Met Says Drug ‘Kingpins’ Among 426 People Convicted in EncroChat Operation

An image of a gun and a wad of notes sent on the EncroChat network in March 2020. (Metropolitan Police)

The Metropolitan Police has described the smashing of the EncroChat encrypted phone network as, “the most significant operation targeting organised crime figures” in the history of the force.

The Met said a number of drug “kingpins” had been among the 426 people convicted as a result of Operation Eternal, which was launched in the summer of 2020 as a result of information obtained after French and Dutch law enforcement hacked into the EncroChat network.

The hacking was part of a larger operation known as Operation Venetic, led by the National Crime Agency (NCA), which has seen more than 1,200 people jailed across the UK.

While in many cases, the NCA, the Met and other forces found drugs, guns and other evidence which proved those using EncroChat phones were involved in criminal conspiracies, in some cases, the only evidence against people was messages on EncroChat which had been attributed to them.

In January, The Epoch Times spoke to several people whose loved ones were facing “chat-only” prosecutions despite never having been found in possession of drugs or guns or even an EncroChat phone.

EncroChat prosecutions and convictions still face a number of legal challenges both in the UK and in Europe, but the Met said there was no doubt it was being used by major organised crime figures.

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Campaigners against the National Crime Agency's use of data hacked from EncroChat by French police protest outside the Old Bailey in London on May 27, 2022. (Chris Summers/The Epoch Times)

Commander Paul Brogden, head of specialist crime at the Met, said it was “the most significant operation targeting organised crime figures in the Met’s history.”

He told the PA news agency, “These criminals were using what we call a ‘hard and secure’ communication device, so effectively it’s like a social media platform that the criminals believed that we couldn’t access.”

‘Significant Leap Forward’

Cmdr. Brogden said: “They were playing out their lifestyles (on EncroChat), trading drugs, ordering violence and murder here on the streets of London, and we could see that play out in a way we’ve never seen before. It was a significant leap forward.”

EncroChat phones looked, to all intents and purposes, like a normal Android phone, but by using a special password, the user was able to send messages via a secure and encrypted network to other EncroChat users.

Each user had a handle which contained an adjective and a noun.

In May 2022, Paul Fontaine, 36, from Hackney, east London, and Frankie Sinclair, 34, from Cardiff, Wales, were jailed for life for conspiracy to murder after a trial which heard they used EncroChat phones to make secret deals.

Fontaine—whose EncroChat handle was Usualwolf—was convicted of supplying a 9 mm Makarov self-loading pistol used to murder Abdullahi Mahamoud in Enfield, north London, on March 19, 2020.

He later sourced a Walther PPK pistol in Newcastle for Sinclair—whose EncroChat handle was NudeTrain—to murder rival Keiron Hassan, but that attack was thwarted when Hassan was arrested and later jailed for 20 years for an unconnected crime in Cardiff.

The handsets cost £1,500, and users could wipe all the data off them by punching in a special code.

Swedish hitman Anis Hemissi—who was convicted of murdering another Swede, Flamur Beqiri in Battersea, south London in Dec. 2019—is believed to have used this data wipe code to clear his EncroChat phone after his arrest.

Paul Fontaine (L) and Frankie Sinclair, pictured in police mugshots taken in November 2020. (Metropolitan Police)

Between March 2020 and June 2020, French police managed to compromise EncroChat, which stored data at the OVH server in Roubaix, near Lille. Data was passed to the NCA, which launched Operation Venetic.

The platform messaged users urging them to get rid of their handsets after realising it had been hacked.

But Cmdr. Brogden said they still managed to track down several of “the kingpins” of organised crime networks in London, including Naki Aslan, one of the leaders of the Hackney Turks gang in London.

Drug Kingpins ‘Sitting in Their Leafy Enclaves’

He said, “They were sitting in their leafy enclaves and didn’t expect police to knock on their door and we did and brought them to justice, so I’m incredibly pleased about that.”

The Met said Operation Eternal had led to 942 arrests, with 784 people charged and 426 convicted.

Three tonnes of Class A and B drugs and 49 guns have been seized by the Met as a result of EncroChat intelligence.

Aslan, 39, was jailed for 23 years for conspiring to import in excess of 20 kilos of heroin and cocaine.

Aslan used the EncroChat handle “junglecookie” and was attempting to source a Makarov pistol to shoot a business associate in May 2020.

One of junglecookie’s EncroChat messages read: “You got anyone to fire a couple of shots? From the waist down but urgent. I wanna get him popped ASAP.”

Critics of the law enforcement response to EncroChat claim the French gendarmerie’s hack, known as Operation Emma, was a live intercept and the evidence obtained should not have been legally admissible in a UK court.

The UK deny it was a live intercept.

The Garda Siochana in the Republic of Ireland—which does not allow live intercept evidence in court—did not seek to prosecute anyone over EncroChat and instead used the information obtained as intelligence.

PA Media contributed to this report.