Europol dismantles MATRIX courier service

Europol has carried out a joint operation to crack down on MATRIX, an encrypted instant messaging application used by criminals. The operation involved cooperation between the police forces of Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Lithuania and Spain and involved arrests, searches and server shutdowns in the latter four countries, while in Germany only the servers were shut down. In addition, more than 2.3 million messages in 33 different languages, €145,000 in cash and €500,000 in cryptocurrencies, 4 vehicles and 974 mobile devices have been seized.

The MATRIX app used a more complex infrastructure than other previously detected and intercepted platforms such as Ghost, Sky ECC or EncroChat, and had 40 servers distributed between France and Germany, an encrypted mobile device repair service and cryptocurrency cold wallets.
In Spain, the National Police arrested two people after six searches in Marbella, in which they seized 145,000 euros in cash and 974 mobile phones.