A woman used her status as a ‘key worker’ during the Covid-19 lockdown to transport cocaine, heroin and cash for a drugs boss, police have said. At a time when travel was limited, police said ‘naïve’ Debra Charlton, 36, took advantage of her exemption.
She’s now been jailed together with Faruquz Zaman, 45, who police said purchased ‘commercial volumes’ of cocaine and heroin from ‘international suppliers’ to sell in Bolton.
Charlton, described as a courier, collected, delivered and stored money and drugs on his behalf, Greater Manchester Police said after they were sentenced.
Zaman, of Cable Street, Bolton, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to supply class A drugs; conspiracy to conceal, convert, disguise and transfer criminal property and encouraging the commission of an offence abroad. He was jailed for 18 years and six months.
Charlton, of Robin Close, Bolton, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class A drugs and conspiracy to conceal, convert, disguise and transfer criminal property. She was jailed for eight years and six months.
Pair jailed after Encrochat take-down
The case follows the infiltration and takedown in 2020 of the encrypted communications platform Encrochat.
The once top-secret messaging system – used by drug dealers, gun runners and gangs – operated on customised Android mobile phones. Accessed by a secure password, a user on the platform was given a unique ‘handle’, typically made up of a noun and an adjective.
GMP
(Image: Manchester Evening News)
The handsets, which cost £1,500 each and were traded among criminals in what police called a crime ‘marketplace’, could only communicate with other EncroChat devices and included a so-called ‘panic wipe’ feature capable of deleting all the phone’s data by the inputting of a four-number code on the home screen.
But in what was described as a ‘game-changer’ by police chiefs in the UK, the National Crime Agency working with crime-fighting colleagues across Europe announced in July 2020 that the EncroChat system’s encryption code had been cracked. Law enforcement agencies could finally see what those they were hunting were saying and planning – and arrests in the hundreds followed, with many dozens of criminal gangs brought down.
Police said Zaman and Charlton both ‘swiftly disposed of their mobile devices and cars they’d been using throughout the conspiracy in an attempt to evade detection’. But it was too late for the pair and they were arrested in August 2020.
‘They thought they were hiding – they were wrong’
A GMP spokesperson said: “There was minimal information on the police computer systems about both Zaman and Charlton, but thanks to the evidence obtained from the encrypted phones, detectives had enough evidence to secure convictions and remove them from our streets.”
Detective Inspector Rick Castley, from GMP’s Serious Organised Crime Group, said: “Zaman and Charlton thought they were hiding behind an encrypted communication system that would keep their identities hidden from police, but they were wrong. They openly communicated on this platform and shared details of their daily lives in and amongst conducting criminal business, which has ultimately led to them going straight to prison.
“The takedown of Encrochat provided us with the opportunity to remove hundreds of criminals from society, and Zaman is the latest. By maintaining a hands-off role, he sought to use naïve and trusted couriers like Debra Charlton to do his business, but she was actively complicit in Zaman’s exploitative trade. Ultimately they are fully deserving of the time in jail they will now serve.”
Both Zaman and Charlton, whose mugshot was not issued by Greater Manchester Police, were sentenced on December 20 at Bolton Crown Court, but details have only just been revealed.