Felons, Fraudsters Flog Offensive Cybersecurity Startup
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- IRIS C2 operates as a McLean, Va. offensive cybersecurity company via Calvexa Group LLC, publicly offering $10,000 to $7 million for zero-day exploits and individual primitives across major platforms.
- Jacob Wohl (28) and Jack Burkman (60) run the venture; Wohl told KrebsOnSecurity he has no formal computer science training and that IRIS C2 shifted from penetration testing to selling phone-hacking services to the government.
- Both Wohl and Burkman pleaded guilty to a felony telecommunications fraud charge in Ohio in 2022 and were sentenced to probation in late 2025 for a robocall scheme prosecutors say targeted Black voters in Detroit.
- The pair previously created fake intelligence companies that spread fabricated claims against Robert Mueller, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris; they also paid a $1 million civil rights settlement in New York in 2023 and faced a $5.1 million FCC fine — then the largest ever sought under the TCPA.
- Wohl was charged with 14 counts of securities fraud by the Arizona Corporation Commission in 2017 ($35,000 restitution) and pleaded guilty in California in 2019 to four felony counts of selling unregistered securities.
- IRIS C2 claims approximately 40 employees, but Wohl said none can list their employment on LinkedIn for "operational security reasons" — echoing the pair's prior venture LobbyMatic, an AI lobbying platform they ran under the pseudonyms "Jay Klein" and "Bill Sanders," prompting at least two employees to resign after learning their true identities.
Why it matters: Two individuals with no verifiable technical credentials and a trail of felony fraud convictions are openly soliciting vulnerability research while hiding employee identities on LinkedIn — a posture that risks luring researchers into an operation whose operators have repeatedly hidden their real names behind pseudonyms and fabricated products.
