US-Based Digital Forensics Firm Hid its Russian Ownership from U.S. Government Customers

Kim Zetter

Sep 23, 2026 • 4 min read

The U.S. Department of War, Secret Service and other federal departments and agencies unwittingly purchased digital forensics software from a Virginia-based firm that was owned by Russian nationals and developed in Russia, according to a complaint filed by the Justice Department, following the arrest of two of the company's officers.

Oxygen Forensics is one of the top firms in the digital forensics industry and has contracts with several U.S. federal agencies and departments, including the IRS, U.S. Army, DHS, and the Justice Department, according to its web site, which became inaccessible earlier this week.

But prosecutors now say the company’s owners deceived federal customers not only about foreign ownership but also about where their forensic software was developed.

The U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles announced today that it had arrested two of its officers and charged them with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Lee Reiber, the 55-year-old American CEO of the company, was arrested on Sunday in Idaho. Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov, a 52-year-old Russian national from Moscow who is co-founder and chief technology officer of the company, was arrested in London at Heathrow Airport before boarding a flight to Turkey.

Prosecutors are not alleging that the company’s software was embedded with malicious code or that anyone was able to gain unauthorized access to the computer systems or data belonging to customers. The charges focus on their alleged deception to federal agencies about ownership of the company and where the software was developed.

Oxygen Forensics sells software used to by law enforcement and other government agencies to extract data from mobile phones, computers and other digital devices, including drone data from cloud platforms. Its customers are not only in the U.S. but also in Russia. The Russian Federal Security Service (also known as the FSB), are a customer, as are the Russian Investigative Committee, and the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, according to the federal complaint.

Only a handful of companies occupy the digital forensic space, including Israel-based Cellebrite; U.S. firms Susteen, Paraben, and BlackBag Technologies; the Canadian firm Magnet Forensics; and Oxygen Forensics, whose Russian ownership was long been known in the industry. (I mentioned its Russian ownership in a piece I wrote in 2016.)

Davydov co-founded the company under the name Oxygen Software (later Oxygen Russia and then MKO-Systems) in 2000 in Russia, and as CTO oversaw development of the company’s software, according to the federal complaint. He helped establish the company’s U.S. presence in 2013 as Oxygen Forensics, where he was identified as a vice president in corporate documents. Reiber, a U.S. citizen, joined the firm two years later as chief operating officer before becoming CEO.

The company’s U.S. office is based in Alexandria, Virginia, and among the U.S. government departments and agencies impacted by the company’s alleged deception are the U.S. Department of War, the Secret Service and its National Computer Forensics Institute (NCFI) as well as Homeland Security Investigations and DHS’s Office of Inspector General, per the complaint.

According to prosecutors, the company’s owners began to deceive customers about their ownership in 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine and the U.S. and its allies imposed more stringent sanctions against Russia-owned firms. The defendants then conspired to conceal the company’s Russian ownership and connections by changing the name of Oxygen Russia to MKO-Systems – to distance it from Oxygen Forensics in the U.S .– installing Reiber as CEO just weeks after the invasion, and removing the names of Davydov and other Russian owners from the company’s public filings. Davydov also moved the company’s software build infrastructure to U.S.-based cloud computers so that Reiber could tell U.S. customers the code was built in the U.S. — even though it continued to be developed in Russia.

Reiber then told U.S. agencies seeking to purchase the company’s tools that its software was developed in the U.S. and that the company was not foreign owned or controlled. But prosecutors say the software continued to be developed in Russia, with Davydov and four other Russian nationals owning and controlling the firm.

Although Oxygen Forensics’ Russian origins were not a secret in the industry, prosecutors allege that in written communication in 2023, Reiber allegedly warned Davydov and two other partners in the company that news reports about its Russian connections could kill its U.S. business, including a pending contract with the Secret Service’s National Computer Forensics Institute.

Reiber then allegedly falsely certified to the U.S. government in 2024 that the company had no “immediate or highest-level owner” and that no foreign person had control over company decisions and activities. Months later, the NCFI awarded the company a five-year contract to use its software, apparently without knowledge of the company’s true ownership.

Earlier this year when news reports called Oxygen a Russia-owned company, Reiber again allegedly told DHS and the NCFI that no Russians developed the software or had access to the company's software evelopment infrastructure. Reiber then published a statement on the company’s web site asserting that none of its software was developed in sanctioned or otherwise restricted jurisdictions.