By Perry Duffin
The underworld’s “unhackable” phone network, relied on by gangsters to plot murderous violence and co-ordinate the global drug trade, has been infiltrated by Australian Federal Police who have captured the alleged mastermind who ran the network from his Sydney bedroom.
More than 700 police are beating down the doors of users of the “Ghost” network in Sydney and Melbourne, and raids are looming in Europe and North America, with the young man who allegedly built their safe haven, a karaoke-singing IT whiz kid, charged late on Tuesday.
A 32-year-old man was arrested at his parents’ home in Sydney on Tuesday morning by AFP raid teams. He has since been charged with assisting a criminal organisation, dealing with suspected criminal money over $100,000 and cryptocurrency offences.
Police claim the man, Jay Je Yoon Jung, is the architect and “Administrator” of Ghost, and that his arrest is sending the underworld scrambling for safe harbour.
Little is known about the shadowy Administrator, but police sources close to the investigation say he is completely unassuming, nerdy and good with computers.
Jung works in his family’s legitimate business, and he still lives at home.
Sources say he is socially awkward, has no partner and does not travel – but loves karaoke.
Jay Je Yoon Jung, the alleged administrator of the Ghost network arrested at his parents’ home in Sydney on Tuesday by the Australian Federal Police.Credit: AFP
The only suggestion the young man lives a second life is a black high-end Mercedes, which would have sold for almost $300,000 when brand new.
But for almost a decade, police claim he has allegedly been the enabler-in-chief of the criminal gangs looking to profit off Australia’s insatiable hunger, and deep pockets, for drugs.
Among his nearly 400 current domestic customers, police claim, are Australia’s home-grown bikie gangs, but also Middle Eastern organised crime groups, Italian crime families and Korean gangs.
They have used Ghost to orchestrate the money laundering, violent crimes, including extortion and threats to kill, that follow the illicit drug trade.
The Administrator’s only indulgence is his black high-end Mercedes, like the one pictured here.
But six months ago, the AFP found a way in to the impervious network – allegedly through Jung’s own computers.
Police allege that each time he sent out an update, a back-up of the messages was copied to the AFP, leaving more than 125,000 exchanges from the last six months now in the hands of law enforcement.
About 50 lives have been saved, police say, after plots to use “extreme violence” against rival gangsters, their associates and families were uncovered in the Ghost messages.
By the end of Tuesday, 38 people had been arrested: 23 in NSW, 13 in Victoria, and one each in SA and WA.
More than 200kg of drugs, $1.2m in cash and 25 weapons were seized.
Inside Ghost
The Administrator was just 23, the AFP claims, when he launched the Ghost network and began building what are known as dedicated encrypted communications devices (DECDs).
DECDs are smartphones built with customised hardware and software to keep law enforcement from intercepting or breaching messages.
One of the arrests from the AFP raids that swept through Sydney on Tuesday.Credit: AFP
They are a cut above the consumer-grade encrypted technology available through the likes of WhatsApp or Signal, and their price reflects that.
Over the last nine years, the young man has allegedly sold the DECDs for about $2350 through eight hand-picked lieutenants known as “resellers”.
The resellers, police allege, are either experienced criminals or have insights into gangs and are tasked with vetting new users before they can be sold a Ghost phone.
The difficulty of obtaining a Ghost phone, through a shadowy reseller, the steep price, and the high-end encryption meant criminals are the only users of the devices.
There are more than 600 active Ghost phones around the world, about 400 of those in Australia.
The remainder are spread across Italy, Sweden, Ireland and Canada, reflecting the global connections required to run major drug supply chains into Australia.
Ghost bragged about security, describing itself as an “encrypted communication service of the future”.
Crucially, it was running on decentralised networks with post-quantum encryption – in simple terms, law enforcement could not hack into Ghost.
Added layers of security, auto-deleting messages, voice disguises, pseudonym usernames and remote-wiping meant even seized phones could be of little use.
The young man is alleged to have stored profits from the phones in cryptocurrency. The AFP expects to seize millions of dollars in the coming days from online wallets.
He was allegedly motivated by money, police say, and the intellectual pursuit.
“Other than a financial motive, the AFP is not aware of why he allegedly created or administered the platform,” a statement reads.
Ghost phones came with a six-month subscription which entitled users to a type of tech support, and police claim the Administrator personally interacted with his criminal customers.
So as the Administrator allegedly walked gangsters through their tech problems, police say he became acutely aware of the havoc his creation was causing on the streets of Sydney, Melbourne and beyond.
Ghost goes mainstream
Today the Administrator is 32 and, despite his unassuming lifestyle, has allegedly become the IT guy for gangs including the Comancheros, Finks, Mongols and Hells Angels – not to mention the infamous Italian mafias in Victoria and Middle Eastern gangs of Sydney.
His rise can be partly attributed to the decline and fall of a host of competitors in the DECD black market.
When Ghost was in its infancy, encrypted Blackberry phones were being modified by a company called Phantom Secure throughout Canada and Australia.
There were about 20,000 users at its zenith, but the AFP and Canadian Royal Mounted Police dismantled Phantom Secure in 2018.
Over the following years more major DECD players, including EncroChat, Sky ECC, and Ciphr, were either all destroyed or blocked to Australians following major busts.
Without doubt, the AN0M platform has made the most international headlines.
The AFP and FBI in 2018 secretly developed their own DECD, and used human sources in the underworld to effectively sign criminals on to a flawed system.
Millions of messages were intercepted over three years until 2021, when global raids netted more than 800 suspects in 16 countries.
Murders, drug deals and countless other crimes were prosecuted by authorities with the information criminals had unwittingly provided to law enforcement across the world.
The fall of AN0M meant those who escaped the arrests were skittish about DECDs and returned to the old ways of doing business.
For some that no doubt meant meeting in person, patting each other down, checking for police wiretaps.
But for the global drug traders, who need long-distance communication, it meant returning to tried and true services – including Ghost.
Throughout the lifetime of Ghost, administrator records show, more than 1700 devices were sold.
Hacking the unhackable
Global law enforcement has long been aware of Ghost, which turned up on phones during arrests in Australia and abroad for years.
The European Union’s law enforcement arm, Europol, set up a taskforce to bring down the network, and in 2022 alerted the AFP that the Administrator appeared to be in Sydney.
But to infiltrate Ghost the AFP, launching Operation Kraken, had to engineer a virus-like program and get it into the Administrator’s computers.
The AFP are hesitant to share details of how they reached the Administrator’s systems, but once they did, the “covert” program sat dormant until he sent updates to Ghost phones.
“The AFP was able to modify those updates, which basically infected the devices, enabling the AFP to access the content on devices in Australia,” a briefing statement reads.
Since March 2024, messages were landing in law enforcement hands, but the users continued to share brazen plans and incriminating photographs.
Among them, sources say, are photographs of designer dogs sitting on piles of cash, expensive watches, guns pressed against heads, and even selfies and intimate “dick pics”.
Secret arrests
The Administrator is not the first person arrested by Kraken investigators. AFP sources say they have intervened in about 50 “threats to life”, which meant arresting both potential attackers and victims from the criminal world.
Others, too, have already been hauled before the courts on other charges, including drug trafficking.
In May, a meth lab was knocked over in Mount Druitt, leading to the arrest of three men.
One of the men, Brandon Lamb, appeared in Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday.
Investigators allegedly found four plastic bags containing cocaine in a designer handbag in his Oran Park home.
Lamb allegedly used Ghost to discuss a so-called “dummy run” where 3 kilograms of sea salt would be imported, the AFP said in a briefing statement.
Lamb’s lawyer told the court there was no sign he was a member of organised crime, but conceded drug importations often come with the territory.
He was granted bail on a charge of cocaine trafficking.
On Tuesday more arrests followed across Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.
In Melbourne, three men were expected to face courts for separate plots to import cocaine, MDMA and methamphetamine in commercial quantities.
In Sydney’s Blacktown and Downing Centre, more alleged drug importers faced court throughout the day.
Jung is expected to face court on Wednesday in Sydney.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.