Sky Global Marketing Charge: Indictment, Takedown, and Prosecutions

The Sky Global indictment is a March 12, 2021 federal case out of the Southern District of California charging the Vancouver company’s founder and CEO, Jean-François Eap, and a former top distributor, Thomas Herdman, with racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. Prosecutors allege the pair ran Sky Global’s encrypted phone platform, Sky ECC, as a communications backbone for transnational drug trafficking organizations. Both counts carry a maximum of life in prison.¹

The Charges in the U.S. Indictment

The indictment, filed as Case No. 21-CR-822GPC, brings two counts: racketeering conspiracy under the federal RICO statute, and conspiracy to distribute heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine. Prosecutors say Sky Global knowingly facilitated the importation and distribution of narcotics into Australia, Asia, Europe, and North America.¹

The core allegation is that after 2018, the company adopted what the government calls an “ask nothing/do nothing” policy, deliberately avoiding any inquiry into how customers used the devices in order to maintain “plausible deniability.” The indictment also alleges employees used Bitcoin and shell companies to process payments and conceal profits.¹ In a November 2021 court filing, the government argued that because of the phones’ limited functionality and closed network, “all of [such] customers are believed to be involved in serious criminal activity.”²

Sky Global had at least 70,000 devices in active use worldwide at the time of the indictment and had generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, according to prosecutors.¹

What Sky ECC Actually Was

Sky Global installed proprietary encryption software on off-the-shelf phones from Apple, Google, BlackBerry, and Nokia and sold them as subscriptions through a global network of distributors. The devices operated on a closed network routed through servers in Canada and France, and users could exchange end-to-end encrypted text messages, photos, and voice recordings. The platform was not available in mainstream app stores; devices moved through private channels.³

The security features are central to the government’s theory of the case. A “panic button” let users immediately erase a device, the company could remotely wipe seized phones, the app interface could be hidden, and the system flagged tampered messages.³

The Takedown That Came With the Indictment

The U.S. charges landed in the middle of a coordinated international operation. Starting in 2020, under Europol’s Operational Taskforce LIMIT, a joint investigation team from Belgium, France, and the Netherlands deployed a “man-in-the-middle” server at the OVH data center in Roubaix, France, attaching it to the Sky ECC infrastructure and capturing messages and encryption keys in real time.⁴ Dutch authorities alone obtained roughly 500 million decrypted messages.⁵

In March 2021, roughly 1,600 Belgian law enforcement officers executed raids on premises tied to drug trafficking, money laundering, and bribery. Across Belgium and the Netherlands, at least 80 people were arrested in the first wave, with 28 guns recovered in Rotterdam and 185 encrypted devices confiscated in Belgium.⁶ Sky Global shut down after BlackBerry revoked its access to the company’s device management services, and U.S. authorities seized the company’s website, replacing it with a banner carrying the logos of the FBI, DEA, U.S. Marshals Service, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.⁷

Where Eap Stands Now

Eap has denied wrongdoing from the start. He has said he built tools to protect what he calls “the fundamental right to privacy,” and has compared himself to a gun manufacturer, arguing that criminal misuse of a product does not make the maker liable.² His attorneys at Steptoe & Johnson filed a motion in the Southern District of California challenging the government’s seizure of over 100 Sky web domains, and said they offered to cooperate with the DOJ in July 2021 but were rebuffed.⁸

As of the most recent reporting, Eap has not been arrested or extradited. He continues to live and run businesses in Canada.⁹ No extradition proceedings had been initiated, and no charges have been filed against him in Canada. The U.S. case has been described as “dormant.”¹⁰

The Parallel French Prosecution

While the U.S. case has stalled, France has pursued its own prosecution. In August 2024, following a multi-year investigation by French judges, Eap and 30 other individuals were indicted in Paris on charges including criminal association, money laundering, and distributing encrypted devices without proper registration. The defendants include senior employees, distributors, and local vendors. Ten resellers with ties to France were specifically charged, and seven had prior convictions for drug or weapons trafficking.²

Herdman, the U.S. co-defendant, was arrested in Spain in June 2021 on a French warrant and held at Fleury-Mérogis prison south of Paris for over four years. He faces 22 charges in France, including money laundering related to drug importation and the unauthorized supply of cryptographic equipment. In June 2025, a Paris court released him under strict judicial supervision, including electronic monitoring, house arrest, and an €80,000 bail with additional monthly payments. In December 2025, a Paris appeals court rejected his petition to expedite trial and denied bail, citing flight risk and the allegation that he held between 65 and 100 bitcoins.¹¹ The French trial for all 30-plus defendants is scheduled for November 2026 and is expected to last up to three months.¹²

What the Intercepted Data Has Produced

The messages captured during the takedown have become the backbone of hundreds of organized crime prosecutions. As of early 2026, more than 1,200 people had been convicted in cases built on the decrypted data, with 470 investigations opened and over 200 ongoing cases enriched by the intercepts. Courts have handed down a combined total of more than 3,600 years of prison time, with individual sentences running as high as 17 years. Authorities have seized more than €224 million in criminal assets.¹³

Convictions have reached beyond drug trafficking into violence, weapons offenses, money laundering, and breach of professional secrecy. The messages let investigators link drug shipments moving through Belgium and South America to leaders operating from the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Morocco, and Albania. The UAE has extradited 13 suspects to Belgium. About a third of the intercepted messages were in Albanian, tied to 578 suspects, and Belgian data helped solve 15 murders and 15 attempted murders in Albania.¹³

Legal Challenges to the Evidence

The intercepts are being contested in courtrooms across Europe. In an Antwerp trial involving alleged crime boss Nordin El Hajjioui, forensic expert Duncan Campbell presented a report arguing the Sky ECC evidence is “unreliable” and fails to meet international forensic standards. Campbell found the data files lacked digital fingerprints, hashes, or signatures needed to verify integrity, and that datasets prosecutors claimed were “identical” between 2022 and 2025 actually differed by 108,000 messages in the newer version. He concluded the Belgian police’s proprietary analysis tool, “Edge,” was “not fit for purpose” and had produced duplicated messages and misattributed content.⁴

The Antwerp Regional Court adjourned the trial in November 2025 to investigate the data integrity questions, resumed proceedings in early 2026, said it would take Campbell’s findings into consideration, denied the defense access to the raw intercepted data, and refused to postpone further.⁴

Other courts have gone further. A provincial court in Valencia, Spain, acquitted 14 defendants after ruling that digital evidence could not be relied upon without defense access to raw intercepts. An Italian court ordered prosecutors to turn over raw intercept data for independent reliability checks.⁴ The French Supreme Court has referred the legality of the French police hacking operation to the European Court of Justice to determine whether EU citizens can challenge the evidence.¹⁴

A separate line of challenge concerns which country actually ran the hack. Reporting from Leiden University found in 2025 that the key hacking tool was developed by Dutch authorities, Dutch police seized the Roubaix servers, and the intercepted data was processed in the Netherlands, even though the Dutch prosecution service had attributed the operation to France. Dutch courts had not required prosecutors to account for the hack’s legality or proportionality on the assumption it was exclusively French.⁵

1
U.S. Department of Justice. Sky Global Executive and Associate Indicted for Providing Encrypted Communication Devices
2
OCCRP. How a Canadian Company’s Encrypted Phones Ended Up in the Hands of Criminals Around the World
3
Europol. Operational Taskforce LIMIT
4
Computer Weekly. Police Intercept Evidence From Sky ECC Cryptophone Network Unreliable, Antwerp Court Told
5
Leiden University. How Great Was Role of the Netherlands in Sky ECC Megahack
6
The Guardian. Police Raids Across Europe After Encrypted Phone Network Shut Down
7
Vice. Sky Secure Shuts Down After BlackBerry Cuts Access
8
Vice. Crime Boss or Tech CEO: Sky Global Sues Government Over Domains
9
Computer Weekly. Canadian Businessman Remains in French Jail Accused of Distributing Sky ECC Cryptophones
10
Business in Vancouver. Vancouver Man Accused in Smartphone Conspiracy Scheme Appeals for Bail
11
Computer Weekly. French Court Refuses to Expedite Trial of Sky ECC Cryptophone Distributor Thomas Herdman
12
Computer Weekly. Sky ECC Distributor Released From French Custody Pending Trial
13
Belga News Agency. Already More Than 1,200 People Convicted in Sky ECC Cases
14
Balkan Insight. Dark Secrets: How Encrypted Comms Boosted Organised Crime in the Balkans