Blackpool man arrested in UK-wide bust of organised crime gangs

Officers carried out a warrant at a home in St Anthony’s Place on Friday (July 3) where they arrested a 48-year-old man on suspicion of Conspiracy to Supply Class A drugs.

He has since been released under investigation.

Lancashire Police also seized a number of items including luxury watches, designer handbags and a Mercedes car.

Detective Chief Insp Becky Smith, of Lancashire Constabulary’s Serious Crime Team, said: "We continue to work with our partners in our fight against criminal activity and violence intimidates and exploits the most vulnerable.

"I hope this work sends a clear message to the public of our determination to rid communities of this sort of criminalisation and to the criminals that we will stop at nothing in our efforts to find them and take them down."

Last week the National Crime Agency (NCA), working alongside UK police forces and Regional Organised Crime Units (ROCU) revealed that an entire organised crime network had been dismantled during Operation Venetic.

The massive police bust led to 746 arrests and the seizure of £54 million in criminal cash, as well as 77 firearms and more than two tonnes of drugs.

EncroChat - an encrypted global communication service used exclusively by criminals – was one of the largest providers of encrypted communications and offered a secure mobile phone instant messaging service.

But last week, an international law enforcement team cracked the company’s encryption.

Police discovered that 60,000 users worldwide and around 10,000 users in the UK had been using the service to coordinate and plan the distribution of illicit commodities, money laundering and even to plot the killing of rival criminals.

Since 2016, the National Crime Agency has been working with international law enforcement agencies to target EncroChat and other encrypted criminal communication platforms by sharing technical expertise and intelligence.

Two months ago, the collaboration resulted in law enforcement agencies in France and the Netherlands infiltrating the platform and the data harvested was shared to police forces in the UK via Europol.

Unbeknown the criminals using the platform, the NCA and the police had been monitoring their every move under Operation Venetic – the UK law enforcement operation launched to take down the criminal network.

At the same time, European law enforcement agencies have also been targeting organised crime groups using the platform.

The EncroChat servers have now been shut down, and Operation Venetic has been hailed as the biggest and most significant operation of its kind in the UK.