- South Australian police filed 800 new charges after the High Court allowed AN0M messages as admissible evidence.
- Operation Ironside, a joint FBI–AFP probe, continues to expose global crime through intercepted encrypted communications.
- Authorities seized over A$58 million in crypto, highlighting growing financial and technological dimensions of organized crime.
South Australian police have detained 55 people in a new phase of Operation Ironside, a long-running joint investigation between Australian and U.S. authorities targeting organized crime groups. The arrests followed a recent High Court decision that confirmed intercepted messages from the encrypted AN0M app could be admitted as legal evidence in Australian courts. The latest phase produced about 800 additional charges covering drug trafficking, firearms, and conspiracy offenses. Investigators said these new cases extend ongoing prosecutions that also involve financial crimes and money-laundering networks.
Encrypted Messages Lead to Major Evidence Expansion
Operation Ironside began in 2018 when the FBI built and controlled AN0M, a supposedly secure messaging platform that criminal networks used globally. The FBI secretly captured communications before encryption and shared them with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) . According to AFP data, nearly 1,600 devices in Australia carried the app, generating about 19.3 million messages during the operation’s first two phases.
After the High Court rejected legal challenges from two defendants, police gained approval to continue using those messages in ongoing prosecutions. Deputy Commissioner Linda Williams confirmed that the decision “paved the way” for authorities to advance remaining investigations based on the encrypted data.
Cryptocurrency and Financial Tracking Remain Central
The investigators have not given up on the digital assets connected to the Ironside cases. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) estimates that the total amount of cryptocurrency taken by them has reached around A$58 million (US$37.9 million). The law enforcement has been able to follow the money flow through different wallet addresses and connected accounts, thereby increasing their operations to take down the laundering networks. In another case by AFP, a data analyst from the Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce was able to successfully get into a cryptocurrency wallet worth AU$9 million and retrieve the funds, which otherwise might have been lost.
Cryptocurrency and Financial Tracking Remain Central
In different parts of Europe, authorities have noticed a surge in complicated and sophisticated crypto-related criminal activities. According to the Economic and Financial Crime Center of Europol , a recent report by CryptoNewsLand confirmed that criminals are using highly sophisticated methods to hide their blockchain transactions, which in turn is putting a strain on the police departments of the respective countries.
The agency has indicated that it will continue to invest in technology and international collaboration to combat the challenges posed by these methods. The law enforcement regards the third wave of arrests as a part of a long-running campaign against organized crime that has lasted for years. Nevertheless, even though there has been some progress in regulations, surveys conducted nationally reveal that approximately 60 percent of Australians still lack trust in cryptocurrencies, which mirrors the ongoing concern about the association of this technology with crime.
