HOW GREATER MANCHESTER POLICE AND NATIONAL

THEY thought they were untouchable. They boasted of their wealth – flaunting designer clothes, flashy cars and lavish jewellery. The gang was pumping out cocaine, amphetamine and MDMA at ‘wholesale level’ and trafficking automatic guns to gangs across the UK. Plans to expand their empire were in the works. International clients were the next step.

The organised grime group (OCG) made millions. Business was booming.

But behind the scenes, the net was closing in on what cops soon realised was the biggest firearms trafficking operation ever encountered on British soil.

And it was the arrest of a Rochdale man that saw things start to fall apart for the gang.

Greater Manchester Police and the National Crime Agency (NCA) stopped the network expanding overseas following the law enforcement hack into the Encrochat system, used by top-tier criminals. Police busted the encrypted phones of gang members as part of Operation Venetic.

Following a six-week trial, seven men were convicted of a string of drugs and firearms offences.

Now six of the group have been jailed for 174 years. One will discover his fate next year.

Their crimes were unravelled by cops who cracked their Encrochat phones, revealing the huge scale of the illicit outfit. Omar Malik used the alias ‘payyabills’ to direct operations at the top of the gang.

Adrian Gonzalez, also known as ‘terryf ***** gtibbs’, played a pivotal role – controlling a stash house in Ancoats and brokering deals between other gangs. Conor Sandlan used the handle ‘stellarboat’ and was responsible for the stash house and the couriering of drugs, cash, and firearms.

Daniel Gibbons went by the name of ‘humblewaffle’. Initially responsible for the supply of drugs, firearms, and cash, he became more trusted in the gang and was used to set up a company which would be the front for importing weapons into the country.

Daniel Waters, also known as ‘obscuretwig’, was initially a courier for the gang, before later becoming responsible for recruiting further couriers for the OCG.

Andrew Cooney used the handle ‘fernpirate’ and was involved in the supply of drugs and firearms throughout the conspiracy. Sean Hogan used the handle ‘dullhyena’ and was involved in the supply of drugs and also purchased a firearm from Cooney during the surveillance period.

Messages such as ‘Feds can’t get in them can they’ were being sent, offering police an insight into the minds of the crooks. But thanks to the infiltration of the encrypted communications platform, cops were already in and could see everything.

The first to be arrested was Sandlan, in April 2020. That spooked the gang, who began to clear the stash house in Cotton Field Wharf – one of Ancoats’ most in-demand apartment blocks. It was already too late. On June 14 2020, Malik was arrested at home on swanky street St Mary’s Parsonage.

A day later, police arrested Gibbons and Waters at an address in Reddish, after the duo were spotted carrying large carrier bags into the address. Gibbons confessed to having tablets, cocaine, ammunition and guns hidden in his wardrobe.

Police found two sub-machine guns, two self-loading pistols, two magazines containing ammunition, a bag of 1,098 rounds of ammunition, cocaine, large quantities of amphetamine found in a freezer, and a suitcase containing £616,000 cash.

That same evening, officers were conducting enquiries at another apartment in the city centre when they spotted Gonzalez heading down to the underground carpark. Gonzalez was blocked by police as he attempted to leave in his Mercedes, and subsequently arrested.

A few days later, on June 25 2020, Hogan was nabbed at a property in Denton, and Cooney was detained at his home in Alderley Edge.

Last week, six of the group – all except Gonzales – appeared before

Minshull Street Crown Court via a video link from Forest Bank prison. They learned their fate.

If it wasn’t clear already, the scale of their offending was ‘among the highest level of firearms trafficking in the UK’, Her Honour Judge Bernadette Baxter told courtroom five. “The Encrochat messages were chilling because they revealed how casual you were with this day to day criminality.”

Judge Baxter added that their operation worked like a well-run company, where ‘you treated each other as very close colleagues’. It was for that reason, and the likely possibility that more harm could be done to the public, that extended licence periods were given to each of the criminals – meaning they will serve two more years than normal.

Det Sup Int Joseph Harrop, for Serious Organised Crime, the lead on Operation Venetic and the senior investigating officer for Operation Glassy, described Encrochat as ‘the criminal Whatsapp’. “It’s one of the encrypted communication systems used by top tier criminals. They were happy with it as it was safe and secure, they could talk openly on it,” he said.

In March 2020 there was a collaboration with law enforcement agencies across Europe as they infiltrated the system. Once ‘the cat got out of the bag’ around June of that year, Operation Venetic was launched in the UK, he said.

Greater Manchester Police was one of the many forces across the country that received intelligence from the National Crime Agency, about a particular handset, and the individual using the particular handset.

“This intelligence was disseminated to us, in packs, so Operation Glassy was one pack. We were given a snapshot of data of what images they’ve sent, the messages etc,” DCI Harrop said.

“There were hundreds of individuals, we had to look at them by priority