Who is Yaacov Apelbaum, the spyware exec who exposed voting machine breach plots?

BALTIMORE — Yaacov Apelbaum is in the spyware business. He's even been accused of being a spy.

As the owner of a New York-based cybersecurity firm called XRVision, Apelbaum has spent much of the past decade developing sophisticated software to monitor and track people all over the world.

He has ties to foreign intelligence agencies and has contracted with the U.S. government to use facial recognition software on the border.

Apelbaum is hardly a household name, but he is known in some far-right circles. He thrust himself into the national spotlight in July with a lawsuit laying out how allies of former President Donald Trump bankrolled post-election voting machine breaches in multiple states.

Now, Apelbaum is raising alarms over an alleged plot to take over the powerful and lucrative MAGA movement from within.

It is a counterintelligence operation he calls an "active measure" to undermine confidence in America's election system. Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne are its chief orchestrators, Apelbaum said.

By sowing fear and distrust, Flynn and Byrne can position themselves to seize control of the populist faction Trump created, Apelbaum said.

"It is sophisticated ... if you really dissect it from an intelligence point of view, that is one of the goals," he said. "Active measures are always designed to hurt."

Spyware exec's claims: Trump allies orchestrate disinformation plot to take control of MAGA, he says

Is Yaacov Apelbaum a spy?

There's no evidence to suggest Apelbaum, 60, is a spy. He has acknowledged contracting with government intelligence and defense agencies, but he's tight-lipped about much of his background.

"I used to operate in that world," he said, declining to elaborate.

The USA TODAY Network pieced together parts of Apelbaum's background from interviews, court records, business filings, published accounts, company news releases and his own blog posts.

Apelbaum said he was from Israel and immigrated to the United States in his late 20s. His Social Security number was issued in Massachusetts in 1988, records show.

Some of Apelbaum's close business associates have ties to foreign intelligence and military agencies, including the Israeli Defense Forces.

XRVision was founded in Singapore in 2015. It bills itself as a specialist in artificial intelligence technology and markets facial recognition software to governments worldwide.

In 2019, the company entered a seven-year contract with the Department of Homeland Security to provide the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency "software for wearable devices ... for matching human face images."

Apelbaum's early work appears related to electronic payments and network security. In 2004, he published a technical manual on password protection called "User Authentication Principle."

He was granted at least seven patents between 2012 and 2018, on everything from payment processing to flash-flood detection and surveillance systems.

In 2013, Apelbaum helped invent an enhanced surveillance system using "data-fusion," which incorporates information collected from a range of sources and processes it through machine-learning software.

The image sources listed on the patent: "CCTV (closed circuit) camera, IR (infrared) camera, PTZ (pan, tilt and zoom) camera, face recognition camera, acoustic sensor, license plate reader, retinal scanner, fingerprint reader and biometric sensor."

He and his associates invented a facial recognition system using concealed mobile cameras in 2015. They also created a "knowledge management system" for municipalities to collect and store data on utilities, transportation, safety and security, health and education.

One of Appelbaum's co-inventors was Matavia "Mati" Zvi Kochavi, a former Israeli intelligence agent. Apelbaum worked directly with Kochavi at Asia Global Technology, which developed the controversial "Falcon Eye" mass surveillance system used by the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria.

The system, which went operational in Abu Dhabi in 2016, links thousands of cameras and can monitor people's movements and activities in real time.

Apelbaum was listed as Asia Global's former chief technology officer in a 2016 bulletin announcing Singapore's investment in XRVision.

The bulletin lists Apelbaum and Guy Ron as company co-founders, describing them as "security veterans." Ron is an Israeli Air Force academy graduate. He was a software development lead for Israeli Defense Forces and conducted research for the Israeli Ministry of Defense and at international companies such as Intel Corp.

A political agent provocateur

Apelbaum has published several blog reports skeptical of political narratives advanced by both of the major U.S. political parties, casting himself as a foil for some hotly contested partisan issues.

In 2018, he produced a critique of the Steele dossier, which purported to demonstrate collusion between Trump and the Russian government. It was ultimately debunked as an opposition research report bankrolled by Democrats.

Apelbaum said he never has worked for Trump or any member of the former first family, nor has XRVision. He also denied signing any agreements with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell or other members of Trump's legal team.

But Apelbaum has closely aligned himself with the Gateway Pundit, a conservative publication that has supported Trump and is frequently accused of publishing false narratives.

The Pundit calls Apelbaum a "contributor" and has cited his work in articles about QAnon, Hunter Biden's laptop and the Biden family's financial ties to China, among others.

In a 2019 article about a Ukranian arms dealer fundraising for Democrats, it referenced the cutting-edge facial recognition technology XRVision employed.

Factcheck.org said the story, based largely on a blog post by Apelbaum, was "exaggerated and misleading."

Apelbaum joined the Pundit in a failed 2020 lawsuit that accused another publication of libel after it attempted to debunk a story about information on Hunter Biden's laptop and questioned Apelbaum's credentials.

The Washington Post, in a story about the laptop published in February, identified Apelbaum as a former aide to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. It's a claim that both Apelbaum and Johnson's office deny.

"We have never heard of or worked with this person," Kiersten Pels, communications director for Johnson, said.

Apelbaum also has pushed back at narratives on the right, sometimes forcefully. A former Trump White House staffer in 2021 accused Apelbaum of being an operative for the Cenral Intelligence Agency or the Israeli Mossad.

The former staffer, conservative social media pundit Garrett Ziegler, had tried to enlist Apelbaum in an "active measure" related to Hunter Biden's laptop, Apelbaum said. He told the USA TODAY Network he turned Ziegler down.

Ziegler denied making the offer. In an email Thursday, he said Apelbaum made that up.

After the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, the Washington Times wrongly reported that XRVision had used its facial recognition software to identify some of the protesters as undercover members of antifa. Antifa is a political movement of far-left militants who oppose neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations and other events.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., an ardent Trump supporter, cited the story in a speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Washington Times removed the article after an attorney for Apelbaum's company refuted the claim, demanding an apology and retraction. XRVision's software actually had identified two members of neo-Nazi organizations and a QAnon supporter in the crowd.

In 2022, Apelbaum published a lengthy takedown of voter fraud claims in the film "2,000 Mules." He called the film "garbage" and said its claims relied on the "murky" methodology of the nonprofit group True the Vote.

He said True the Vote often made bombastic claims about finding voter fraud that it could not back up with credible evidence.

"'2,000 Mules' is the culmination of multiple lines of grifting and political warfare effort," Apelbaum wrote. "The goal of '2,000 Mules' is to create stupefying shiny object claims in order to divert attention and funding away from real and urgently needed election integrity investigations and legislation."

Robert Anglen is an investigative reporter for The Republic. Reach him at robert.anglen@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8694. Follow him on X @robertanglen.

Bruce Siwy is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network's Pennsylvania state Capitol bureau. He can be reached at bsiwy@gannett.com or on X @BruceSiwy.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Yaacov Apelbaum: About the man who exposed voting machine breach plots