'She betrayed her job in the police, colleagues and the public - she clearly didn't care about taking dangerous criminals off the streets'

A corrupt police worker illegally accessed sensitive information and tipped-off a criminal friend about a massive, secret investigation into serious and organised crime. Natalie Mottram alerted the pal to the smashing of the EncroChat communications network used by organised crime groups.

Mottram, 24, from Warrington, was employed by Cheshire Constabulary but was on secondment and working as an intelligence analyst at the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (ROCU) when she was arrested by National Crime Agency officers in 2020.

She was arrested as part of Operation Venetic – the NCA-led UK response to the takedown of the encrypted communications platform EncroChat. Soon after Operation Venetic began, it became clear there had been a leak.

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Mottram was the source of that leak. She had not only told Jonathan Kay, 38, about the covert investigation – she told him that officers had intelligence on him too. On 24 April 2020, a friend of Kay’s, who cannot be named for legal reasons, messaged another EncroChat user to say he had learned that day about law enforcement infiltrating the platform.

And he messaged a second contact: “I no [sic] a lady who works for the police. This is not hearsay. Direct to me. They can access Encro software. And are using to intercept forearms [sic] only at the moment. There [sic] software runs 48 hours behind real time. So have ur burns one day max. And try to avoid giving postcodes over it.”

‘Burns’ refers to the delete-time on messages. He added: “Her words was are you on Encro, I said no why, I only sell a bit of bud. She said cool just giving you heads up. Because NCA now have access. But she