Sources: MPC, which pitched itself as a privacy-focused smartphone vendor, was run by a violent UK gang, shuttering after multiple investigations into it began
Crime blogger Martin Kok was assassinated while leaving a sex club. It turned out MPC, one of his clients, was not an ordinary phone company. Tweets: @josephfcox , @josephfcox , @vice , @derektmead , @jason_koebler , and @astepanovich Tweets: Joseph Cox / @josephfcox : The DEA confirmed to us that MPC, the phone company, is part of the investigation. The company may be closed now, but today the two kingpin Brothers remain free, likely in South America https://www.vice.com/... pic.twitter.com/9PoWkRVKY7 Joseph Cox / @josephfcox : Escalade group, which controls the phone company MPC, are highly technologically sophisticated. When police pursued them, it seemed the gang's cars had phone jamming equipment in them. They hid weapons in compartments in vans. Tech expert; top end stuff. https://www.vice.com/... pic.twitter.com/ToQq2FYaW1 @vice : NEW: Crime blogger Martin Kok was assassinated while leaving a sex club. It turned out MPC, one of his clients, was not an ordinary phone company. MORE: https://www.vice.com/... @derektmead : COCAINE, MURDER, RINGTONES: turns out this cell phone company is actually run by an international criminal ring. what a DOOZY of a story: https://www.vice.com/... Jason Koebler / @jason_koebler : this story is an incredibly wild ride from start to finish: https://www.vice.com/... Amie Stepanovich / @astepanovich : I've been saying this would happen for years. Undermining commercial encryption will have a very short shelf life in assisting with criminal investigations as encryption becomes regular criminal tradecraft. Instead it will only make the rest of us terrifyingly insecure. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
MPC is the second entry in a now-familiar arc: a vendor selling 'privacy-focused' hardened phones that turns out to be organized crime itself. The template was set by Canada's Phantom Secure, whose CEO was arrested by the FBI in 2018 for customizing BlackBerrys for criminals (removing microphones and cameras, routing messages through overseas servers) before the company became a Sinaloa Cartel network and was shut down. What distinguishes MPC is that the operator wasn't merely serving criminals — sources say the Escalade group, a violent UK gang with jamming equipment and hidden weapons, ran the phone business directly, and it counted assassinated crime blogger Martin Kok among its clients.
The closure comes as multiple investigations, including one the DEA has confirmed, converge on the company — while the two kingpin brothers behind it reportedly remain free, likely in South America. The story matters because it shows law enforcement moving up the stack: not just arresting end users, but dismantling the vendors who supply criminals' communications.
First-order effects
- MPC's criminal customer base loses its phone provider overnight, forcing an urgent migration to rival encrypted-phone services like the ones later documented at 'No. 1 BC'.
- The DEA's confirmed role in the investigation gives US authorities visibility into MPC's client list and distribution chain even as the Escalade brothers evade capture abroad.
Second-order effects
- Displaced MPC users become addressable market for surviving encrypted-phone vendors, intensifying competition among providers that must weigh criminal revenue against takedown risk.
- Each vendor collapse hands investigators a fresh trove of subscriber data and trade craft, feeding the infiltration playbook European police later used against EncroChat and Sky ECC.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Phantom Secure, then MPC — the encrypted-phone niche consolidates around fewer, more cautious operators while police shift resources from arresting individual buyers to owning entire networks, as the EncroChat and Sky ECC breaches eventually demonstrated.
The trend: Hardened-phone vendors keep being exposed as criminal enterprises themselves, pulling law enforcement from one-off vendor takedowns toward wholesale infiltration of encrypted communication networks.