More than 6,500 suspects were arrested worldwide and €900 million in illicit funds was seized or frozen by law enforcement authorities over the past three years following a 2020 major police hack of EncroChat, an encrypted phone network heavily used by organized crime groups.
According to Europol’s statement, in the past three years:
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6558 suspects arrested, amongst whom 197 high-value targets
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7134 years of imprisonment of convicted criminals up to now
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€739.7 million in cash seized
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€154.1 million frozen in assets or bank accounts
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30.5 million pills of chemical drugs seized
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103.5 tonnes of cocaine seized
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163.4 tonnes of cannabis seized
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3.3 tonnes of heroin seized
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971 vehicles seized
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271 estates or homes seized
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923 weapons seized, as well as 21 750 rounds of ammunition and 68 explosives
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83 boats and 40 planes seized
An investigation into the EncroChat platform began in 2017 when the French Gendarmerie and judicial authorities discovered that EncroChat phones were regularly used by organized crime groups and that the company was operating from servers in France. In April 2020, a joint investigation team (JIT) was created between France and the Netherlands, with the support of Dutch and French Desks at Eurojust and Europol.
By infiltrating the encrypted communications platform police officers gained access to millions of messages leading to the arrests of hundreds of suspects in several countries including France, the Netherlands, the UK, Norway, and Sweden.
As part of a joint operation, which went in France under the code name “Emma 95” and in the Netherlands was known as “Lemont”, the police officers monitored the communications between thousands of suspects.
The operation ended on June 13, 2020, when EncroChat realized that the platform was compromised. The company then sent a warning to all its users advising them to immediately dispose of the phones.
In February 2023, a joint operation carried out by law enforcement authorities from the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland dismantled Exclu, yet another encrypted messaging service, which had an estimated 3 000 users, including members of organized crime groups (OCGs).
The police were able to hack into the app and covertly read decrypted communications of its users for five months before launching coordinated raids.