The Criminal Assets Bureau is to confiscate more than €500,000 from two Dublin bank accounts used by a company which sold encrypted phones to drug dealers and criminal gangs all over the world.
The accounts were used to launder millions of euro which were the proceeds of crime.
The company, Phantom Secure Technology Limited, had an office in Dublin and sold encrypted devices which could remotely delete the criminals communications.
Its director, a Canadian man Victor Ramos has pleaded guilty in the US to racketeering and will be sentenced later this month.
The High Court today granted the CAB orders which allow it to hand the money in the Dublin accounts over to the State.
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The CAB began investigating Phantom Secure, which has a registered office at The Black Church, St Mary’s Place in Dublin 7, in March of this year on foot of information from the FBI.
The company sold encrypted devices for between US$2,000 and $3,000 (€1,755 - €2,632) each and also earned service fees.
It maintained servers in Panama and Hong Kong and used virtual proxy servers to disguise the physical location of the servers.
It enabled criminals to keep their communications private from law enforcement and remotely delete these if the devices were seized by the police.
The devices were linked to major international drug deals in Mexico, Canada, Australia, and the US.
Phantom Secure Technology Limited had an office on the third floor of The Ormond Building in Ormond Quay in Dublin which CAB officers raided in March of this year along with two other premises.
The company was set up here to accept international wire transfers from Phantom Secure distributors all over the world to minimise taxable income in Canada.
Gardaí discovered two Allied Irish Bank accounts linked to Phantom Secure, accounts numbers 1 and 2, which were used in the layering and integration of the money laundering scheme.
Over $7.5m was channeled through account number 1, another $5.5m through account number 2, with over forty lodgments in each from shell companies in Singapore and the British Virgin Islands.
Ramos was arrested following an FBI sting operation in the US and has pleaded guilty to leading a criminal enterprise that facilitated the transnational importation of drugs through the sale and service of encrypted communications devices and is due to be sentenced in two weeks time.
A CAB officer visited him in prison in the US and he agreed to forfeit the contents of the Dublin bank accounts.
The High Court granted CAB orders to confiscate the remaining money. It will be handed over to the exchequer.
The settlement is part of a total forfeiture which includes $80m in the US as well as tens of millions in identified assets ranging from bank accounts worldwide, houses, a Lamborghini, cryptocurrency accounts and gold coins.
Ramos also agreed to forfeit the server licences and more than 150 domains which were used to operate the infrastructure of the Phantom Secure Network enabling it to send and receive encrypted messages for criminals.
