MPC (mobile phone company)

MPC was a company that provided encrypted phones to criminals.[1]

## Contents

* 1 Background
* 2 Encrypted phones
* 2.1 Murder of Martin Kok
* 3 Status
* 4 References

## Background

James and Barries Gillespie were brothers involved in crime in Glasgow.[1] They moved to Portugal to avoid being killed in a gang war while running their business.[1] Scottish police have named their gang the Escalade Group.[1]

## Encrypted phones

Initially the brothers used phones from Ennetcom.[1] They then hired developers to develop an operating system for their own phones and distributed them to their own gang and others they worked for.[1] They began selling the phones to other gangs.[1]

They sponsored blogger Martin Kok and ran advertisements.[1][2]

They also used intimidation tactics against mobile phone resellers.[1]

The phones they adapted were Nexus 5 or Nexus 5X models.[1]

### Murder of Martin Kok

On 8 December 2017 Martin Kok was shot dead outside a sex club in Laren.[3] Christopher Hughes faced charges of concealing money and supplying encrypted devices to others (including Kok), a second charge relating to the supply of cocaine and a final charge in relation to the murder of Kok.[4] In April 2022 Hughes was convicted at the High Court in Stirling, Scotland and jailed for at least 25 years.[5]

Ridouan Taghi is also linked to the murder.[2]

The motive for the murder was blog posts that annoyed Moroccan crime figures with links to the Gillespie brothers. The brothers lulled Kok into a false sense of security by sponsoring him and running adverts on his site. They then arranged for him to be murdered by their associates.[2]

## Status

As of October 2019 the company is closed.[1]

## References

1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 Cox, Joseph (2019-10-22). "Inside the Phone Company Secretly Run By Drug Traffickers". Motherboard. https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjwbmm/inside-the-phone-company-secretly-run-by-drug-traffickers.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Cox, Joseph (2018-10-24). "Encrypted Phone Company Helped Plan Crime Blogger's Murder, Cops and Source Say". Motherboard. https://www.vice.com/en/article/kz4yxa/encrypted-phone-company-mpc-helped-martin-kok-murder.
3. ↑ Barnes, David (2018-02-08). "The Strange Life of a Murderer Turned Crime Blogger". Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/the-strange-life-of-martin-kok/. Retrieved 2022-05-31.
4. ↑ "Man denies role in sex club murder of Dutch crime writer". BBC News. 7 April 2021. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-56665537.
5. ↑ "Scottish gangster lured crime writer to 'execution' outside sex club" (in en-GB). 2022-04-22. https://news.stv.tv/world/glasgow-gangster-christopher-hughes-lured-crime-writer-martin-kok-to-execution-outside-amsterdam-sex-club.

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