Melbourne man charged over alleged drug rink linked to Ghost app

The Melbourne boss of a top agricultural company has been caught up in raids involving the Ghost app and charged over a syndicate that allegedly trafficked meth, cocaine and MDMA.

The Melbourne boss of a successful agricultural company is among those entangled in nationwide raids on users of the Ghost communications app.

Caner Dogan, 36, was arrested this week at his swanky Docklands apartment by Australian Federal Police officers working on an operation called Kraken-Rishi.

He has been charged over a syndicate which allegedly trafficked 128kg of methamphetamine, cocaine and MDMA in the first half of this year.

Mr Dogan, the director of Global Farms International, and another man had been arrested and charged months earlier for allegedly doing a drug deal in Port Melbourne.

Police involved in that swoop seized two electronic devices from a hidden compartment in one of their vehicles.

Also confiscated from the compartment were scales and 12 clip-seal bags each containing 1kg of methamphetamine.

Allegedly hidden in the other vehicle was a “brick” of cocaine, three electronic devices and $30,000 in cash.

Another 18 devices were recovered from a Port Melbourne office.

A brick of cocaine was allegedly hidden in a vehicle. Picture: iStock

The AFP this week charged Mr Dogan and two other men with high-level methamphetamine and cocaine trafficking charges.

Swept up in a separate arm of Kraken was a well-connected Melbourne player with links to Middle-Eastern organised crime and bikie gangs.

He faces high-level tobacco importation charges.

Many of those arrested this week face charges which stemmed from months of AFP analysis of messages which senders and recipients thought were for their eyes only.

They were wrong and many of those transmissions ended up being highly incriminating.

Ghost had become popular among organised crime figures since being developed by its accused mastermind, Jay Je Yoon Jung, 32, from Sydney’s southwest

The AFP described Jung as a “computer geek” who had allegedly raked in millions from a platform which connected Australia criminals to their counterparts around the world.

Jung was allegedly 23 years old when he created Ghost while living at his parents’ home.

Encrypted technology has for more than a decade been regarded as giving criminal organisations a major advantage over law enforcement.

An AFP officer arrests a suspect allegedly involved in use of the Ghost communications app. Picture: Australian Federal Police

But there have been significant instances where users have been left exposed in recent years.

Ghost is the second major platform since 2021 to be cracked, opening up the secrets of the underworld.

In that year, the worldwide Ironside operation spearheaded by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and the AFP resulted in the arrests of hundreds of crime figures, including powerful outlaw motorcycle gang members and mafia figures.

It centred on the ANOM app, which was marketed as a surveillance-proof communications platform but had actually been created by police to harvest messages.

An underworld source said the Ghost phones cost up to $2500 and there were other versions available on the dark and “clear” web.

“I’d never trust a service like this. One, you don’t know who’s customising the devices and what kind of info they can access. Two, they’re always going to get done. It’s just the way of the world,” the source said.

Originally published as Melbourne man charged over alleged drug rink linked to Ghost app