- 2 days ago
#CinemaJourney
#Operation Dark Phone- Murder by Text
#Operation Dark Phone- Murder by Text
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04:35From looking at the Encro chat messaging for bold move and throw the dice, it was quite clear that they were comfortable that they had a secure communication platform. Some of the messages were so explicit.
05:59They were absolutely massive.
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06:13There seems to be —
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06:17using the —
06:19bold move —
06:21and —
06:23through the —
06:25through the —
06:27through the —
06:29through the —
06:31through the —
06:33through the —
06:35through the —
06:37through the —
06:38through the —
06:40through the —
06:44through the —
06:54Where a crow stem is the nickname is paddy. He's probably Irish and he's got company based in Cork
07:24Two weeks into these messages around this machine arriving in Australia, they suddenly mention an auction
07:38An auction's going live and this machine is going to be listed
07:44So I'm thinking what's going on, this is something I hadn't seen before
07:54ProStem sends two pictures of the listing of the machine
08:20So straight away you're thinking, I can look this up, this is like on a live auction website
08:26It's a massive orange machine, it's parked out in the sunshine in Australia presumably
08:30This is a big digger, it's an excavator, it's a 40 odd tonnes
08:34So there's potential for an awful lot of class A drugs to be concealed within it
08:50If you just look at it cold like to say why on earth would you auction something that you've stuffed full of millions of pounds worth of drugs
09:05Why would you add that risk in?
09:07But I think from their point of view, it's more difficult if the drugs are identified
09:12To prove who's part of it
09:14Because you say, well I bought it at auction, I didn't know, how would I know that machine's full of drugs?
09:22Yeah, that's it, yeah, yeah, yeah, so the machine goes up tomorrow
09:25And the Australian buyer will make a bid, I need you to decline that bid, but accept the second one
09:31It's exactly the same as we've done before
09:33And I'll let everybody know, I'll rent so that there's no confusion
09:37Alright, all the best, bye
09:39The stakes are even higher because anyone could log on, look at this machine and place a bid from within Australia or anywhere in the world for that matter
10:05So the risks involved in putting this machine full of class A drugs to auction online were huge
10:11We knew the machine had been shipped to Australia and we knew it was full of drugs
10:23And it's obvious from the couple of days leading up to the auction that they've got a plan in the world for that matter
10:29We knew the machine had been shipped to Australia and we knew it was full of drugs
10:35And it's obvious from the couple of days leading up to the auction that they've got a plan in place to make sure that the right person buys the machine
10:44The machine
10:45The machine
10:48SING
10:51SING
10:53SING
10:57SING
11:01SING
11:05SING
11:07SING
11:09SING
11:11It was clear from the EncroChat data they had another form of encrypted communication.
11:40Throw the Dice and Bold Move were effectively the CEOs of the company in the UK, but they were communicating with someone we only knew as Zed.
11:53Because of the content of the messages about Zed, kind of thinking of Zed in charge, it was kind of like, who's Zed?
12:02Unlike Throw the Dice and Bold Move, we've obviously got their messaging. With Zed we haven't, so all we've got on Zed effectively is the two of them talking to each other and referring to him.
12:20He was potentially in Netherlands and he was potentially Serbian, but Bold Move and Throw the Dice appear in the messaging to be accountable to Zed, which puts him at a higher level, and so they defer to him.
12:35See you on the other side.
12:42The auction was due to run for 24 hours. That meant this group had a 24 hour period where they had to have control of this whole process, and obviously it was quite clear these guys had a lot of money invested in this.
12:57There was an awful lot of riding on this going correct.
13:04They have got a plan in place to make sure that the right person buys the machine. So their plan is to get the person in Australia to offer 280,000, and the seller would reject the 280 offer, and that he would make a counter offer.
13:21It does make it complicated.
13:24so
13:27The
13:30of
13:31Part
13:32up
13:33top
13:34x
13:38The
13:40and
13:42the
13:43the
13:44the
13:45is
13:46to
13:47earth
13:49the
13:51I don't know.
14:21Listen, you need to call the auction house right now, and you better pray that it's there and makes up, and that that machine hasn't gone to the wrong people.
14:43There is frantic activity with ProSem.
14:48Find out what's happened, we'll get back to you, we'll let you know, like, panicking.
14:52But from their point of view, I can understand, or we've got to make sure we say it's the right person.
14:56I can understand, or we've got to make sure we say it's the right person.
15:26The way Bolmover for Overdice disgusts Ed.
15:46You could see that they were a little bit worried.
15:52And when there's that sort of level of commodity involved, you expect these people behind it to be quite forceful, be quite threatening with other people.
15:58But it's frustrating that the opportunities weren't in front of us to go and try and identify who Z was.
16:07Around the auction, it's not clear whether they've actually resolved it.
16:17You can see when you're reading the messages that there are messages missing.
16:24The technique to get the data didn't seem to work properly on all their phones.
16:28It's incredibly frustrating.
16:39There were essentially invisible spots.
16:43I was informed by the team that the French were going to gather more content from more devices, but using a method that might become known to EncroClear.
16:54The implant is still working, it's still collecting data, but users were starting to notice something was amiss.
17:09They started to contact the EncroChat hotline reporting a problem.
17:35But the EncroChat operators probably thought it was either a network mistake or a rival.
17:41They did not realize that this was law enforcement.
17:45And so what they did is they tried to update EncroChat several times.
17:50But the French police would immediately push a new version.
17:54It's a bit of a cat and mouse situation.
17:58And in this case, a word could mean a difference between acquittal or being behind bars.
18:05The Black Lives Matter
18:10The difficulty for us was that we're dealing with pseudonyms.
18:31We throw the dice.
18:33We had 60,000 lines of data.
18:37And it's trolling through that to find that one nugget that will tell you who he is.
19:00And because of what was happening with COVID, the UK had gone into lockdown, dogs are becoming
19:22really popular as more and more people were staying at home. So we could see this emerging
19:25trend almost with these criminals buying dogs and sending pictures of these dogs to their associates.
19:33Bro the Dice sends a picture to Bold Move of his dog. And the dog is actually kind of,
19:40looks like he's kind of stood up, like kind of towards whoever's taking the picture.
19:46But around the neck of the dog is a dog tag. And on the dog tag is a phone number.
19:55That number is subscribed to the partner of a male called Danny Brown.
20:05He's talking a middle-aged man, wife, family, kids, very respectable house he's living in.
20:11He's not your stereotypical someone you'd associate with moving huge quantities of drugs
20:15all around the world.
20:16Danny Brown was somebody who was extremely well connected, both domestically and internationally.
20:25He had minor criminal convictions, all of which were historic, quite unremarkable.
20:32But to be successful as a criminal, you need to stay underneath the radar. The last thing you want
20:37to do is draw attention to yourself. So, grey is a good colour.
20:41Don't lie, bye-bye. So, when we identified that this person, Danny Brown,
20:45was behind the Foverdice handle, for us it was an element of excitement there and the fact that
20:49this is somebody potentially involved in some really serious criminality that we were unaware of,
20:54but we now had the opportunity to go and look at and work out exactly what this person's doing
20:58and who they're doing it with.
21:02It's quite a long time between it kind of being sold at auction and the buyer receiving the machine.
21:08There's a load of messages going on for quite a few days about any updates yet,
21:14when's it being delivered? And then there's a conversation, yep, in delivered,
21:20they all kind of talk about it and celebrate forwarding messages to each other and it's all great news.
21:25It's gone to the buyer and we've seen pictures exchanged and it's behind signage,
21:31they said Elmaz. That was gold dust to us because Elmaz Construction is owned by a gentleman
21:36in Australia called Tony Maz. That was potentially who had bought this machine or at least somebody
21:42affiliated with that company. They had a building business and they actually used it for a couple of
21:49days. The next layer of risk is when you actually remove the drugs from the excavator because up until
21:55that point all you've done is you've bought an excavator from an auction and you're in the building firm.
22:00But when you cut open that excavator and you take the drugs out, that's not a normal thing to do.
22:08Hey, I'm trying to give that to your sister.
22:23...has to say on Sunday. But I think what I can say is this, she's going to
22:28set out effectively a road map of how we can evolve the current restrictions we have. And while
22:35clearly restaurants and pubs had to close, we were quite keen to keep that capacity to be able to
22:42do takeaway food, but predominantly for drive-through.
23:02Dad?
23:03Yeah, just give me a minute. Stay in the car.
23:06Oh, no!
23:10Ah- No, but...
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25:45I have to say I was a bit disappointed that they never considered for one minute that it was law enforcement that had done it.
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27:16My best action from there was to open that excavator and see what was inside.
27:23We started pulling one bag out at a time and laying it out on the floor.
27:30We started pulling one bag out at a time and laying it out on the floor.
27:37We started pulling one bag out at a time and laying it out on the floor.
27:42Australian Border Force container examination facility.
27:45We came to a total of 226 bags.
27:49Half a tonne of MDMA.
27:52The street value in Australia is $80 million.
27:57Such a large importation obviously involved some very serious and well organised criminal syndicates.
28:09We really made a decision at that time to return the excavator back to its original condition
28:16and placed trackers on the excavator.
28:20The excavator arrived at a site in Western Sydney being managed by Tony Maz.
28:28He was of no interest to police previously.
28:32It appeared to me to be a legitimate business.
28:35I was actually considering whether this was the correct person.
28:44Not many people were coming and going from the site.
28:47And we identified a male person.
28:52That person was Raymond Lipovac.
28:55Despite having very little criminal history himself,
28:58he was associated to Western Sydney organised crime networks.
29:04They lowered the boom down behind the Elmaz screen.
29:08To allow him to have access and reach to the boom.
29:16Maz got a little bit impatient.
29:18And we quickly observed a lot of sparks and a lot of noise coming from the excavator.
29:25And that gave us confidence that they knew what they were doing.
29:28They knew what was inside the excavator.
29:30Alright.
29:32Yes.
29:33Come on.
29:34Tent.
29:35What?
29:36Tent.
29:37What?
29:38Nothing at all bro.
29:39I'll never leave one day.
29:40Fuckin nothing bro.
29:44This is the compartment.
29:46I have to listen.
29:47It has to be here.
29:48Even if it's not here for a moment, I'm going to lose my shit.
29:51It was of their mindset that the drugs got ripped and they thought that it was someone
30:13in the UK and it was at this stage I realised that it was really good that we didn't substitute
30:19it and it allowed them to continue with their criminal activities without any concern that
30:24they were being monitored or intercepted by police.
30:31Hello mate, yeah.
30:32When we realised the Australian Federal Police had in fact intercepted this machine in Australia
30:37and to find out that it was just under half a ton of MDMA, which is ecstasy, it was huge
30:43for us because this showed that actually these guys, these that operate on a massive, massive
30:47scale, we're talking millions and millions of pounds.
31:08We were quite confident that we'd established who Frover Dice was, but what we were looking
31:13for us, Boldmove, to send something that would indicate who he was, you're waiting for them
31:17to slip up.
31:18Boldmove and Frover Dice have arranged to meet in Putney and Boldmove sends the picture and
31:26then he follows it up by saying, I'm here, I'm stood here.
31:31But where he's taking this picture, his face is reflected back in the image.
31:36When I found out it was Stefan Baldorf, I nearly fell off my chair.
31:42The last time I came across Stefan Baldorf was in relation to an Albanian cocaine network.
31:48He popped up in the middle of that.
31:51Stefan's German.
31:53He's been convicted in the UK of drug trafficking.
31:57He's very well connected internationally.
31:59And he's the go-to person in terms of drug trafficking.
32:04He was actually deported from the UK following the last term of imprisonment that he did.
32:09So he's in the UK illegally.
32:12And I had to get permission from the Home Office to continue the investigation, as opposed
32:17to just going and arresting him there and then.
32:18They were arranged to go and get coffees in Putney, which from a surveillance point of view, gave us
32:26great opportunities to capture imagery of these people together.
32:30They're not the stereotype I would have in my head.
32:33There's no massive Rolex watch.
32:35They're just normal guys, dressed like in their polo shirt and their shorts.
32:39There's nothing about them that screams, this person's in an organised crime group and is smuggling
32:44huge amounts of class A drugs.
32:46They were career criminals and I would call them old school.
32:50They were the likes of the Hatton Garden team.
32:54They're old men like me.
32:56LAUGHTER
32:58LAUGHTER
32:59LAUGHTER
32:59I don't know.
33:29When Anchor Chat starts getting reports that something is wrong, they think it's just a malfunction.
33:42They didn't jump to the conclusion that it was a state-sponsored attack.
33:47Anchor Chat operators became suspicious.
33:50And at this point, French police realizes that this is likely to end up with them realizing that there is police operation.
33:59The French police pushes a last updated version of the implant to try and have a last wide grab of all the conversations before Anchor Chat is shut down.
34:10The French and Dutch get more downloads from more handsets.
34:16And it was just fantastic to see this material come through.
34:19Even accepting this is probably the beginning of the end.
34:23Sorry.
34:24Excuse me.
34:25Okay.
34:25It's time.
34:25It's time.
34:25It's time.
35:25Before this operation effectively came to an end.
35:28They're talking about where they're meeting.
35:48So we were able to go and get CCTV.
35:51A car that we knew was being used by Danny Brown drives down the road.
35:57Minutes later, a vehicle used by Stefan Baldorf arrives.
36:01You can see Stefan Baldorf get out of his car, walk right into the middle of the road, and
36:05he's waving down the road towards Danny Brown's car, as in to indicate to come up, and Danny
36:10Brown then drives up the road in his car.
36:13And around about 10 o'clock, you get a silver Mercedes that arrives into the same location.
36:20It parked in there, and other footage shows two males.
36:24We were able to identify that cross-stem guy they called Paddy was a gentleman called Leon
36:36Riley, and mid-endorker was a man called Philip Lawson.
36:41They thought they were like the Don Corleone's of the smuggling world.
36:47The fact they'd met that was crucial for us because we know that we're not going to be
36:51getting much more from any of our handles from this point onwards.
36:54And then it happened.
37:00AnchorChat realized that something was amiss with their phones.
37:04They got hold of one of their users' phones.
37:07They analyzed the software on it, and they realized the software was sending messages to
37:12the French police server rather than the AnchorChat server.
37:16At that moment, AnchorChat sent a message to all the users.
37:24The message says, important security notice.
37:33Today, we had our domains seized illegally by government entities.
37:38We can no longer guarantee the security of your device.
37:41You were advised to power off and physically dispose of your device immediately.
37:47Overnight, a message has gone out.
37:49It shows that the administrators are aware of what's happened.
37:53So at that point, we kind of know, okay, the game's up.
37:59The criminals will start to dispose of their devices, start to clean up evidence, because
38:05they know that we might be coming for them.
38:07A large number of them would go on the run.
38:10We had to move really quickly and start making arrests.
38:16I had two separate surveillance teams covering both of them.
38:22Danny Brown started heading over towards the Putney area.
38:27Stefan Baldorf started to move as well.
38:30He was already in the country illegally.
38:32He was already looking over his shoulder.
38:34He could have run at any point.
38:36Fortuitously, they came together in Putney.
38:40Yeah, mate.
38:41You okay?
38:42I don't believe Stefan had too much to say.
39:04But Danny Brown really wanted to distance himself from the encro phone that he had in his possession,
39:10saying that a friend had given it to him to take it for repair.
39:13But they reacted the way that I'd expect career criminals to react, said very little, and were no trouble.
39:29Can you please state your full name on your date of birth, please?
39:33Danny Joseph Brown, 9567.
39:36You've been identified as one of a number of individuals who have conspired together to traffic in excess of 450 kilograms of MDMA to Australia,
39:46concealed with implant machinery.
39:47No comment.
39:49Can you please state your name and date of birth?
39:50Stefan Baldorf, 24th of the 1st, 1960.
39:55All sale price on the Australian market, $24,695,000 Australian dollars.
40:02Street level, $44,844,000 sterling.
40:11No comment.
40:13After they were arrested, we were able to go out then and capture Crostem, News Leon Riley.
40:22Have you ever been involved in the production of MDMA?
40:25Pardon my ignorance, but what is MDMA?
40:28Ecstasy. You heard of ecstasy?
40:30Yeah, heard of it.
40:31Have you ever been involved in the supply of MDMA?
40:35No.
40:36I know nothing about drugs.
40:38Nothing.
40:39I don't even take prescription drugs if I can possibly, possibly avoid it.
40:45Those two to three days, it was all a bit of a blur.
40:51Today is a really significant day.
40:53You are part of a national operation.
40:54It is the most significant operation I can recall tackling serious of an organised crime in my entire service.
41:01There was an element of, this is not the end for us and we need to work twice as hard to sweep up those individuals while we have the opportunity.
41:11In one of the biggest police operations of its kind, a secret communication system relied on by organised criminals to trade drugs and firearms has been hacked by the UK's national crime agency.
41:23There have been more than 700 arrests and entire criminal networks have been taken down.
41:31Every single police force in the UK has been involved.
41:34When this is happening in the UK, the French and the Dutch and many other countries around the world are at a vital stage in their operations, going after the most dangerous and the most high-end organised criminals.
41:51And a large number of them have been arrested.
42:00I was informed by the NCA that the EncroChat interception was about to come to an end.
42:18And at that stage, we arrest Maz and Lipovac.
42:24With me, I have Tony Maz.
42:27I can't believe this is happening, man.
42:29All because of buying an Escoveta.
42:32So are you saying, so you're saying to me that you did not attempt to...
42:36Man, I'm not going to say nothing. I'm really going to be, I'm really upset.
42:39Okay.
42:41This is the residence of Raymond Lipovac.
42:45Can you say a full name, Ray?
42:46Yes, Raymond Lipovac.
42:48Can you tell me what was inside that site?
42:53This is my savings.
42:55Open.
42:57And there appears to be stacks of cash.
43:02Currency dogs searched this room and reacted to this black bag here.
43:08When we executed search warrants on Lipovac's premises, we located $1.2 million in cash.
43:15Who's cash is it?
43:19No comment.
43:20Where did it come from?
43:22No comment.
43:24You just said it was part of your savings.
43:26No.
43:28How will it take you to save that?
43:29A long time.
43:30How long is a long time?
43:31No comment.
43:32He was in possession of a lot of encrypted devices, including one phone in particular, which he attempted to dispose of in a sink full of water.
43:43So it's just enough water to submerge the phone.
43:47That phone, we believe, was the phone that he utilised to communicate with Zed offshore.
43:53Zed was situated in a country where he's out of reach of law enforcement, but we knew Zed had connections with different criminal syndicates all around the world.
44:05There are ongoing investigations in relation to a lot of these people, and we're working with both domestic and international partners in bringing these people to justice.
44:16We got some of the people at the top, we didn't get all of the people at the top, but there will be other opportunities.
44:24Police, come to the door!
44:26We are still working our way through that material.
44:32We are investigating day in, day out.
44:35Paranoia amongst organised criminals will be higher now.
44:42I truly believe we struck a blow against organised crime, the likes of which we've never seen before.
44:56I truly believe we've never seen before.
45:26It's like being on a stage when those lights come up and everybody
45:56is illuminated. And at the end of a performance, the lights go off and you're in the dark again.
46:03We've seen already levels of encryption are increasing and more encrypted platforms are
46:10being released. The only thing that we can do is try and understand where they're going
46:17to go next.
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