Former Detroit Fire Dispatcher Charged After Allegedly Tipping Off Family About FBI Search Warrant

A former Detroit Fire Department dispatcher, Stephanie Steen, has been charged with making a false statement or representation to an agency of the United States. A criminal complaint unsealed on September 28 details allegations that Steen warned family members about an FBI raid and subsequently lied to federal agents about her involvement.

Steen, who retired from the Detroit Fire Department in March, had served as a dispatcher and lieutenant for more than 13 years. The Detroit Fire and Police Departments share a joint dispatch center at the Detroit Public Safety Headquarters.

Federal authorities allege that Steen warned her sibling and mother about a search warrant scheduled for their home on Turner Street in Detroit before law enforcement arrived on March 5, 2025. When later confronted by federal agents about the leak, she reportedly denied her involvement.

On March 5, 2025, the FBI, Department of Labor, and other agencies, including the Detroit Police Department, executed multiple federal search warrants across Metro Detroit. These warrants were part of ongoing unemployment insurance fraud and bribery investigations. One specific search warrant targeted a home on Turner Street, planned for 4 a.m. due to the subject’s work schedule. This subject was referred to in the criminal complaint as C.B.

When law enforcement executed the search warrant as scheduled, agents reported that lights were on at the home and people were inside, awake and moving around, prior to the search. Federal authorities believe C.B. was aware of the planned search warrant, citing messages observed on C.B.’s publicly viewable Facebook page from March 5, shortly before the warrant's execution.

Further investigation into C.B.’s phone, seized during the search, revealed Facebook Messenger messages beginning at 3:36 a.m. on March 5. Detroit police informed the FBI that on March 5, 2025, a “call for service” related to the Turner Street search warrant was entered into its dispatching system. This type of request is created when the Detroit Police Department provides a marked police car to assist with a federal search warrant.

Phone records obtained through a federal grand jury subpoena showed that at 3:13 a.m., approximately three minutes after the call for service was created in the Detroit Police dispatch system, a 30-second phone call was made from a number subscribed to Stephanie Steen to a number belonging to her mother. Federal authorities later learned that Steen is C.B.’s sister, and her mother lives with C.B. at the Turner Street residence.

According to a Detroit Fire Department employee with knowledge of Steen’s role, Steen was working her assigned shift from around 6 p.m. on March 4 until 6 a.m. on March 5. Approximately seven minutes after the call for service was entered into the system, Steen’s unique username was allegedly used to view the call for service linked to the Turner Street search warrant.

Records show Steen placed a second call to the same number around 3:17 a.m., lasting nearly three minutes, followed by a third call around 3:21 a.m. for about 62 seconds. Steen also placed another call to C.B. around the time C.B. began posting messages on their Facebook page. At around 3:35 a.m., C.B. called the United Auto Workers Call-In Absence Line, a call lasting over seven minutes. C.B. was reportedly working at Stellantis in Warren at the time.

Through another federal grand jury subpoena, FBI agents obtained Apple iCloud account information. A search warrant executed on Steen’s and her mother’s iCloud accounts on July 11, 2025, uncovered several text message conversations, including one with the phrase, “Don’t tell them I told you.”

During an interview with federal authorities on January 30, 2026, as part of the investigation, Steen stated she did not know about the search warrant at the Turner Street house until after she had left work. When presented with a police dispatch document showing her sign-on name, “STEENS121,” in the log at 3:17 a.m., she allegedly denied it was her username and later claimed she was on medical leave for back and other issues. Agents confronted Steen with the text messages, to which she responded that she did not remember anything from March and denied disclosing sensitive information.

In February, the FBI and Detroit Police Department confirmed that STEENS121 was uniquely assigned to Steen, with usernames generated from employees’ last names and the last three digits of their pension numbers. The Detroit Fire Department released a statement acknowledging the criminal complaint against a former Communications Division member and stated it fully cooperated with the federal investigation, deferring further comment to the investigating agency. Steen retired from the department on March 27, 2026.