ON the face of it, a French bulldog, an old fashioned doily and a Ferrari with an out-of-date MOT might not sound like they have much in common.
But these seemingly innocuous items helped identify some of the UK’s most dangerous, high-ranking criminals and led to the biggest organised crime bust in British policing history.
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In the spring of 2020, French police managed to hack into the secret phone network EncroChat. With access to millions of messages sent from inside the world’s criminal network, they shared this data with relevant forces across Europe, including the Metropolitan Police.
It led to cops working around the clock, spending up to 20 hours a day trawling through the astonishing conversations of Britain’s drug lords, in scenes akin to a modern-day version of TV drama The Wire, where detectives wire-tapped notorious dealers.
Now, a new Radio 5 Live and BBC Studios podcast, Gangster Presents…Catching the Kingpins, has been given unprecedented access to the story of exactly how the Met used this intelligence to put away London’s criminal kingpins.
It reveals how cops were able to uncover a murder plot, with a picture of a French bulldog shared on the encrypted messaging platform providing a vital clue.
The six-part series also details how the Met’s operation infiltrating EncroChat, codenamed Operation Eternal, even caught one of their OWN bent coppers, who was secretly working for the kingpins and whose behaviour makes Line of Duty look dull.
Operation Eternal was part of the nationwide Operation Venetic, led by the National Crime Agency.
In total, more than 3,220 arrests have been made across UK law enforcement, with around 2,000 suspects charged and more than 1,300 offenders being convicted.
Mobeen Azhar, who presents the investigation into the sting operation, tells the Sun: “Many criminals believed that this system provided a shield or force field around them, which would mean their messages would never be read and it was a platform where they could organise crime freely.
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“What I find fascinating, is just the ridiculous things that people do online. People went to the trouble of paying for an encrypted phone network and setting up an anonymised handle but then they became complacent.
“Some started sending selfies, wishing each other happy birthday…someone even sent a picture of their car with the number plate visible.
“It was really stupid behaviour.”
Journalist Mobeen, who has spent more than a decade reporting on organised crime, first became aware of EncroChat phones back in 2018 while covering a court case.
He says: “When one of the defendants was asked why he had one of the devices, he replied: ‘Everyone has these phones.’”
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His research revealed they cost around £1,500 for the handset and you have to pay another £1,500 every six months as a subscription.
Mobeen, who was given access to one of the devices during his investigation for the series by the National Crime Agency, says: “They look like a standard Android phone but when you turn it on, it’s got two modes.
“There’s one mode which has a kind of standard interface, which will probably look like your phone or mine. But then you can put in a code which turns it on to EncroChat mode.”
After news of the hack broke in 2020, Mobeen says: “I thought, ‘someone is going to tell this story and I want it to be me.’”
It took months of negotiations with the Met to get the inside story and Mobeen spoke at length to senior investigating officer DCI Driss Hayoukane.
For more than two months from April 2020, DCI Hayoukane and his team spent up to 20 hours a day reading messages sent by 1,400 suspected criminals – who had no idea their apparently secure EncroChat encrypted phones had been infiltrated.
DCI Hayoukane said: “Sometimes it was like being in a room with them and they are talking freely and they don’t see you there.”
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Criminals operated behind EncroChat’s anonymised handles and officers faced a race against time to uncover their identities before the platform’s creators became aware of the hack.
But some made it easier for cops than others. One user even sent a message saying: ‘my name is such and such, this is my date of birth, this is my address…’
A potential murder plot was uncovered after the team discovered a message asking to buy a “James Bond ting”, codename for a gun.
Going by the handle ‘Nudetrain’, he detailed how he needed it for a “ride out” in retaliation after someone “lit up” their mum’s house – and talked about whether he needed more than one firearm.
He even shared a photo of the £3,000 Walther PPK handgun – made famous in the 007 film Dr No – after buying it from a user known as ‘Usual wolf’.
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‘Nudetrain’ was later identified as career criminal Frankie Sinclair, from Cardiff, and was found guilty of conspiracy to murder and a string of other offences in March 2022, along with gun dealer Paul Fontaine, of north London.
A photo Frankie shared on EncroChat of his girlfriend’s French bulldog helped confirm his identity to police.
Mobeen says: “He even sent Fontaine a photograph of his mum’s house, showing his mum’s car and her registration plate.”
Secret drug lords
Harry Hicks-Samuels, from Denham, Bucks, who used the handle ‘Surrealtailor,’ boasted on EncroChat that “everyone thinks I’m a watch dealer”.
But in reality it was a front for importing cocaine. He was brought to justice after revealing how he had joined an exclusive golf club and, separately, ordered a takeaway from a posh restaurant in London’s Mayfair.
Police investigations revealed his was the only name on both lists. He was jailed for 17 years in November 2022 for conspiracy to import cocaine.
Mobeen says: “Once the police had enough evidence it was likely to be him, they got a warrant. When it became public knowledge that EncroChat had been hacked, the police went to his home to arrest him. They saw the same doily on the table as they had seen in one of the photographs he had sent on EncroChat.
“The police call this bit of finding additional evidence after arrest ‘secondary attribution.’
“Lots of different pieces that come together that suggest, ‘’Yeah, this is him, I’ve got the right guy.'”
One of Hicks-Samuel’s associates, money launderer Lee Hannigan – who went by the handle ‘Bank boss’ – boasted about his Ferrari, even mentioning its MOT was out of date, giving police vital clues to his identity.
Hannigan was eventually jailed for five years and six months for money laundering and conspiracy to supply cocaine.
Bent copper
PC Kashif Mahmood, 32, was jailed for eight years for helping a drug gang steal money from other gangs.
The award-winning Met police officer, from Harlow in Essex, seized hundreds of thousands of pounds for an organised crime gang controlled from Dubai.
Messages on EncroChat from the gang refer to the officer as ‘Kash the Fed’ and how they would be told when rival drug gang couriers were on the move so he could intercept them.
Mobeen says: “He was stopping people and looked like this good cop, that he must have had this amazing sixth sense of knowing which cars to stop.
“But he was taking the money for a gang controlled from Dubai.”
He was sentenced in May 2021 – along with other members of the organised crime group including – to eight years after pleading guilty to conspiracy to acquire criminal property and misconduct in public office.
Moshin Khan was sentenced to 16 years for conspiracy to supply class A drugs, conspiracy to transfer criminal property and conspiracy to acquire criminal property.
Shabaz Khan was jailed for 14 years for conspiracy to supply class A drugs, conspiracy to transfer criminal property, conspiracy to acquire criminal property and possession of a controlled drug of class B with intent to supply.
But Mobeen says: “As far as we know the ‘Mr Big’ in this story is still at large.”
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Intelligence from EncroChat also caught out former Leeds United player Paul Shepherd who last September was jailed for nine years and six months for his role collecting cash in a major cocaine-trafficking gang.
And ex-professional footballer Faye Dunn, who led a double life as a drugs boss, regularly used the secret phone network under the name ‘StiffNinja’ to discuss the drug laundering operation which saw her smuggle cash out of the country down her trousers.
In May 2022, she was jailed for three years and nine months for conspiracy to supply cannabis and money laundering.
Mystery still surrounds who set up EncroChat – and why – but Mobeen has no doubt it was designed “for criminal use”.
One of the features is known as a “duress PIN code”, because once entered it erases the contents of the phone.
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Mobeen says: “If the police ask for the PIN to your phone, you can act like you’re being really helpful by giving your PIN. But by the time they open the phone, all the information and data on there is gone.
“It goes beyond the regular realm of privacy and encryption, which I think the average person really wants and needs.
“As a result it attracted a whole bunch of people in the criminal world.”
Three years on from the hack, an analysis of the messages and their senders has challenged British detectives’ preconceptions about how organised crime works.
But since criminals discovered the system has been compromised, Mobeen believes the majority of EncroChat devices will have been “baked in an oven or chucked in the Thames”.
Such is the fast-paced world of organised crime, he says “it’s inevitable” they will have moved on to another secure messaging service to carry out their business.
Mobeen says: “I don’t know what the new network is. But I’m pretty sure there are multiple platforms out there that are used by organised crime members.
“Wherever there are people willing to pay money – and there are definitely people willing to pay for a platform like this – then someone is going to come along and plug that gap.”
Gangster Presents…Catching the Kingpins is available to stream on BBC Sounds, and airs weekly on Sundays on BBC Radio 4 at 1.30pm
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