South Australia Rounds Up Another 55 Suspects After High Court Backs Encrypted-App Sting

South Australia Police made 55 arrests over the weekend in the latest phase of Operation Ironside, the long-running domestic arm of a global sting that infiltrated an encrypted messaging network, following the High Court’s ruling that intercepted messages could be used as evidence.

Authorities have filed some 800 new charges tied to drug trafficking, firearms, and conspiracy offenses, adding to ongoing Ironside cases that already cover financial crime and money laundering.

Crypto, traced through wallet addresses and associated accounts, has remained a key part of the probe, with seizures adding to what is already around A$58 million (US$37.9 million), per a 2024 estimate from the Australian Federal Police.

Operation Ironside is a joint investigation by the Australian Federal Police and the FBI targeting organized crime networks. It began in 2018 and centered on AN0M, an encrypted messaging app that the FBI secretly controlled until June 2021.

Authorities were “able to leverage” intelligence gathered from the encrypted app to pursue criminal networks after the High Court’s early October ruling confirmed the messages could be used in court and “paved the way [for us] to go to resolution today,” Deputy Commissioner Linda Williams said in a statement to ABC News.

The High Court’s ruling came after two suspects challenged a law that confirmed AN0M messages were lawfully gathered by police. The court rejected their claim, allowing investigators to keep using the intercepted communications as evidence in ongoing criminal cases.

Counter-encryption?

The AN0M app was installed on modified phones and sold through criminal intermediaries as an ultra-secure tool.

The phones had no camera, GPS, or browser, making them look purpose-built for covert use. That stripped-down design helped the app spread quickly through drug, weapons, and money-laundering circles.

Investigators did not purposely break the encryption protecting AN0M; instead, they had built a hidden system that secretly captured each message before it was encrypted and sent.

The FBI held the master encryption keys, allowing messages to be automatically duplicated to servers under law-enforcement control, which were then shared with the Australian Federal Police.

At least 1,600 devices were running AN0M in Australia, with about 19.3 million messages detected across them during the operation’s first two waves, according to data from the Australian Federal Police.

Elsewhere in the world, Europol has stated that criminal crypto use is becoming “increasingly sophisticated” and has strained police resources.

The third wave of successful arrests under Operation Ironside comes as Australians continue to generally distrust crypto for its criminal associations, despite the Albanese government’s inroads into regulatory progress this year.

At least 60% of Australians don’t trust crypto, with 31% citing lingering concerns about fraud, according to data compiled by Swyftx.