An investigation into one of the largest drug cases in the East Midlands, UK
Analysts from East Midlands Special Operations Unit (EMSOU) used Chorus to help break a 15 handed national drugs conspiracy intending to supply the UK with over £1m worth of wholesale drugs.
Products Utilised
Chorus was invaluable for processing and analyzing all the data. Manual processing would have taken several weeks and the additional functionality and speed gave us many options for identifying important details that would have been otherwise impossible to uncover.
Inspector, UK Police Force
A key individual is suspected of a drugs conspiracy with connections to Birmingham, Leicester, Gloucester and Cambridge. Their phone is seized and Chorus uses a contact list to aid the attribution of phones. Messages and keywords are used to identify shipment dates.
The suspect’s phone data is also used to link with other subjects and identify key supply dates.
Chorus finds 28 key dates where Class A and B drugs were couriered, including over £1million of wholesale powder being shipped around the UK.
Chorus analyzed over 300,000 rows of call data records to find that the key suspect used 24 different handsets throughout the conspiracy. 14 other subjects were found to be involved in the case and were also suspected of using clean and dirty phones.
Chorus overlaid ALPR data to show travel of courier vehicles on the key dates. This was combined with handset and call data to attribute to certain individuals.
The links revealed substantially raised the scale of the investigation.
11 of 15 defendants pleaded guilty to conspiring to supply class A and B drugs. The remaining disputed the co-location of clean and dirty phones and highlighted simultaneous use of phones.
A 50 page report from a telco expert was then submitted 1 week before trial by the defense.
However, this was debunked by the investigation team, using Chorus in the run up to the trial.
Chorus was used on the stand to immediately answer questions from the defense:
After 3 days of analytical evidence and cross examination a second key suspect pleaded guilty during trial, a Chorus report proving significant.
