Federal investigators still can’t break into Eric Adams’ locked personal cellphone — nearly a year after agents seized it as they mounted a historic corruption case against the mayor, prosecutors revealed Wednesday.
Prosecutor Hagan Scotten, during a Manhattan federal court hearing, called the government’s trouble breaking into Adams’ phone a “significant wild card” in the case.
The bombshell revelation adds another wrinkle to one of the oddest accusations detailed in the historic 57-page indictment against Adams: that the mayor perhaps-too-conveniently had “forgotten” the device’s password.
The mayor’s supposed memory lapse came just a day after federal agents took two more of his phones when they dramatically stopped him on the street in November 2023, court papers state.
Adams didn’t have his personal cellphone with him, so he handed it over to the feds the next day –claiming he’d changed the password after learning about the investigation to prevent his staff from accidentally or intentionally deleting the device’s content.
“According to Adams, he wished to preserve the contents of his phone due to the investigation,” the indictment states.
“But, Adams further claimed, he had forgotten the password he had just set, and thus was unable to provide the FBI with a password that would unlock the phone,” the court papers state.
As the case against the mayor continues to develop, Scotten also dropped what he described as a “significant wild card” — telling the judge the feds still have yet to break into Adams’ personal cellphone – nearly a year after it was seized.
The feds cast Adams’ last-minute password changeover and apparent amnesia as a shady attempt to conceal his alleged crimes.
After the indictment was unveiled, experts told The Post that breaking into a password-locked, likely encrypted phone could be “monumentally difficult” for the feds.
Scotten’s statement confirmed the feds’ difficulties cracking the phone have persisted nearly 11 months later.
But the prosecutor also said he believes that the feds will be able to get into the device eventually.
“Decryption always catches up with encryption,” Scotten told the judge. “But we don’t know what we have until we can access it.”