British authorities arrested two drug traffickers belonging to a larger organized crime group, thanks largely to intelligence gathered from a photo of a dog belonging to one of the suspects, a small French Bulldog known as Bob, the National Crime Agency said Tuesday.
Stefan Baldauf, 64, and Philip Lawson’s, 63, plan to smuggle out of the country 448 kg of ecstasy, worth roughly £45 million ($55.5 million) on the street, fell apart after Baldauf received a photo of Bob, belonging to Danny Brown, 57, one of his accomplices.
As part of Operation Venetic, investigators intercepted the photo exchanged between the drug traffickers and discovered that Bob’s collar had his owner’s phone number on it.
Venetic’s purpose was to crack how criminals were communicating with each other following the 2020 takedown of EncroChat, an encrypted platform used predominantly by organized crime groups. The discovery of the phone number was a boon for police to tie the traffickers to the same conspiracy, the NCA said.
Authorities determined from the suspects’ online exchanges that they conspired to stash almost half a tonne of ecstasy in the arm of an excavator and ship it to their Australian accomplices. They even rigged an auction for the machine to ensure the drugs reached their intended recipients, investigators said.
“These criminals did not care about the misery and exploitation that the supply of illegal drugs bring to U.K. and Australian communities,” said Chris Hill, who led the NCA investigation. “All they cared about was money.”
The discovery of Brown’s number alone allowed police to determine his place of residency. A separate intercepted photo sent by Baldauf also showed his face through his reflection in a brass door sign, thereby revealing his physical identity.
Baldauf, who was jailed for 28 years in December 2022, was ordered on Monday to repay a little over £1 million ($1.2 million) in penalties. The court gave him three months to deliver, lest he face an additional seven years added to his sentence.
Lawson, who designed how the drugs were to be concealed and then extracted from the excavator, was initially sentenced to 23 years. He too received a fine in the amount of £182,476 ($225,000) and will serve an extra three years should he not pay within three months.
The other members of their drug trafficking menagerie, including Brown, were sentenced to a combined 163 years in prison by U.K. and Australian authorities.
Authorities did not immediately respond when asked what became of Bob.
