EncroChat

Yeah.

And you also, uh, defended some of the Encrochat, um, uh, uh, cases as well.

So for people...

Well, in fact, I'll get you to describe what Encrochat was, but it was a, a technology, a type of handset, wasn't it? That was used, uh...

Well, anyone could buy them, but they were particularly popular among a certain section of society.

Pick us up from there, please.

Uh, she was related to Joaquín El Chapo Guzmán, the head of the Sinaloa cartel.

Um, yeah, Maurice O'Shea Salazar came up on Encrochat phone material that was presented to the court in Chile.

He is not only wanted, I think he's been convicted in absentia there.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah

... uh, to do with activities around the Sinaloa cartel, and EncroChat material would suggest that he is wanted in Chile.

I think actually there's a warrant out for his arrest.

He had been based in Barcelona for a number of years, and probably around this time, working as an operative for the Sinaloa cartel in Europe.

Yeah.

And it hadn't gotten anywhere close to the size of the likes of EncroChat or-

Yeah

...

Yeah

...

EncroChat, chat thing, so it wasn't a hack as such.

Mm.

Right? Now, so much activity has gone on in relation to the Robbie Lawler murder in the past year.

Um, as a, a defense lawyer pointed out, um, today in the court, there's a dozen suspects have been interviewed but not yet charged based on this EncroChat data-

Yeah

... which is what the court heard is the basis of this case against, against Drew.

Drew, we haven't heard from him except to, to hear he confirmed his name today.

But the PSNI made the case that he could be connected, um, to- Through, uh, telecom evidence, which presumably means the phones, um, to the, to the case and to the murder of Robbie Lawler.

Yeah, it's based on information within the EncroChat platform-

Yeah

But the guns are only part of the story.

In 2020, European police cracked EncroChat, an encrypted phone network that was used by organized crime groups across the continent.

This was such an important breakthrough that the UK alone arrested more than 700 people as a result of the operation.

In Sweden, the information was used to arrest hundreds of the country's most senior gang figures.

Put

those Encro phones.

They don't need those.

You just need an Xbox.

Mm.

Not one of the EncroChat phones, but one of an earlier version, a pretty good privacy phone, as they're called, BlackBerry devices.

So it's a, a significant arrest in and of itself.

itself.Hey, Ontario.

Um, they had more information about him on a encrypted messaging platform called Matrix, is it?

Yeah.

So he had, um, so obviously the, the, the, there'd already been the hacks into the major encrypted networks like Sky ECC and EncroChat.

So he se- according to police anyway, he had set up his own encrypted network called Matrix that was just for use amongst him and his, and his associates.