'It's a tragedy that as a result of these crimes you have lost your reputation, your career and you must now lose your liberty'

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

A series of incriminating messages exposed how a corrupt police analyst jeopardised one of the biggest and most successful criminal investigations ever undertaken by law enforcement agencies across the globe.

Somehow, a fresh-faced but troubled 18-year-old new recruit at Cheshire Police, Natalie Mottram, was seconded to the North West Regional Crime Unit to investigate the most serious criminals.

Despite reservations from her sergeant, she went on to be promoted to the key position of intelligence analyst even though she had some very dodgy friends, was thrown out of her family home and was spending £1,500-a-month on cannabis.

But the concerned sergeant was overruled by his inspector and it meant, by the time the Gendarmarie managed to hack the servers of EncroChat in northern France and mine swathes of incrimination data in April 2020, Mottram was among a small coterie of trusted law enforcement workers in the UK who knew the network, dubbed WhatsApp for criminals, had been breached. READ MORE: Man's bizarre actions as fire engulfed his flat 'could have ended in tragic consequences' READ MORE: The top stories across the M.E.N.