How Phantom Secure, which started as a privacy-focused phone company in Canada, became a network for the Sinaloa Cartel before being shut down by the FBI
flood the market and figure out laws later. Then the FBI investigated him. Based on Phantom sources, internal docs, FBI files, years of reporting, this is “The Network” https://www.vice.com/... Will Strafach / @chronic : very fascinating and comprehensive read on Phantom Secure. I would be interested to better understand what actual hardware modifications and software was used on these special devices. https://twitter.com/... Joseph Cox / @josephfcox : There's an audio adaption of this story here https://play.acast.com/... Joseph Cox / @josephfcox : The piece has Louis Vuitton silver-plated AK-47s; Australian biker hitmen; and phone companies fighting for territory. But it opens with a previously unreported Vegas hotel escape. The FBI had Ramos, questioning him, asked for a backdoor. Then he escaped. https://www.vice.com/... https://twitter.com/... Lauren Shiplett / @laurenshiplett : This club has everything: Blackberries, cartels, global law enforcement, Australians. @josephfcox with an absolute beast insider account of the phone network that became a crime world mainstay and deserves to be your WTF read of the week https://www.vice.com/... Tip @Techmeme Michael Learmonth / @learmonth : How the founder of Phantom Phones, encrypted Blackberries beloved by mob bosses, the Sinaloa cartel, and biker gangs, escaped from the FBI. https://www.vice.com/... via @vice Joseph Cox / @josephfcox : Always wanted to find a story that was compelling enough to commit years of time to, and which deserved beautiful art. I thought Phantom's rise from privacy phone to Sinaloa Cartel gadget was that, and @RebekkaDunlap made this dream come true https://www.vice.com/... https://twitter.com/... Edward Ongweso Jr / @bigblackjacobin : What a crazy story from @josephfcox following the rise and fall of Phantom Secure—an encrypted network on the scene years before Wickr/Signal that seemed to span the globe at one point https://www.vice.com/... @derektmead : This is a stunning story from @josephfcox into the underground world of secure phones that took just an incredible amount of reporting https://www.vice.com/... Joseph Cox / @josephfcox : In the hotel escape scene, the FBI asked Vincent Ramos to place a backdoor in his encrypted phone network, so perhaps they could identify the drug dealers using it. A family member said Ramos didn't do it to respect privacy; others said couldn't do it https://www.vice.com/... https://twitter.com/... Max Daly / @narcomania : This investigation into the world of encrypted phones and organised crime by @josephfcox is one of the best pieces of journalism I think I've ever read. Masterful. Fascinating https://twitter.com/... Tim Marchman / @timmarchman : Incredible, cinematic yarn from @josephfcox about a salesman who sort of fell into being the provider of choice of encrypted luxury phone to criminals and cartels around the world https://www.vice.com/... Jason Koebler / @jason_koebler : NEW: @josephfcox has spent two years digging into Phantom Secure, an encrypted phone company that worked with drug cartels and organized criminals around the world. This is the story of how it got started, how it grew in power, and how it got taken down https://www.vice.com/... Thanks: @laurenshiplett
Context & Ripple Effects
The VICE investigation traces Phantom Secure from a Canadian privacy-phone startup selling modified Blackberries to an encrypted network serving mob bosses, biker gangs, and ultimately the Sinaloa Cartel — until the FBI opened an investigation into founder Vincent Ramos and shut it down. It is the founding case in a now-familiar pattern: the same playbook later surfaced with MPC, another privacy-phone vendor exposed as a criminal front.
What makes the piece pivotal is what came after it in the coverage timeline. Law enforcement stopped just taking networks down and started running them — first infiltrating EncroChat and Sky ECC across Europe, then building and marketing its own device, the FBI-Australian An0m handset sold at $1,700 plus $1,250 a year. Phantom Secure is where that strategy began.
First-order effects
- The Sinaloa Cartel and other criminal subscribers lose their encrypted communications channel overnight, forcing an urgent migration to alternative networks.
- Vincent Ramos faces an active FBI investigation — including his escape while being questioned in a Vegas hotel — and the company's revenue stream ends with the shutdown.
Second-order effects
- Displaced demand flows to rival encrypted networks like EncroChat and Sky ECC, concentrating users on platforms that European police then successfully penetrate at scale.
- The FBI's success converts a takedown into a template: rather than letting the market refill organically, agencies move to control the replacement supply themselves via An0m.
Third-order effects
- Criminal-market enforcement shifts structurally from disruption to substitution — agencies operating the very infrastructure they once dismantled, trading short-term arrests for long-term intelligence access.
- Every 'privacy-focused' phone vendor now carries counterintelligence risk on both sides: buyers can't verify absence of backdoors (Ramos's family denied one existed), and vendors can't prove they aren't state-run, eroding trust across the entire encrypted-device category.
The trend: Law enforcement's approach to criminal encryption has evolved from shutting down networks like Phantom Secure to infiltrating and even operating their successors.