Sources, former sellers, and court records detail “No. 1 Business Communication”, a company that sells an encrypted messaging app used by organized crime groups
Joseph Cox / VICE :
Context & Ripple Effects
No. 1 Business Communication is the latest entry in a lineage VICE has tracked for years: Phantom Secure's CEO was arrested by the FBI in 2018 for customizing BlackBerrys for criminals, the UK gang-run phone vendor MPC shut down under investigation pressure in 2019, and police infiltrated Encrochat in 2020 to read millions of messages and drive international arrests.
The new reporting on No. 1 BC — built from sources, former sellers, and court records rather than a company statement — shows the model survived every one of those takedowns: load an encrypted messaging app onto phones and distribute them through reseller networks into organized crime. That court records are now documenting the seller side suggests investigators are working their way down the distribution chain.
First-order effects
- Former sellers speaking to press and court records naming the company mean No. 1 BC's reseller network is exposed at exactly the tier — distribution, not technology — where law enforcement has repeatedly found leverage.
- Organized crime groups relying on No. 1 BC's phones now face the same risk profile that preceded Encrochat's compromise: a named vendor whose infrastructure and sales channels can be mapped.
Second-order effects
- Following the Phantom Secure-to-Sinaloa Cartel playbook and the Encrochat arrests, expect remaining encrypted-phone operators to harden distribution — fewer identifiable sellers, more offshore hosting — while investigators target resellers as the repeatable entry point.
- Each documented takedown pushes buyers toward newer, less-proven vendors, cycling demand through the same market faster than authorities can close it.
Third-order effects
- The recurring pattern across Phantom Secure, MPC, Encrochat, and now No. 1 BC points toward encryption-for-hire becoming a persistent underground industry structured like a supply chain — vendor, resellers, customers — where removing one node regenerates demand for the next, keeping lawful-privacy vendors under suspicion by association.
The trend: Encrypted criminal communications keeps proving a hydra market: every law-enforcement takedown of a phone network seeds demand for a successor, making reseller networks the durable battleground between vendors and investigators.