In the early 1970s, the Hotel Diplomat in Midtown New York was the gathering spot for masked phone phreaks swapping tricks to outwit Ma Bell. They built Blue Boxes and Red Boxes, whistled tones into payphones, and hopscotched calls across continents. What looked like pranks at the time was in fact the birth of hacking culture, an underground current that made corporations nervous and caught the attention of the FBI.
Half a century later, the stakes are no longer about free long-distance calls. Attackers now hijack crypto wallets, clone celebrity accounts, and sell the personal records of executives and billionaires. A child’s school revealed in a public filing, a private jet’s tail number on a flight tracker, or a home address listed in a broker database can be all it takes for a scammer to escalate from curiosity to extortion.
That is where Kevin Leyes, founder and CEO of LeyesX, comes in.
The Cost of a Signal Drop
Consider crypto investor Michael Terpin. A simple loss of cell signal turned into a $24 million theft when hackers rerouted his phone number in a SIM swap. By the time he landed, his wallets were empty.
“This is the nightmare scenario,” Leyes explains. “Attackers do not need to be on the dark web. They can use breadcrumbs in public records and tie them together. Our job is to erase those breadcrumbs, or replace them with ones that go nowhere.”
From Disruption to Defense
Where the phone phreaks once broke systems open, Leyes builds systems to close them down. His firm’s flagship service is designed for billionaires, family offices, and celebrities.
LeyesX begins by mapping every trace of a client across the web and dark web. The report often shocks them: leaked email addresses, old photos, even forgotten corporate filings. From there, the company goes to work.
Detection: AI-driven sweeps across public records, forums, and data broker databases.
Erasure: Removal or suppression of personal data from search results and broker sites.
Deception: Decoy trails seeded to mislead attackers.
Telecom defense: Carrier-level protections against SIM swaps.
Reputation control: Through Leyes Media, clients gain verified accounts, SEO dominance, and top-tier media features.
The Trifecta
Leyes describes his empire as a trifecta:
LeyesX for cyber defense, Leyes Media for PR and reputation strategy, and Babys for creator and model protection, managing talent like Maeurn Smiles, who now commands over 5 million followers.
“The trifecta works because visibility and security are connected,” Leyes says. “You cannot build influence without protection, and you cannot protect someone without shaping their digital presence.”
From Midtown to Miami
Masked phone phreaks captured the energy of New York’s first hackers. Today, Leyes sees himself as part of that lineage, but on the side of defense. Instead of tricking Ma Bell, he shields billionaires, creators, and governments from digital threats.
Already, LeyesX serves undisclosed billionaires, corporations like Stripe and Crypto.com, and governments including El Salvador and Argentina. In recognition of his work, Ambassador Milena Mayorga of El Salvador publicly praised his role in digital consulting.
“The softest target today is not a building or a jet,” Leyes says. “It is the SIM card, the Google result, the public filing. That is what attackers exploit. Our mission is to make those vulnerabilities disappear.”