KUALA LUMPUR, May 12 — A smiling selfie with a beer in hand was enough for a British cocaine lord to get busted by police.
The drug dealer, Leon Atkinson, was caught after posting a photo of himself drinking beer on a secret messaging app being monitored by police, although he thought he was undetectable.
The 41-year-old was captured when detectives accessed messages on the EncroChat network used by the dealers.
The plot was uncovered after detectives cracked the communications system used by drug dealers as part of an operation back in 2020.
It led to the arrest of major crime figures as well as 800 Europe-wide criminals involved in drug deals.
According to BBC, Atkinson led a gang involved in drug deals worth £9 million (RM48.13 million) in just three months.
As a result, the Manchester Crown Court sentenced Atkinson to 15 years in jail.
He and four others admitted a raft of offences including conspiracy to supply Class A drugs (heroin, cocaine and ecstasy) and money laundering.
Atkinson was identified as the ringleader when he sent the photograph, taken in his garden during England’s first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, to a leading member of another drugs gang.
The dark web messages allowed the investigators to trail Atkinson’s purchases and transportation of huge quantities of cocaine with another gang member.
Detective inspector Roger Smethurst told the media that this was an extremely sophisticated drugs gang that effectively distributed mass quantities of cocaine across the North West.
