Greater Manchester Police’s role in EncroChat takedown revealed in new Channel 4 documentary series
Greater Manchester Police’s role in one of the UK’s most significant criminal investigations into organised crime has been spotlighted in Channel 4’s new documentary series, Operation Dark Phone: Murder by Text, which aired in earlier this summer.
The four-part series explores the dramatic infiltration of EncroChat – an encrypted communications platform used by organised crime groups across Europe. The breach allowed law enforcement agencies, including GMP, to monitor messages in real time for 74 days, leading to a wave of arrests and convictions of some of GM’s most serious organised criminals.
The force was at the forefront of this national effort, working closely with the National Crime Agency (NCA) and other regional forces as part of Operation Venetic – the UK’s response to the EncroChat takedown.
To date, GMP has made 269 arrests as part of the operation, with 215 individuals already sentenced to a combined total of over 2,120 years in prison.
Over 40 suspects remain either on trial or awaiting sentencing.
At the centre of GMP’s investigation was Jamie Rothwell (38), a fugitive drugs kingpin from Salford, who used EncroChat extensively. When the encrypted platform was compromised in April 2020, Rothwell fled the UK and settled in Spain, continuing to orchestrate the importation and distribution of drugs, firearms, and criminal cash from abroad but was later apprehended
Detective Superintendent Joseph Harrop, who has overseen GMP’s contribution, said: “The EncroChat breakthrough gave us an extraordinary opportunity to strike at the heart of organised crime. We saw complex drug supply plots as well as very real threats of extreme violence coming to the streets of Greater Manchester being developed in real time.”
Adding: “For the first time, we were able to read messages shortly after they were sent—often within hours. This meant seeing how and where drugs were moved to, how violence was planned, and how criminal networks operated at scale. But with that insight came responsibility. We had to act with care and tact, as well as urgency to protect the public while gathering as much evidence as possible to ensure the strongest outcomes in court. It was truly a unique moment in policing, and our teams rose to the challenge.”
The Channel 4 series is available to stream now.