‘Tenderpasta’ set to stew in prison
DRUGS TRAFFICKER WITH MEMORABLE CALL SIGN IMPORTED £1.6M IN COCAINE
A MAN who used the handle “Tenderpasta” in a secret communication system to import cocaine worth £1.6m is today facing a lengthy jail sentence.
Ibraheem Abdullah, 38, was caught when GMP and National Crime Officers raided a joiners yard in Middleton.
Stashed in boxes of phone accessories, they discovered 20 kilos of cocaine.
The drugs had been sent from Holland and showed a purity of between 70 and 73 per cent.
The raid was part of a Operation Venetic which smashed the Encrochat encrypted phone system used by criminals.
Abdullah, also known as Dwaine George, attempted to flee when police came into the yard in Wade Street.
He was chased on foot and caught, but in a desperate bid to destroy two phones he hurled one against a wall and dropped the other in a brook.
A raid of his home in Mariman Drive, Crumpsall, resulted in the seizure of electronic scales and a quantity of small plastic bags.
A device Abdullah had thrown against the wall was the EncroChat phone he used to arrange the shipment of the drugs under his Encro handle ‘Tenderpasta.’
They would have had an estimated street value of £1.6 million once cut.
Monitoring of the encrypted network by police found that on April 7 last year, ‘Tenderpasta’ exchanged messages with the EncroChat handle ‘Maxbro.’
The builder’s yard was identified as the best drop off location.
Analysis showed Abdullah’s his phones were using cell masts near the joiners yard at the time the messages were sent.
He was also trying to sell on the cocaine, with two potential buyers agreeing a price of £37,500 per kilo.
At Manchester Crown Court, Abdullah admitted a charge of conspiracy to import Class A drugs. He will be sentenced on December 17.
NCA Operations Manager Helen Murphy said: “Like many other users of EncroChat, Abdullah will have mistakenly thought that he could traffic drugs with impunity.
“The NCA works with partners across the UK to ensure there are no safe spaces for serious and organised criminals, including those who seek to profit from a class A drugs trade which fuels violence and exploitation in our communities.”
Police hacked into the secret Encrochat communication system used by criminals last year.
Guns, ammunition, drugs and more than £2.5m in dirty cash has been seized in Greater Manchester in the year since the breakthrough into the secret Encrochat servers in Roubaix in northern France.
Some 169 suspects have been arrested and 128 of them have been charged in a major breakthrough against organised crime.
For years, the totally legal EncroChat service allowed 50,000 users around the world - 9,000 of them in the UK - to communicate in the knowledge none of their texts would be uncovered by law enforcement.
It was WhatsApp for serious criminals.
Like many other users of Encrochat, Abdullah will have mistakenly thought he could traffic drugs with impunity Helen Murphy, National Crime Agency