MPC (mobile phone company)

MPC was a company that provided encrypted phones to criminals.[1]

Background

James and Barries Gillespie were brothers involved in crime in Glasgow.[1] They moved to Portugal to avoid being killed in a gang war while running their business.[1] Scottish police have named their gang the Escalade Group.[1]

Encrypted phones

Initially the brothers used phones from Ennetcom.[1] They then hired developers to develop an operating system for their own phones and distributed them to their own gang and others they worked for.[1] They began selling the phones to other gangs.[1]

They sponsored blogger Martin Kok and ran advertisements.[1][2]

They also used intimidation tactics against mobile phone resellers.[1]

The phones they adapted were Nexus 5 or Nexus 5X models.[1]

Murder of Martin Kok

On 8 December 2017 Martin Kok was shot dead outside a sex club in Laren.[3] Christopher Hughes faced charges of concealing money and supplying encrypted devices to others (including Kok), a second charge relating to the supply of cocaine and a final charge in relation to the murder of Kok.[4] In April 2022 Hughes was convicted at the High Court in Stirling, Scotland and jailed for at least 25 years.[5]

Ridouan Taghi is also linked to the murder.[2]

The motive for the murder was blog posts that annoyed Moroccan crime figures with links to the Gillespie brothers. The brothers lulled Kok into a false sense of security by sponsoring him and running adverts on his site. They then arranged for him to be murdered by their associates.[2]

Status

As of October 2019 the company is closed.[1]

References
  1. Cox, Joseph (2019-10-22). "Inside the Phone Company Secretly Run By Drug Traffickers". Motherboard. Retrieved 2022-05-31.
  2. Cox, Joseph (2018-10-24). "Encrypted Phone Company Helped Plan Crime Blogger's Murder, Cops and Source Say". Motherboard. Retrieved 2022-05-31.
  3. Barnes, David (2018-02-08). "The Strange Life of a Murderer Turned Crime Blogger". Wired. Retrieved 2022-05-31.
  4. "Man denies role in sex club murder of Dutch crime writer". BBC News. 7 April 2021. Retrieved 31 May 2022.
  5. "Scottish gangster lured crime writer to 'execution' outside sex club". STV News. 2022-04-22. Retrieved 2022-05-31.
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