Disturbing texts show a British gunrunner ordering a hitman to ‘melt the face’ of a rival with acid – unaware police were reading every one.
Philip Waugh is among hundreds of gang bosses now in jail after police hacked into EncroChat, an encrypted communication platform used by criminals.
The 39-year-old exhibits shocking sadism, urging an associate to blind the victim and stab him in the leg so he is unable to run to a sink to wash his face.
Waugh is also seen blithely admitting that a ‘pineapple’ – slang for a grenade – had been let outside the home of one of his enemies on a residential street in Warrington.
After an associate asked him to remove it because a child lived inside the house, Waugh dismisses his concerns and writes: ‘It’s in god’s hands now.’
The Daily Mail has produced mock-ups of Waugh’s EncroChat exchanges, which feature in a new documentary about the police response to the hack in 2020.
Waugh, who used the handle AceProspect, made a living selling military-grade guns to British gangs.
Originally from Warrington, he operated from a luxury villa in Malaga.
Philip Waugh (left) spoke to Jonathan Gordon (right) – a member of Liverpool’s Deli Mob who worked as a hitman – about blinding his rivals with acid
Waugh dealt in firearms, including this pistol dug up from a garden in Cheshire
Waugh first came to the attention of police when he distributed an ‘advert’ revealing a list of weapons, including two AK47s, Skorpion and Uzi machine guns, and several pistols.
At that time police did not know his identity, but were able to unmask him earlier this year using EncroChat evidence.
The texts also reveal him having conversations with Jonathan Gordon – a member of Liverpool’s Deli Mob who worked as a hitman – about blinding his rivals with acid.
One of these planned attacks targeted a Warrington man called Nathan Simpson.
‘Just need him blind and face melted,’ Waugh texts Gordon about Mr Simpson, offering £6,000 for an acid attack, rising to £10,000 if he is blinded.
The hitman accepts the offer before describing an earlier acid attack he had carried out in St Helens on another man, Lee Deakin.
Referring to this attack, Gordon laments how Mr Deakin was able to ‘get to the sink’ to wash his face and save his eyesight.
This leads Waugh to suggest Mr Simpson should be ‘stabbed in the leg’ to stop him reaching a sink.
He also orders Gordon to ‘double the dose’ and also blind Mr Simpson’s partner.
Police recovered a stash of Waugh’s guns by excavating the garden in Thelwall
Hundreds of rounds of ammunition were recovered alongside the firearms
Other texts show Gordon sending a picture to Waugh of a metal canister overflowing with acid, prompting him to reply: ‘Proper one that bro.’
The first attempt to attack Mr Simpson – on April 6, 2020 – was abandoned when Gordon saw CCTV cameras outside his home.
He tried again the next day but was approached by patrol officers – causing him to flee and abandon his car.
After a long police operation to track him down, Waugh was arrested in September 2024 at his rented villa in Benahavis, Malaga. He was then extradited to the UK.
A court case heard he smuggled guns into Britain before his right-hand man, Robert Brazendale, 37, took possession of them and passed them on to gangland customers.
The National Crime Agency went on to recover two AK47s, Uzi and Skorpion machine guns, a Grand Power automatic pistol, a Smith and Wesson pistol, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
At court in April, Waugh admitted a range of firearms offences and a count of conspiring to inflict grievous bodily harm against Mr Simpson.
Brazendale was jailed in 2022 but has now been convicted of further offences alongside Waugh. Both men will be sentenced later this year.
The grenade Waugh referred to in one of his messages was destroyed in a controlled explosion.
Ben Rutter, NCA senior investigating officer, said: ‘The NCA worked for five years to trace, locate and bring Philip Waugh to justice under Operation Venetic.
Robert Brazendale, 37, was described as Waugh’s right-hand man
‘He supplied an array of terrifying automatic and semi-automatic weaponry to offenders who were planning horrific crimes.
‘He didn’t care at all about who might be killed in the process, he only cared about money.
‘He is an extremely dangerous offender. The NCA will continue to do everything we can with partners at home and abroad to prevent organised crime groups trafficking firearms.’
Channel 4’s Operation Dark Phone, which began airing this week, tells how police scrambled to arrest gang bosses as part of Operation Venetic.
One of the biggest challenges was identifying the criminals behind anonymous handles like Tubbytern, Key-Hole and Ball-Sniffer.
However, this work was made easier by the blasé approach EncroChat users took to security due to their belief the platform was impregnable. Many shared clues about their identity and – in some cases – personal photos.
An example of an EncroChat phone. The encrypted messaging service was hacked by police in 2020
‘It literally was 15 days of complete madness, and then a period of holding our breath,’ Marni Roberts – the agency’s senior intelligence operations manager – told the programme.
‘In the first instance, I was like a child in a sweet shop. You’d start to read it and you’d be like, ”Oh my God, this is fantastic”. Then the next one would come and that would be even better and so on.
‘It was unbelievable and overwhelming. It was hard to walk away as we didn’t want to miss anything; like FOMO [fear of missing out] on steroids.’
Wayne Johns, 50, another senior officer involved in the operation, described the hack as ‘like walking into a dark room and turning the light on’.
He added: ‘You could see straight away, it was really massive and we had to get it right because if we were going to prosecute these people in due course, we needed to be able to present the strongest possible case that was going to stand the scrutiny of the judicial system. So that added to the pressure.’
EncroChat-related prosecutions are continuing to roll through the courts.
One of the latest netted the son of iconic 1990s pop star Peter Hooton, who was identified as a major drug dealer using messages he shared on the platform.
Thomas Hooton, 30, brokered drug deals worth £1.3million for organised criminals using the encrypted messaging service.
EncroChat-related prosecutions are continuing to roll through the courts. Thomas Hooton, 30, brokered drug deals worth £1.3million
Police were able to identify the criminal – who used the handle ‘Ownraptor’ – by references to his father Peter Hooton, 62, lead singer of The Farm
But police were able to identify the criminal – who used the handle ‘Ownraptor’ – by references to his father Peter Hooton, 62, lead singer of The Farm.
This included a picture the Liverpool fan sent of his father with the Champions League trophy.
He also spoke in messages about driving a Black Audi A3 and that his ‘arl fella’ arranged his insurance.
Hooton, of Crosby, was jailed for 10 years and eight months on Friday for conspiring to supply heroin, cocaine, cannabis and ketamine.
He had 41 different EncroChat contacts, and ran county lines routes to criminals in Scotland, and the north-east and south of England.
At the very minimum, he was involved in the supply of 42.5kg of cannabis, 3.25kg of heroin, 10 kg of cocaine and 1kg of ketamine.
