Edge Ops, the company behind a new immigrant-tracking system contracted by ICE, appears to have used stock photos, phantom past clients, and unverifiable executives on its website to market itself.

After the Lever reported last month that President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcers awarded a defense vendor a $12 million contract to map out immigrants’ routines and real-time locations, the company, Edge Ops LLC, overhauled its website.

Gone was all mention of “Project SAFE HAVEN,” the “question-based AI interface” that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) planned to use to track immigrants and categorize them as potential threats. But that wasn’t all: the company also scrubbed details about its leadership and past clients.

Now a Lever review raises questions about whether several of the people and undertakings that Edge Ops advertised in the lead-up to its multimillion-dollar government deal actually exist.

In one case, a company that Edge Ops has claimed to have partnered with on wildfire detection technology told the Lever that it was not working with the vendor at all.

In another, Edge Ops used a stock photo for the headshot of its ostensible lead computer scientist, for whom it included no easily identifiable biographical information.

While these references have vanished from Edge Ops’ website, questions about the company and its new millions still linger.

An opaque vendor evading standard competitive bidding to win a valuable ICE contract — this is largely par for the course amid Trump’s immigration spending blitz. The GOP megabill last year handed ICE an unprecedented $75 billion windfall. The agency has since gone on a spending spree to build out its surveillance and detention infrastructure, to the benefit of long-standing ICE vendors like private prison companies and tech giants.

But the case of Edge Ops — which has Pentagon ties but no apparent federal contracting experience as a company, and which was apparently founded to own a sailboat — brings up fresh concerns. The company’s questionable bona fides offer a glimpse into the Wild West of Department of Homeland Security contractors, where smaller and more obscure wildcat vendors are also vying to profit from Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“It’s unique. Let’s put it that way,” one industry attorney, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly, said of Edge Ops’ $12 million contract.

Edge Ops did not return repeated requests for comment from the Lever nor did the Department of Homeland Security.

The Case of the Missing Executive

The first public indication of Edge Ops’ work for ICE came on April 13, when ICE released a public notice of the $12 million sole-source contract. As the Lever revealed the following day, the purchase was for an analytics tool called Project SAFE HAVEN, which purportedly deploys AI to map out the routines, habits, and “patterns of life” of immigrants targeted by federal authorities.

ICE purchased Project SAFE HAVEN analytics for its Homeland Security Task Force, a project designed by White House homeland security advisor and anti-immigrant zealot Stephen Miller. Led by ICE’s special investigations division, Homeland Security Investigations, the task force is a collaboration between ICE, the FBI, the military, and other federal agencies. It is made up of more than two dozen regional task squads around the country.

The task force claims its focus is on hunting down transnational criminal organizations, not civil immigration enforcement. But concerns about mission creep have dogged the project since a White House executive order launched it in January 2025.

As ProPublica reported last year, some federal law enforcement worried privately “that the new task forces will focus on rounding up undocumented immigrants who have any sort of criminal record at the cost of more significant organized crime investigations.”

A description of Project SAFE HAVEN previously featured on Edge Ops’ website seemed to validate some of these concerns. The vendor boasted that the tool, purchased for use by the task force’s National Coordination Center in Virginia, “transforms the way we identify, locate, and map illegal migrants.” It did not reference gangs or cartels.

William Owen, communications director of the watchdog group Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, called the descriptions of Project SAFE HAVEN “highly concerning and alarming.”

“This sort of contract — multimillion dollars — really reflects the revolving door between agencies like ICE and spyware firms,” Owen told the Lever.

After the Lever reported on the contract, Edge Ops stripped all information about Project SAFE HAVEN from its website. At the same time, the photo and bio of Edge Ops’ top computer scientist disappeared from the site’s “leadership” section.

An archived copy of the company’s website preserves the previous details of its leadership team, an iteration that was live as recently as April 16. The old page featured an executive named Diya Das, who “leads the development team.” In her bio, Das was described as an “innovative and results-driven computer scientist” with a “proven track record of developing robust, efficient software.”

Look closely, though, and Das’s headshot bears a watermark that reads “Dreamstime,” a popular online stock photo website. Her bio, meanwhile, contains virtually no identifiable biographical information, such as her alma mater or previous employers.

In fact, the image that Edge Ops was using for the computer scientist is a stock photo that the Lever identified on a variety of other websites, including an online therapy platform and a life coaching service. The photographer selling the image is based in the United Arab Emirates, according to his Instagram profile.

The original image is still on offer for royalty-free use on the Dreamstime website under the caption, “Indian lady relax on sofa using tablet look at camera.”

The Lever provided its findings on Das, among other abnormalities in company marketing materials, to Edge Ops and asked for clarification. The company did not respond to these inquiries.

“I Have No Clue Who This Guy Is”

Stock photo or not, Das may still be a real Edge Ops employee. But it’s not the only questionable detail that has now been removed from the company’s online marketing materials.

Until April, the company suggested on its website that its services had been used on an “ultra-early” wildfire detection technology.

“Working [with] Dryad Networks, Edge is helping to deploy an AI driven wireless environmental sensor network,” the blurb read. It was one of several projects — including Project SAFE HAVEN — that Edge Ops said online was “enabled by” its technology.

Dryad Networks is a German company that sells wildfire sensors. The photos of the technology that Edge Ops displayed on its website are found in Dryad’s marketing materials.

But when the Lever contacted Dryad to inquire about its work with Edge Ops, the company said there was no partnership between the two firms.

“We are not working with Edge Ops LLC, or at least I am not aware that we do,” Carsten Brinkschulte, the company’s CEO and cofounder, wrote in an email to the Lever.

When the Lever asked if Dryad had worked with Edge Ops founder Robert Piccerillo in any other capacity, Brinkschulte said he had never heard of him.

“I have no clue who this guy is, and I don’t know why they use photos of our tech,” Brinkschulte wrote. “Why don’t you ask him?”

Piccerillo did not return multiple phone calls and text messages from the Lever about Edge Ops’ claims, including its work with Dryad.

Edge Ops no longer lists its work with Dryad on its website.

Additional attempts by the Lever to identify past clients of Edge Ops led to similar dead ends. In March and April, the company’s home page highlighted a quote from a satisfied customer: Sarah Mitchell, identified as the “chief operating officer” of “InnovativeTech Solutions.”

“Working with EdgeOps has been a game changer for our business,” Mitchell was quoted as saying. “We highly recommend EdgeOps to anyone looking to enhance their business operations and drive sustainable growth!”

No Sarah Mitchell at such a company appears online, however. And when Edge Ops updated its website, it altered the reference, reworking several lines of the quote and changing the name and attribution to simply “Sarah” at “Operational Mission Support.”

The final line now reads: “We would strongly recommend Edge Ops for mission-critical analytic support.”

Charles Tiefer, professor emeritus at the University of Baltimore School of Law who formerly served on a federal commission investigating government contracts during the Iraq war, called the Lever’s findings “worrisome,” especially given the nature of the technology detailed in the company’s new no-bid contract: AI-driven surveillance.

“I think they make submissions as part of their claim for being the one and only responsible source that are misleading to the government,” said Tiefer.

Smooth Sailing

There are two names associated with Edge Ops that are less slippery: Robert and Jennifer Piccerillo, its chief technology officer and CEO, respectively. The husband and wife have long-standing ties to the defense industry.

Robert “Pic” Piccerillo, an Air Force veteran and former Defense Department official, first incorporated Edge Ops LLC in 2014 with a Maryland address. At the time, it did not appear to be hawking surveillance technology. Incorporation documents obtained by the Lever show that its listed purpose was “to house and to hold a new sailboat.”

But when Trump won a second term in 2024, the company’s name resurfaced. On November 6, 2024, the day after the election, Edge Ops LLC was registered with the federal government contracting website Sam.gov. It claimed to be a “veteran-owned business,” a “women-owned business,” and a “small disadvantaged business,” all categories that improve vendors’ chances to score government contracts, thanks to various federal programs.

Jennifer, who also served in the Air Force, has a defense industry background as well; she worked for the weapons company Raytheon for several years as a program manager.

Jennifer did not answer multiple email, text, and phone inquiries from the Lever.

According to his bio, in 2009, Robert founded an information-sharing hub at the Pentagon called the Multi Agency Collaboration Environment (MACE). Although its website is now defunct, internal descriptions of the project bear similarities to the Trump administration’s Homeland Security Task Force and National Coordination Center.

MACE was focused on breaking down information silos in the many arms of the US security state. The operation would promote “greater information sharing among the Department of Defense and its partners,” including the Department of Homeland Security, per early descriptions.

MACE was subsequently run in part by private industry, led by the Sierra Nevada Corporation, a major defense and aerospace contractor. Sometime in 2025, the project’s website was taken down.

It’s not clear when Robert left the Defense Department or what work he has been engaged in since. In addition to his role at Edge Ops, he is listed as a director at Candy Data Analytics, an arm of UK logistics firm the Candy Group that was incorporated in November 2024.

Two weeks after the Lever reported on ICE’s $12 million no-bid contract with Edge Ops, the agency released heavily redacted documents related to why it had made the purchase without allowing other companies to compete for the opportunity, as is standard practice.

In the documents, ICE argued that Edge Ops was “the only one source that can provide analytic support services” to the Homeland Security Task Force, despite other vendors expressing interest.

According to Tiefer at the University of Baltimore, dubious sole-source contracts have abounded under Trump’s Department of Homeland Security. During former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem’s tenure, the agency used an emergency exemption to award $220 million in contracts to a firm to with which she had close personal and business ties.

“It seems like competitive procurement is the exception rather than the rule,” Tiefer told the Lever. “They have a lot of money, they’re in a rush, and they don’t want to follow the rules.”

Tiefer and other experts interviewed by the Lever said they were skeptical of that justification in Edge Ops’ case.

“The fact that other defense and security contractors don’t have the capability to provide this is a bit unusual,” the industry lawyer said.

Tiefer added that the $12 million price tag for Project SAFE HAVEN was “an incredible amount for a tiny firm.”

While it’s possible that Edge Ops is partnering with other vendors to provide its technology, the procurement documents say that “they do not subcontract out their work, only Edge Op, LLC [sic] employees can perform the required services.”