Relevant Numbers

Persons of Interest

Relevant Numbers

Relevant numbers are Persons of Interest whose Social Security Numbers were officially produced by the Machine after determining that those individuals would pose a threat to national security.

Whenever sufficient intel has been collected, the Machine would insert "relevant" information into briefing reports destined for FBI or NSA executives without the knowledge or consent of the person who created the original report.

A team of ISA agents is then dispatched to neutralize the threat.

Similar to the irrelevant numbers, a relevant number was sometimes the victim and not the perpetrator. This was true in the case of Owen Matthews who was targeted by the ISA for the embarrassment that his testimony would bring to the US after receiving his number and misunderstanding the Machine's intent. However, the true threat was a drug cartel assassin who had orders to crash a plane full of innocent people, the national tragedy and the true danger that was linked to Owen rather than his testimony. While Owen was a victim, the Machine was able to predict the mass casualty event that would come from the attempt on his life and acted directly to send John Reese to stop it.

After the government shut down the Northern Lights program due to Vigilance, the Machine began sending the relevant numbers to Root to take care of instead.

Later, Samaritan took over providing relevant numbers. According to Brooks, under Samaritan, the ISA began targeting more threats than they ever did under the Machine. As noted by Devon Grice, this came at the price of the ISA agents no longer investigating or knowing why they were targeting a person. Instead of being given numbers to investigate, Samaritan just gave them numbers to kill. However, it failed to provide the number of the President of the United States when he was targeted by domestic terrorists, causing the Machine to intervene instead by sending Team Machine to help. John Reese and Sameen Shaw came to believe that this meant that ASI no longer considered the President to be relevant, a worrying idea.

The President of the United States is designated as Relevant-One by the Machine. When giving the President's relevant number, the Machine uses HMX-1, standing for Marine One, the Presidential helicopter.

Known Relevant Numbers[]

Name	Episode	Year	Status

Yusuf	“Get Carter”	2004	Deceased
Yusuf was an Iraqi coerced by the insurgents to aid in the storage and transport of IEDs. He was humanely interrogated by Joss Carter but then later killed by US forces.
Gordon Kurzweil	“Super”	2005	Alive
DIA case officer and officially the first relevant number produced by the Machine when he arranged to sell 26 pounds of weapons-grade uranium to the Iranian government. According to an online article read by Harold Finch and Nathan Ingram, he was arrested and later pled guilty to espionage.

Asif	“God Mode”	2010	Deceased
Caught planning to detonate an explosive-laden van. Control ordered Hersh to go ahead with bombing at NYC ferry terminal in order to prevent Nathan Ingram from disclosing information regarding the Machine to a reporter.
Daniel Aquino	“Relevance”	2011	Deceased
Member of the Northern Lights project who was framed by the government when he started to ask too many questions. He was killed by Sameen Shaw.

Carlson	“No Good Deed”	2012	Unknown
Individual who became the key to stopping a major terrorist attack. His name was slipped into a report written and submitted by Henry Peck. Because Peck's boss opted to congratulate him for his insight on what Peck didn't even realize happened, Peck concluded that a machine was at work.
Nuclear terrorist	“A House Divided”	2013	Deceased
A terrorist who built a radiological bomb with the cesium he stole from a dental X-ray machine and attempted to detonate it in Georgetown near the Country Day School. However, the terrorist was intercepted and executed by Sameen Shaw before he could detonate the bomb. Amongst the people saved were Presidental intelligence advisor Manuel Rivera's children.

Ahnaz Bekhti	“Relevance”	2013	Deceased
Known terrorist operating in Berlin, Germany who was building a dirty bomb. He and his group were killed by Sameen Shaw.
James Mercer	“Relevance”	2013	Unknown
Former Marine who was dishonorably discharged and then received a wire transfer of $10K. Mercer's designation as a POI was actually just a smoke screen to eliminate Shaw and Michael Cole after Cole began to investigate intel used to frame Aquino.

Owen Matthews	“4C”	2013	Alive
Creator of the online drug market the Black Market Bazaar. The ISA secretly arranged to take 30% of all drug trading profits as a supplementary source of income. To prevent Matthews from revealing this secret, Agent Indigo 6A was tasked with terminating him during an international flight which they believed to be the reason for being given the relevant number. In reality, the Machine predicted a mass casualty event with a 94.50% probability and placed Reese on the flight. Reese discovered that an assassin from a drug cartel intended to crash the plane full of innocent people in order to kill Owen. As noted by Finch, he had built the Machine to prevent national tragedies, not national embarrassments like the ISA was trying to stop. The assassination was stopped by Reese and the plane was prevented from crashing by Finch.
Guy with laptop	“4C”	2014	Unknown
A guy with glasses and a laptop was being targeted by Hersh as a relevant number when Shaw questioned him about Owen Matthews. It's unknown why he was targeted or if the ISA succeeded in taking him out as Hersh was drugged by Shaw in the middle of the operation.

Peter Collier	“Most Likely To...”	2014	Deceased
Vigilance leader who leaked information about Northern Lights to the press. His number was sent to Control with the ID #NR6982930-17.

Militia group	“Death Benefit”	2014	Unknown
The Machine sent Root the numbers of a militia group in Anchorage, Alaska posing a threat to national security. Root picked up Shaw in New York, stole a jet, and took care of the threat.
Miami arms dealers	“Death Benefit”	2014	Alive
The Machine sent Root the numbers of a group of arms dealers in Miami, Florida who were moving explosives and who posed a threat to national security. Root and Shaw beat up the men and neutralized the threat. Before leaving, Shaw suggested to one man that they should go back to being drug dealers which was safer than moving explosives.
Unknown	“Death Benefit”	2014	Unknown
The Machine sent Root to a relevant number located in Saint Louis.

Kirill W. Ivanov	“Beta”	2014	Alive
A terrorist who was identified by Samaritan during its Beta test to prove to the government the ASI's effectiveness as a replacement for the Machine. According to Samaritan's data, he expressed aberrant beliefs, had overseas communication, and purchased flagged goods in the form of RDX explosives. The dossier given to Senator Ross Garrison by John Greer as Ivanov was arrested included communications with someone named Jassel and suggested that Ivanov had converted to radical Islam under the name of Kasim Umarov and was planning a terrorist bombing of some kind.

Marko Jevtic	“Honor Among Thieves”	2014	Deceased
A thief who was hired by an unknown party to steal the deadly Marburg virus and cause a pandemic. As a result, Samaritan designated Marko a relevant number and sent Devon Grice and Brooks to stop him before changing the orders to eliminating all targets and securing the virus, presumably for Samaritan's use. After being wounded by Shaw, Marko was killed by Brooks. The virus was recovered by Shaw and destroyed by Team Machine.
Unknown	“Honor Among Thieves”	2014	Unknown
Samaritan sent Devon Grice and Brooks after a list of numbers to take care of in South America.

Yasin Said, Massoud Shammar, Tariq Al Juhani, Hussain Ashoor	“Control-Alt-Delete”	2014	Deceased
A supposed terrorist sleeper cell in Detroit, MI. Samaritan sent their information to Control to prevent a terrorist attack. In reality, the group was hired by Samaritan to do programing for it and then framed as terrorists to keep their work for the ASI from getting out.

President of the United States	“Synecdoche”	2015	Alive
The President of the United States was targeted by a senator's wife and her organization due to disagreement about mass surveillance. After Samaritan did not send the number to the ISA, the Machine sent it to John Reese who stopped the assassination with the help of Sameen Shaw and Lionel Fusco. Unknown to them at first, Reese's team was aided by a second team who had them as their irrelevant number.