LONDON—Three drug dealers have been jailed for a total of 50 years and six months for importing cocaine, using the EncroChat encrypted phone network.
EncroChat was an encrypted phone network which was allegedly used by thousands of criminals until it was hacked in March 2020 and closed down three months later.
Calvin Crump, 28, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply Class A drugs only in February this year, after it became clear his attempt to rule the EncroChat evidence inadmissible had failed.
Crump was jailed for 13 years and six months on Friday, and Khurram Ahmed, 37, was jailed for 15 and a half years after pleading guilty to conspiracy to supply cocaine.
Peter Thompson, 60, was jailed for a total of 21 years and 6 months after pleading guilty to admitting conspiracy to import cocaine and possession of a Steyr self-loading pistol and ammunition. He had been acquitted of possessing the gun with intent to endanger life.
Sobbing could be heard in the public gallery and Judge Leonard, KC, warned people to be quiet after a relative reacted to Crump’s sentencing.
Ematuwo—who, as a teenager, was jailed for six years for manslaughter in 2009—denied he had offered to be the hitman.
The trial jury heard the gang were bringing huge amounts of cocaine into Britain in the spring of 2020 and were describing drug deals in detail in encrypted messages.
On Friday, prosecutor Adam Payter said the gang purchased the cocaine for about £30,000 per kilo and sold it for up to £40,000 per kilo.
Judge: ‘Hard To Comprehend Quantity of Cocaine’
Sentencing the trio, Judge Leonard said, “It’s hard to comprehend the quantity of cocaine that those EncroChat messages showed were imported in the space of two months.”“Without the benefit of EncroChat that scale of offending would never have been apparent,” he added.
During the trial prosecutor Duncan Atkinson, KC, said the gang communicated “[using] a highly sophisticated form of end-to-end encryption, which was believed by them to be impregnable to any access by law enforcement.”
Mr. Atkinson said two individuals who cannot be named for legal reasons but will be identified as QQ and ZZ gave orders to Crump and the others through EncroChat.
Mr. Atkinson said it cost up to £1,500 to buy an EncroChat device and a six-month subscription to the network.
The trial heard Crump admitted he used the handles “Blockmover” and “Brickmover” and Thompson accepted he was “Logicaldemon.”
On Friday, James Scobie KC, counsel for Crump, denied he was a “nationwide dealer” and said he was only engaged in supplying the drug in the Redhill and Horley area of Surrey.
Counsel for Ahmed said during the lockdown imposed on prisons during the COVID-19 pandemic he was allowed out of his cell only once every 20 days.
The prosecution said the gang used EncroChat because they considered they were “safe from law enforcement gaining access to what they were saying.”
“They were therefore very frank, and thus very clear, about the criminality in which they were together engaged and about which they talked. It was a serious business which they treated seriously,” added Mr. Atkinson.
In the spring of 2020 the French gendarmerie’s C3N, a specialist digital crime unit, hacked into the OHV server in Roubaix which EncroChat used.
For several months the French were able to read the encrypted messages and identify evidence that helped them to identify many of the EncroChat devices. These were then shared with Britain’s National Crime Agency and many other European law enforcement agencies.
Mr. Gottshalk—who denied he was the man behind the EncroChat handle “Notnice”—was also acquitted of conspiracy to evade a prohibition on the importation of cocaine and conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.
Mr. Ematuwo had admitted he was the user of an EncroChat device with the handle “Randommist.”
