Australian and US law enforcement have combined to bring down two key players in international cocaine trafficking and other criminal enterprises.
Vincent Ramos, the chief executive of a Canada-based encrypted phone company Phantom Secure that was a favourite of criminals in Australia, has entered a guilty plea in a southern California court.
Ramos admitted that he and his co-conspirators facilitated the distribution of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine to Australia, the US, Mexico, Canada, Thailand and Europe by supplying narcotics traffickers with Phantom Secure encrypted communications devices designed to thwart law enforcement.
The FBI estimated 10,000 of the 20,000 Phantom Secure devices in service around the world were used by Australian criminals.
"The Phantom Secure encrypted communication service was designed with one purpose - to provide drug traffickers and other violent criminals with a secure means by which to communicate openly about criminal activity without fear of detection by law enforcement," US Attorney for the Southern District of California, Adam Braverman, said.
"As a result of this investigation, Phantom Secure has been dismantled and its CEO Vincent Ramos now faces a significant prison sentence."
Ramos agreed to forfeit $US80 million as well as of tens of millions of dollars in identified assets, ranging from bank accounts worldwide, houses, a Lamborghini, cryptocurrency accounts and gold coins.
Ramos will also forfeit the server licences and over 150 domains used to operate the infrastructure of the Phantom Secure network, enabling it to send and receive encrypted messages for criminals.
He will be sentenced in San Diego on September 17.
Braverman also dealt the final blow to violent California kingpin Owen Hanson's once mighty and violent cocaine smuggling, money laundering and illegal gambling empire.
Hanson's San Diego-based accountant, Luke Fairfield, was sentenced on Tuesday to 21 months' prison for his role in Hanson's criminal enterprise, nicknamed ODOG.
Fairfield is the last of 22 ODOG defendants charged in the case to be sentenced.
The case arose out of a joint investigation by the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, NSW Police and the NSW Crime Commission.
Hanson, 35, was jailed for 21 years last December in San Diego for trafficking a "staggering" amount of drugs after Australian and US authorities conducted a sting operation and arrested him at a San Diego golf course in 2015.
On one occasion Fairfield personally transferred proceeds of Hanson's Australian drug trafficking to the US using an alias and fake identification.
Fairfield also worked with Hanson to track the collection of debts from bookies and gamblers who owed the ODOG enterprise hundreds of thousands of dollars from illegal bookmaking.
"This conviction would not have been possible without the significant contributions of the Internal Revenue Service and the New South Wales Police Force," John Brown, FBI Special Agent in Charge of the San Diego Field Office, said.
Hanson, a former University of Southern California football player, operated ODOG in Australia, Central and South America and the US from 2012 to 2016.
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