For over two months from April 2020, Met officers were able to eavesdrop on messages sent by 1,400 suspected criminals who were unaware that their supposedly secure EncroChat encrypted phones had been compromised by a French hacking operation. It was, according to the six-part BBC podcast, Catching the Kingpins, the biggest organised crime bust in British policing history, leading the Met Police to arrest 950 suspected criminals and secure convictions against 750 of the most dangerous criminals.
It was a secret encrypted network being used by some of the UK’s biggest gangsters – but details about luxury takeaways and children’s birthday parties, among plans to hire hitmen and ship kilos of cocaine, would finally lead the police to one of the most dangerous organised crime gangs in Britain. David James Smith, who had access to the investigation, tells the incredible story of how they did it