A no-bid ICE defense vendor used a watermarked stock photo as an executive

A $12M no-bid contract led to a strange trail of corporate misrepresentation, including a fake-looking development chief still bearing a stock-photo watermark

After an obscure defense vendor won a $12 million no-bid contract w/ ICE, I noticed something odd on its website: The firm was using a (still watermarked!) stock photo for the chief of its “development team.” Things only got more bizarre

Ranked #26 on backlist 2026-05-12 (12 May 2026 UTC) · by @ktyschwnk (katya schwenk) · view on X ↗

How it ranks: Backlist reads my Twitter/X timeline, scores every tweet for substance with an LLM rubric (not engagement), and publishes the daily top picks with a one-line takeaway. Curated by Surya Dantuluri.