The FBI began planning a sophisticated sting that led to the arrests of 800 suspected organised criminals in raids around the world three years ago. Police this week carried out hundreds of searches, seized drugs, fire-arms, luxury vehicles and cash in co-ordinated operation across multiple countries. The targets were organised crime groups who had placed their trust in an encrypted phone application called An0m to arrange drug deals, kidnappings, and assassinations. An informer working for the FBI sold An0m Android phones on the black market claiming it offered users highly secure encrypted messaging services. More than 9,000 encrypted devices were in circulation by the time law enforcement agencies pulled the plug on the network on 7 June 2021.
21:07 EDT, 9 June 2021
A photo of crime lord Hakan Ayik enjoying a luxury dinner alongside a former top Comancheros bikie has re-surfaced, showing the Australian crime king pin in happier times, unaware his high life as the Facebook Gangster was about to come to an abrupt end this week.
The photo with ex-Comanchero Baris Tukel sharing a dinner with a bevy of attractive friends in Istanbul would now seem a world away for Ayik, who is a wanted man not just by authorities but now also by fellow gangsters who blame him for the police raid this week which smashed their violent drug syndicates.
FBI and law enforcement partners in Australia and elsewhere scooped up and decrypted 27 million messages of drug traffickers, exposing global criminal networks.
Ex-bikieâs lavish dinner with Aussie drug lord Baris Tukel, the former bikie hit with charges by the FBI over the AN0M app, has been pictured at a dinner with fugitive Hakan Ayik.
Crime by Ellen Whinnett
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Subscriber only Baris Tukel, the former Australian bikie hit with racketeering charges by the FBI over the underworld encrypted app AN0M - has been photographed at a dinner with fugitive drug lord Hakan Ayik. The dinner, at an up-market restaurant believed to be in the Turkish capital of Istanbul, was uploaded to Instagram by Ayik s wife, Dutch woman Fleur Messelink, before being deleted.