Newgrange Signs Business Affairs & Development Chiefs
06.11.2023 - 11:15 / manchestereveningnews.co.uk
A series of incriminating messages exposed how a corrupt police analyst jeopardised one of the biggest and most successful criminal investigations ever undertaken by law enforcement agencies across the globe.
Somehow, a fresh-faced but troubled 18-year-old new recruit at Cheshire Police, Natalie Mottram, was seconded to the North West Regional Crime Unit to investigate the most serious criminals. Despite reservations from her sergeant, she went on to be promoted to the key position of intelligence analyst even though she had some very dodgy friends, was thrown out of her family home and was spending £1,500-a-month on cannabis.
But the concerned sergeant was overruled by his inspector and it meant, by the time the Gendarmarie managed to hack the servers of EncroChat in northern France and mine swathes of incrimination data in April 2020, Mottram was among a small coterie of trusted law enforcement workers in the UK who knew the network, dubbed WhatsApp for criminals, had been breached.
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The hack gave law enforcement bodies across the globe a rare window where cops, rather than the criminals who used the network, had the upper hand.
Criminals heard rumours but it wasn't until Mottram revealed the hack to a man suspected of being a major criminal - named in court as Liam France - that the underworld realised the game was up and they abandoned EncroChat for a new network, Sky EEC, which itself was breached earlier this year.
It meant the hack, although stupendously successful because of the number of criminals it helped put behind bars, was a relatively brief one, lasting two
Newgrange Signs Business Affairs & Development Chiefs
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