Hundreds arrested as gangs’ ‘code’ is cracked

AN ENCRYPTED communication system used by criminals trading in drugs and guns has been hacked by law enforcement officers in one of the biggest operations of its kind.

Thousands of officers from the National Crime Agency, regional crime squads and every UK police force have been involved in a massive international sting that was launched in April.

More than 700 people have been arrested so far, including police officers and law enforcement officials, and drugs worth £80m, 77 guns and more than £54m in cash has been seized.

In Yorkshire and the Humber, more than 70 arrests have been made and £3m in cash seized.

Ten firearms and more than 100kg of cocaine were also seized in the county after the NCA intercepted and decoded messages on EncroChat. Seven EncroChat devices were seized in Yorkshire.

After four years of work by international teams, French investigators managed to access Encrochat, an encrypted platform used by 60,000 people, including around 10,000 in the UK, for what agencies claim were purely criminal purposes.

The company, which charged £1,500 for a device on a six-month contract, sent out a warning to users in early June to say that its servers had been hacked by a government entity.

This left investigators with a race to make the most of the wealth of information available on the platform, targeting “Mr and Mrs Bigs” before they could cover their tracks.

International investigators were also going after the team who ran Encrochat, who they said led “luxury lifestyles”, although the technology itself is not illegal.

National Crime Agency (NCA)

director of investigations Nikki Holland said the breach – described by one official as like breaking the Enigma code – was like “having an inside person in every top organised crime group in the country”.

She said: “This is the biggest and the most significant law enforcement operation of its kind in the UK and it is previously unmatched in terms of its scale.

“We have dismantled wellestablished organised crime groups and have already secured evidence to prosecute a significant number of known criminals that have previously remained beyond our reach.”

Officers in the UK have arrested 746 suspects and seized more than £54m in cash, as well as 55 sports cars and 73 luxury watches.

They have seized more than two tonnes of class A and B drugs, as well as 28 million street valium pills.