A American tech executive and a Moscow-based software developer face up to 20 years in federal prison after prosecutors alleged they ran a years-long scheme to disguise Russian ownership of a digital forensics company, one that landed a five-year contract with a Secret Service-operated institute.
Federal prosecutors charged Oxygen Forensics CEO Lee Reiber, 52, and Russian national Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov, 52, with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, alleging the pair concealed that Davydov and four other Russian nationals owned the Alexandria, Virginia-based company through a Cyprus holding company. Reiber was arrested in Idaho and appeared in federal court there this week. Davydov was arrested Sunday at London's Heathrow Airport, and U.S. authorities are now seeking his extradition from Britain, the New York Post reported.
The case will be prosecuted in Los Angeles federal court, where Reiber is expected to be arraigned in the coming weeks. If convicted, each defendant faces up to 20 years behind bars.
Davydov founded Oxygen Forensics' Virginia entity in 2013. Reiber joined the company in 2015. But prosecutors say the real shift came in 2022, after the United States imposed sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. Around that time, Reiber was allegedly installed as CEO, a move prosecutors describe as placing an American face on a Russian-controlled operation.
Behind the scenes, prosecutors allege, the Russians never gave up the wheel. Davydov and the other 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," according to the criminal complaint.
Oxygen Forensics makes software designed to recover, preserve, and analyze electronic data from digital devices. Before the alleged concealment scheme, the company had sold its products to the Russian Federal Security Service, the Russian Investigative Committee, and Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs. Those are not the kinds of clients that inspire confidence when a company comes knocking on the door of the U.S. Secret Service.
Prosecutors outlined at least four occasions when Reiber allegedly lied to the federal government in official certifications. In December 2022, he told U.S. officials the company had no "immediate or highest-level owner." He repeated the same claim in October 2023. In July 2024, he certified to the Department of War that no foreign person had the power to control the appointment of the company's directors or managers, or to direct its other decisions or activities.
Then, in September 2024, the Secret Service-operated National Computer Forensics Institute awarded Oxygen Forensics a five-year contract for its software, software that prosecutors say was developed by Russians. The NCFI award file itself included Reiber's certification that the company had no immediate or highest-level owner.
As recently as March 2026, Reiber allegedly certified to the Department of Homeland Security that no Russian was involved in developing the software and that no one in Russia had access to the environment in which it was built.
The company's own website reinforced the deception, stating that Oxygen had "no development presence in any restricted jurisdiction."
About a month after Reiber's second false certification in October 2023, a reporter began asking questions about Oxygen's Russian connections. Reiber's response, captured in emails uncovered by investigators, was not to come clean, it was to panic.
He allegedly emailed Davydov and two of the other Russian owners, warning that the resulting reporting "could destroy this entire opportunity" to do business with the U.S. government. In another message, he wrote that the "current existence of this company hangs in the balance."
Rather than disclose the truth, Reiber allegedly doubled down. The false certifications to the Department of War and DHS came after those emails, in July 2024 and March 2026, respectively. And the five-year NCFI contract was awarded in September 2024, nearly a year after Reiber acknowledged internally that a single news story could unravel everything.
Prosecutors took care to note that the complaint "does not allege that the software contained malicious code or that it was used to gain unauthorized access to any customer's computer systems or data." That distinction matters legally. But it does not erase the national security implications of a Russian-owned firm embedding its forensic tools inside a Secret Service training institute.
Digital forensics software, by its nature, touches the most sensitive data law enforcement handles, the contents of seized phones, computers, and storage devices. The question of who built that software, who maintains it, and who ultimately controls the company behind it is not academic. It is exactly the kind of supply-chain vulnerability that U.S. sanctions on Russia were designed to prevent.
The scheme described in the complaint is not a case of sloppy paperwork. Prosecutors allege a deliberate, multi-year effort to deceive multiple federal agencies, complete with a front man, a shell ownership structure routed through Cyprus, and repeated written lies submitted under penalty of law. Reiber did not stumble into these certifications. He allegedly signed them knowing they were false, while the actual owners in Moscow called the shots.
Davydov, for his part, now sits in British custody while American authorities work to bring him to Los Angeles. Four other alleged Russian co-owners remain unnamed in public filings. Whether they face charges of their own is among the many open questions surrounding a case that cuts to the heart of how the federal government vets its own contractors.
When the people responsible for protecting the president cannot verify who actually owns the software on their own systems, the contracting process is not just broken, it is a liability that adversaries are happy to exploit.
