Police have arrested eight people suspected of being behind the secretive global phone network EncroChat during an operation in Spain, Dubai, and the Dominican Republic.
Since the Encrochat Hack Operation, while thousands of career criminals have been arrested, prosecuted or convicted as a result of incriminating phone messages sent over EncroChat, police have been seeking information about the network’s operators.
Details of the arrests were first published in French newspaper Le Parisien. The main target of the operation, according to the report, was a Canadian suspect called “Paul K”. Police believe he was a key player in setting up and running EncroChat.
He was arrested in the Dominican Republic last month after police monitoring his movements realised he had become aware he was under surveillance and decided to act, according to the report. For reasons unknown he was then released.
Earlier this month Paul K’s wife was also arrested, as were six other people suspected of being involved in the running of EncroChat, three in Spain and three in Dubai, the report adds.
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The eight arrests are thought to be the first arrests of people involved in the setting up and running of EncroChat.
The Le Parisien report did not publish Paul K’s full name. However, according to a cache of emails previously obtained by VICE’s Motherboard and information from a source who interacted with EncroChat this name likely refers to Paul Krusky, a Canadian tech expert who Motherboard has found was integral to the early development and running of EncroChat.
Now that Krusky has been arrested, Motherboard can add that the EncroChat member who sent the emails was Krusky.
Krusky appears to have a background working with internet service providers, according to forum posts and archived webpages. A Paul Krusky is listed as working for an ISP that had servers in Waterloo, Ontario, according to forum posts from 2002.
Geoff Green, the founder of legitimate encrypted phone company Myntex, previously described to Motherboard his interactions with Krusky and what appears to be the very early stages of EncroChat. According to Green, at the time Krusky worked with a Canadian company that wanted to sell secure phones, but it had no customers. Eventually Krusky’s product operated under the name EncroChat, according to emails obtained by Motherboard.
When European authorities hacked EncroChat in 2020, after announcing the operation publicly, they asked the owners to come forward because they had been unable to identify them.
Law enforcement agencies around the world have increasingly targeted the creators and administrators of encrypted phone companies. Starting years ago in the Netherlands, Dutch police repeatedly arrested owners of firms that made PGP BlackBerrys, customised BlackBerry devices that had the ability to send encrypted emails. In some of those cases the charges stemmed around the owner’s alleged participation in money laundering.
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