It started last month with a job advertisement on the encrypted messaging app Signal. The account was called Sponge Jobb.
A hitman was needed to carry out a murder somewhere in the European Union, wrote the user on August 10th.
A gun and knife would be provided, as well as a motorbike, said Sponge Jobb. The pay was 650,000 Swedish Krona (€58,578).
Danish police had been monitoring this Signal group as part of efforts to combat the rising trend of what Europol calls “violence as a service” (VAAS).
Organised criminals are increasingly using social media and encrypted apps to outsource violent activity, including assault, murder and arson, to third parties, frequently teenagers, in exchange for relatively small sums of money.
The tactic is particularly favoured by the organised crime gangs that have emerged in Scandinavian countries in recent years.
A Danish undercover police officer responded to Sponge Jobb’s message. Posing as a hitman-for hire, he accepted the job.
Sponge Jobb, whose profile picture was the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, claimed to be part of a group that operated all over Europe. The user began working out the logistics with the undercover agent.
The hit would take place in Cyprus and involve not one target but two. He was to kill a pair of British twins who would be holidaying on the island that month.
If they were successfully assassinated, there may be a third job on the island for the hitman, he was later told.
The motivation for murdering the twins remains unclear, but Irish security sources said they were confident the hits were ultimately commissioned by veteran criminals with close links to the Kinahan cartel, the Irish organised crime group considered to be one of Europe’s largest cocaine importers.
The Kinahan group remains a formidable force but, due to the efforts of law enforcement, its reach has been curtailed in recent years. Many of its European contacts are either in jail or on the run.
To compensate, the gang has entered a relationship with other lower-tier criminal groups, including the Foxtrot network based in Sweden and members of the McCarthy-Dundon gang in Ireland.
The Kinahan group occasionally uses these criminals as foot soldiers to carry out dangerous work on the Continent, according to gardaí and a Scandinavian criminal justice source, thereby insulating its own members from potential arrest.
The logistics worked out, a flight was booked for the would-be hitman. The Danish police alerted their counterparts in Cyprus, who placed the undercover agent under discreet surveillance as soon as he touched town on the Mediterranean island on August 24th.
The Irish Times, in co-operation with European outlets including the Cyprus Investigative Reporting Network (CIRN), the Norwegian newspaper VG and Swedish public broadcaster SVT, has reconstructed the events leading up to the planned murder and the attempts by the criminal networks to complete the task, even after the arrest of the alleged conspirators.
By the time the Danish undercover officer touched down, his alleged handlers were already on the island. Two Norwegian men, with links to organised crime, arrived from Oslo on August 11th and 15th.
On August 17th, a 33-year-old man from Co Limerick arrived in Cyprus, having flown from the UK. Unlike his alleged co-conspirators, his criminal record is relatively minor, amounting to a handful of road traffic convictions in Ireland. This includes an arrest for drink driving during which he became aggressive with gardaí.
However, members of the man’s family are linked to the McCarthy-Dundon gang, which is involved in drug trafficking and extortion in Limerick city.
Prosecutors in Cyprus allege the Irish suspect was responsible for liaising with the hitman and passing money to him during his stay.
On August 25th, the Danish agent was directed over Signal to a self-service laundromat in the city to collect some money. Photographs and videos were sent to help him locate the drop. One captured a man, wearing short black trousers and black slippers, placing a white envelope on the wheel of a parked car.
Another photo showed a hand, with a distinctive tattoo, pointing to where the money was placed.
The undercover officer arrived shortly after and messaged the criminals to say that he could not find the money. Investigators allege the Irish man then arrived and began searching the area before leaving.
Local police, acting on instructions from the surveillance team, stopped the Irish man a short distance away. They noticed he was wearing black trousers and slippers and had the same tattoo on his hand as the one in the photograph, prosecutors say.
The officers let the man go but he was placed under close surveillance. In the meantime, the Danish agent received a photograph of the twins he was supposed to assassinate.
Police then observed the Irish man meeting with the two Norwegian suspects before the three men spent some time at a premises on the Marina in Aya Napa, a tourist resort and party town on the islands east coast.
During this period, the Danish agent received instructions about collecting the gun to be used in the murders.
The next day, August 28th, police arrested all three suspects. Searches of their apartments uncovered six mobile phones, two expandable batons and more than €2,600 in cash.
The Norwegian men refused to answer questions from police. A lawyer for the younger Norwegian told VG, the Norwegian publishers, that he denies involvement and is confident he will be acquitted.
The Irish suspect was more forthcoming in police interviews. He denied any wrongdoing and said he was in Cyprus on holiday with two women when he met one of the Norwegian men. He said he dropped the money at the laundromat as a favour to this man, who claimed he owed it to a friend.
Police say that a search of the Irish suspect’s mobile phone revealed a video showing a pistol and magazine inside a briefcase as well as footage of a person processing material resembling cannabis, according to information obtained by CIRN.
On the younger Norwegian’s phone, police found a video of a man being tortured by a masked assailant. Another man can be seen in the footage, strapped to a chair with duct tape on his mouth.
The younger Norwegian man has several serious convictions in Norway relating to firearms, assault, drugs and fraud. The older Norwegian suspect has convictions relating to weapons, and drugs.
Cypriot police continue to liaise with gardaí on the Irish suspect’s background.
“Cypriot Authorities have been in contact with An Garda Síochána regarding an Irish citizen in Cyprus through the Europol communications channel,” a Garda spokesman told The Irish Times.
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The Irish man and the two Norwegians remain in custody but have not been charged. Police say they are being investigated on suspicion of organised crime offences, including conspiracy to murder and participation in a criminal group.
With their arrest, the murder plot came to an abrupt halt, police say. But those behind the conspiracy were not ready to give up on their plan.
Last Friday, Cypriot police received a warning from authorities in Sweden that a suspected hitman had arrived on the island from Stockholm the previous day. Swedish police said they believed the criminal had been sent to complete the hit on the British twins.
Police placed him under surveillance along with another man, who had recently arrived from Sweden and who had previously been arrested on suspicion of commissioning a murder in Stockholm.
That evening, police arrested the two new arrivals along with three other Swedish suspects. Follow-up searches uncovered a pistol, medical masks and disposable gloves.
In interviews, all five Swedes denied wrongdoing and said they were in Cyprus for a holiday.
The Cyprus plot “is a fairly typical violence-as-a-service set-up”, Swedish police superintendent Teodor Smedius told SVT. “They have taken on this assignment, but this time they are not the typical child soldiers – they are a bit older.
“We see that when assignments are carried out abroad, slightly older individuals tend to be recruited. It makes travelling easier and attracts less attention.”
He would not comment on the role of members of the Kinahan cartel in the plot but said it is “absolutely clear that our domestic criminal networks co-operate with other organised criminal networks across Europe”.
This view is borne out by an incident in Limerick last June, when Swedish man Axel Erick Wolfgang Liebsch Morales was killed in a car crash shortly after arriving in Ireland. A loaded gun was found at his feet. Gardaí believe he had been hired by a Limerick-based gang to murder a member of a rival faction in the county.
Meanwhile, the location of the two British twins remains a mystery. Police have established they were in Cyprus but left recently. The men’s family members have told police they have not been seen in two months.