Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard’s podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.
Mafioso Bartolo Bruzzaniti needed everyone to do their job just right. First, the Colombian suppliers would hide a massive amount of cocaine inside bananas at the port city of Turbo, Colombia. That shipping container would then be transported across the ocean to Catania, in Sicily, Italy. A corrupt port worker on the mafia’s payroll would wave the shipment through and had advised the group how to package the drugs. This was so the cocaine could remain undetected even if the worker was forced to scan the shipment. Another group of on-the-ground mafiosos would then unload the cocaine outside of the port.
In March 2021, Bruzzaniti, an alleged member of the infamous ‘Ndrangheta mafia group and who says Milan belongs to him “by right,” asked his brother Antonio to go fetch something else crucial to the traffickers’ success.
“Go right now,” Bruzzaniti wrote in a text message later produced in court records. “It’s needed urgently.”
Investigators know what Bruzzaniti said because European authorities had penetrated an encrypted phone network called Sky and harvested a bill of the users’ messages. These phones are the technological backbone of organized crime around the world.
The thing Antonio needed to urgently fetch was a phone from a different encrypted phone network, one that the authorities appear to have not compromised and which the mafia have been using as part of their operations. To that phone, a contact sent one half of the shipping container’s serial number.
A reporting collaboration between Motherboard, lavialibera, and IrpiMedia has identified that encrypted phone as being run by a company called No. 1 Business Communication (No. 1 BC). The investigation has found members of the mafia and other organized crime groups turning to No. 1 BC as authorities cracked down on other platforms. The collaboration has identified multiple key players in No. 1 BC’s development, sales, and legal structure.
“Take the bc1 right away,” Bruzzaniti wrote in another text, referring to the No. 1 BC phone.
Left: a photo of stacks of product sent over Sky. Right: a photo of a No. 1 BC phone and half of the shipping container’s serial number. Image: Motherboard.
Last week, European authorities arrested 132 members of the ‘Ndrangheta, the infamous mafia organization that Bruzzaniti was part of. The ‘Ndrangheta is accused of top-tier cocaine trafficking from South America, weapons smuggling out of Pakistan, money laundering across Europe, and a series of other crimes around the world, according to a press release from Europol. A Europol spokesperson told Motherboard that the operation was a result of intelligence from Sky and another hacked network called Encrochat.
As part of those arrests, Italian courts unsealed another cache of documents which say that the content of a mafio’s encrypted messages on No. 1 BC were “not intercepted.” Bruzzaniti remains a fugitive.
Intercepted messages from Sky included in court records also show an Albanian organized crime group discussing No. 1 BC, explaining they paid over 10,000 Euros for around half a dozen phones. This group believed that No. 1 BC was more secure than Sky at the time, according to the court records.
“We need 8 pieces,” one of their messages reads.
Names linked to No. 1 BC identified as part of this investigation include a high profile American investor and businessman, a Ukrainian technologist, and a convicted drug trafficker and money launderer. The investigation paints a picture of an organization that has existed in the shadows for years, but which recently gathered more significance among organized criminals after law enforcement agencies knocked out No. 1 BC’s main competitors, like Sky and Encrochat.
One former No. 1 BC seller told Motherboard the company was at some point “big on the market.” Motherboard granted multiple sources in this story anonymity to speak more candidly about industry developments.
Do you know anything else about No. 1 BC? Do you work for the company, or are you a user? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.
“The revolutionary solution for protecting voice communication,” No. 1 BC’s website read in 2009 shortly after it launched. In a German l
