Assassination By DNA: Fact or Fiction?

Walt Manning, CFE, shares a theoretical exploration of future crime possibilities through the rising popularity of biohacking.

By Walt Manning, CFE

President, Investigations MD

May 2015

Lisa looks into a microscope on a worktable she had set up in the spare bedroom. The room is completely dark because every window and door is covered with blackout shades. Lisa has to make sure that no light can penetrate the room, but she also doesn’t want anyone to see her temporary biogenetics lab. The lab was easy to set up – she bought almost all of the necessary equipment on eBay.

She is looking at a small amount of gel contained in a petri dish. Lisa smiles when she sees a slight glow coming from the gel. This tells her that she has successfully copied the original DNA of her target. Lisa makes several additional copies of the DNA in case she needs them later.

She can now begin to work on a mutated version of the Ebola virus designed so that it will only be triggered when coming into contact with a unique sequence in her target’s DNA. When completed, the virus can be delivered either in powder, liquid or aerosol form. The carrier will be immune, since the virus only works against the specific DNA of her target.

Two weeks later, the CEO of one of the biggest Internet companies is finishing one of his famous product introductions that will once again completely change the industry. He is one of the most recognized business leaders in the world, and the pre-event publicity always guarantees amazing media coverage. After the presentation, a crowd of people waits for just a second of his attention. Lisa’s carrier is patiently waiting in the group. She knows that the CEO loves to meet and greet his fans. After warmly thanking everyone and shaking their hands, he returns to the office.

Three weeks later, he wakes up in the night with sudden flu symptoms – nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The next morning, he has his driver take him to the emergency room, where he is admitted to the hospital because of dehydration. The diagnosis is a severe case of the flu. The next day, severe headaches start, and then he also has chest pain and some bleeding from the nose and ears. He is moved to the Intensive Care Unit, and additional specialists are brought in. No treatment makes a difference, and his condition continues to get worse.

Less than one month after the product event, this icon of the business world dies. Celebrities, politicians and other business luminaries from around the world attend the funeral. The grieving family allows no autopsy.

The company’s stock plummets at the news. Lisa’s client – who arranged for the assassination – made more than $2 million by shorting the stock, spreading his transactions through multiple brokers and companies.

The day following the funeral, Lisa checks one of her anonymous dark net email addresses, and sees that she received a transfer of 1,050 bitcoins, which she proceeds to quickly launder through several of the services on the dark net that she trusts. With the value of a bitcoin at $238, this gives Lisa the equivalent of $250,000 in bitcoins. Some of the bitcoins are sent to pay her suppliers, but she converts most of the bitcoins into currencies in different countries where Lisa previously opened accounts.

The crime was never detected.

Is this story possible today? Probably not, but the technology to engineer DNA and to customize treatments for diseases and even vaccines is advancing every day. The equipment and materials to conduct genetic research are also getting cheaper, and there is a growing “Do-It-Yourself” biohacking movement.

The project to sequence the human genome was officially completed in April 2003 at great costs. Since that time, the costs associated with DNA sequencing in the production of DNA base pairs has drastically decreased. In 2001, the cost of reading 1 million base pairs was around $100,000. The same cost is about 10 cents today, according to Genome.gov.

Currently there are new organizations making biogenetics labs accessible to almost anyone, creating a completely new generation of biogenetics hobbyists. These new biohackers are using their imaginations and their curiosity about this technology to conduct interesting experiments.

One of these new labs is Genspace, a nonprofit organization located in Brooklyn, New York. Membership dues are only $100 per month, providing members access to accomplished experts and sophisticated equipment that they might not be able to afford on their own. Some of the expensive equipment available from Genspace includes polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines, autoclaves, centrifuges and incubators.

As an example of just how easy it is to create your own biogenetics lab, a group of journalists did their own research and bought equipment, chemicals and the biological materials they needed to set up a temporary lab in their office. It cost them only 3,500 Euros, just over $3,900 at current exchange rates.

Amazingly, they found a lot of the equipment on eBay. With very little training or professional expertise, the group conducted several successful genetic experiments, including cloning the gene for the toxin ricin.

The group was very careful to carry out only legal experiments, and did not actually create ricin from the genetic material, yet they suggested it might be possible for someone to do so.

What impact could this have on the personal security of not just business leaders, as in our fictional example, but for world political leaders as well? In the book “In the President’s Secret Service,” published in 2009, the author claims that Navy stewards collect objects touched by the president – such as bed sheets and drinking glasses – which are later sanitized or destroyed – to try to prevent anyone from getting samples of his DNA.

One of the documents released in 2010 by WikiLeaks included a cable from then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton instructing U.S. embassies to collect DNA samples from other world leaders.

Is this really something that investigators need to be thinking about? The FBI thinks so. The Bureau has a Biological Countermeasures Unit that is monitoring the biohacking community worldwide to prevent the development of biological weapons of mass destruction.

Technology is growing at an exponential rate, and we need to begin thinking about these future crimes now. Fraud examiners should be aware of the potential for abuse that new technologies can create, and how we can address the significant issues related to safety, law and investigative techniques that may be required.

Today, biohacking assassination may not be possible, but tomorrow may be a different story.