How the Met took down the kingpins of organised crime

Det Ch Insp Driss Hayoukane was on the brink of retirement from the Metropolitan Police in March 2020, when he got a call he could not resist.

French and Dutch police had infiltrated a supposedly uncrackable mobile messaging network called EncroChat, used by criminals to trade drugs and guns.

Det Ch Insp Hayoukane was asked to assemble a team to read the secret messages, with the aim of bringing down major crime figures in London’s underworld.

If they succeeded, the Met would help secure the biggest organised crime bust in legal history.

Now a new podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live, Gangster Presents… Catching the Kingpins, tells the story of how the force helped catch them.

“Sometimes it was like being in a room with them, and they are talking freely but they don’t see you there,” Det Ch Insp Hayoukane explains.

“Every morning you came in and you’re like, ‘Oh my, oh my, that is incredible. Oh wow, that’s him’.”

It was a Europe-wide operation that also involved the National Crime Agency and police forces across the UK. But officers had to act quickly.

Just three months into their investigation, rumours began to circulate that EncroChat had been intercepted by law enforcement, and many of the criminals were hiding behind anonymous usernames – so police needed to work out who they were.

That meant looking for clues in their conversations.

Fortunately for investigators, the Covid pandemic restrictions in place at the time may have helped the investigation.

Det Sgt Sarah Wykes said: “I guess because they were all at home and bored, they were messaging each other about their personal circumstances.

“They spoke about their children. Small, personal details that slipped out during conversations. Photographs were really important.”

It was through such conversations that police were able to track down two criminals: Lee Hannigan, a money launderer who called himself Bank Boss, and a drug trafficker he was talking to, Harry Hicks Samuels, who used the handle Surreal Taylor.

Both appeared to be respectable businessmen living in luxury homes in the suburban village of Denham, Buckinghamshire.

Hannigan, 45, owned car garages and Samuels, 27, was a watch dealer, but police discovered this was a front for importing cocaine.

“He was so confident in the encrypted system that he actually gave away quite a lot about himself,” says Det Sgt Wykes.

These included details of a takeaway he ordered from a restaurant in Mayfair, and an exclusive golf club he had joined. When police compared the two lists of names associated with both, it pointed to Samuels.

EncroChat is a mobile phone company that purports to provide modified mobile handsets that have had their microphones, cameras and GPS systems removed.

The devices then have a special operating system and messaging software installed on them, which sends and receives encrypted messages.

Some are only able to communicate with other phones on the network and have the provision for a code to be entered which deletes the encrypted chats.

Police said EncroChat is well hidden on phones, only appearing after a user triggers a special reboot.

There were other messages too, which were of great concern to police.

“They spoke about raising firearms and being able to raise firearms,” says Det Sgt Wykes.

“At one point, Surreal Taylor spoke about hiring someone called Rent-a-Clump paying someone to hurt someone who was in debt to them.”

The Met says its three-and-a-half year operation resulted in more than 420 criminals being jailed, and the seizure of 49 guns and three tonnes of illegal drugs.

Hannigan was eventually jailed for five years and six months, and Samuels was jailed for 17 years in November 2022.

Det Ch Insp Hayoukane says the operation also taught the Met more about how organised crime gangs operate.

“One of the preconceptions is you know group A doesn’t deal with group B because they’re in conflict. Well, that’s not the case,” he says.

“Group A will deal with Group B because it’s financially beneficial for both. You know, they may have a conflict and that conflict might still be ongoing in the background, but business trumps everything.”

He says it has been an exciting operation to be part of.

“The most important thing is we have convicted some of the most dangerous men in London.”

Gangster Presents: Catching the Kingpins is available on BBC Sounds from Sunday, and runs weekly on BBC Radio 4 at 13:30 GMT.

Source: bbc.co.uk