreign person could control its decisions — while, as prosecutors say he knew, its Russian owners controlled those decisions and one had recently joined its board under a Turkish identity. In November 2023, after a reporter asked Reiber about the company’s Russian connections, he allegedly wrote to Davydov and two other Russian owners that the resulting publicity “could destroy this entire opportunity” and that the “current existence of this company hangs in the balance.” The pending opportunity he referenced — a five-year contract awarded by the Secret Service’s National Computer Forensics Institute in September 2024, with Reiber’s October 2023 certification in the award file — was allegedly secured by the concealment.

The affected agencies identified in the affidavit were the Department of War and three DHS components: the Secret Service and its National Computer Forensics Institute, Homeland Security Investigations, and the DHS Office of Inspector General. A federal magistrate judge issued a seizure warrant on September 19, 2026 for corporate bank accounts, roughly 57 domains and other infrastructure allegedly used in the scheme, which was executed on September 20.

Public Reaction and Consequences

Reiber, 55, was arrested in Idaho on Sunday, September 20, 2026, appeared in US District Court in Idaho on Tuesday and was ordered released on bond pending an expected arraignment in Los Angeles federal court in the coming weeks. Davydov was arrested the same Sunday at London Heathrow Airport before boarding a flight to Istanbul; the United States expects to seek his extradition. Each faces a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

The news broke publicly on September 23, 2026, when the Justice Department announced the arrests, and was picked up the same day by outlets including the New York Post, which framed the case as a “Cold War-style plot to infiltrate the US Secret Service” using an American tech CEO. The company’s website reportedly became inaccessible earlier in the week following the seizures.

No public statement from Reiber or his legal team addressing the charges is recorded in the source material at the time of writing; the allegations remain contested charges rather than proven claims.

Current Status

As of late September 2026, Reiber is free on bond following his initial court appearance in Idaho, awaiting arraignment in the Central District of California. Davydov is in UK custody facing US extradition proceedings. The criminal case is at its earliest stage: both men are charged, not convicted, and the conspiracy count carries a statutory maximum of 20 years. The government has seized the corporate accounts and domains it tied to the alleged scheme, and any contract relationships with the affected agencies now sit alongside a public fraud prosecution naming the company’s CEO.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Reiber’s career as a digital-forensics executive — two decades in the industry, COO from 2015 and CEO, president and chairman from March 2022 — is now defined by a federal fraud prosecution in which prosecutors allege he served as the American face of a secretly Russian-owned company. An arrest, felony charge and pending arraignment typically end a corporate executive’s tenure, though no announcement about his role at Oxygen Forensics appears in the source material at the time of writing. The company he ran, one of a small handful of firms dominating the mobile-forensics market, faces the reputational fallout of its CEO’s arrest, the seizure of its accounts and domains, and public questions about its government business.

Sources

US Department of Justice (US Attorney’s Office, Central District of California), “Tech CEO, Russian National Arrested on Complaint Alleging They Hid Russian Ownership and Development of Software Sold to U.S. Government,” September 23, 2026. source
Courthouse News Service, “Feds accuse Secret Service software provider of hiding Russian ties,” September 23, 2026. source
Kim Zetter, Zetter’s Zero Day, “US-Based Digital Forensics Firm Hid its Russian Ownership from U.S. Government Customers,” September 23, 2026. source
Patch (Old Town Alexandria), “NoVa Software Company Hid Russian Ownership From U.S. Government Clients: DOJ,” September 23, 2026. source
New York Post, “Sinister network of Russian agents busted in Cold War-style plot to infiltrate the US Secret Service using American tech CEO,” September 23, 2026. source