Europol announced today that the takedown of the EncroChat encrypted mobile communications platform has led to the arrest of over 6,600 people and the seizure of $979 million in illicit funds.
EncroChat phones ran a special, hardened version of Android that promised users unbreakable encryption, anonymity, and no traceability.
The service also provided message self-destruction features, panic device wipe, tamper-proofing booting, and a brute force resistant FIPS 140-2 certified hardware cryptographic engine.
These features were valued by criminals who wanted to communicate securely, so tens of thousands paid €1,500 ($1,635) for a six-month subscription with global coverage and 24/7 support.
The EncroChat phones themselves were sold for a one-time payment of €1,000 ($1,090) and were remotely erasable if needed.
Secretly monitoring communications
In 2020, a large-scale European law enforcement operation quietly infiltrated the EncroChat platform and was able to analyze millions of messages shared between its users after breaking the encryption algorithm.
Since then, police units in France and the Netherlands working in coordination with their peers in other countries have arrested 6,558 individuals, users of EncroChat, including 197 high-value targets.
This was made possible thanks to the analysis of 115 million conversations between roughly 60,000 users of the platform.
Utilizing this data, the police managed to locate and seize 270 tons of drugs, 971 vehicles, 271 properties, 923 weapons, 68 explosives, 40 planes, and 83 boats.
Additionally, law enforcement agents sized €740 million ($807 million) in cash and froze another €154 million ($168 million).
Europol says that most EncroChat users were either members of organized crime (34.8%) or performed drug trafficking (33.3%). The rest engaged in money laundering (14%), murders (11.5%), and firearms trafficking (6.4%).
The arrested EncroChat users have so far been convicted to a total of 7,134 years of imprisonment, though not all of them have been sentenced yet.
It is worth noting that after the takedown of EncroChat, many of its users migrated to an alternative service called ‘Sky ECC,’ which was operating as a legal entity.
Europol and investigators from various European cyber-police units broke the encryption of Sky ECC and monitored the communications between roughly 70,000 users.
On March 9, 2021, the police in Belgium and the Netherlands performed simultaneous raids on the homes of high-value targets, resulting in numerous arrests and asset seizures.