That’s gonna be one awkward call with the phone provider…

Police in Belgium have gotten their James Bond on in a super big bust, hacking an encrypted phone network to get the drop on some drug runners and their mountains of cocaine. The move definitely paid off, ending up with the police force seizing nearly $2 billion USD ($2.6 billion AUD) worth of the powdery drug.

The police were able to pull off the whole shebang by gaining access to an encrypted messaging service named Sky ECC, which helped them find out vital info as to the shipment and other details of the entire trafficking operation.

A statement from the police said “During a judicial investigation into a potential service criminal organization suspected of knowingly providing encrypted telephones to the criminal environment, police specialists managed to crack the encrypted messages from Sky ECC. This data provides elements in current files, but also opened up new criminal offenses. The international smuggling of cocaine batches plays a prominent role in intercepted reports.”

The investigation began back in February and went for six weeks, focusing on the port of Antwerp. A total of 27.64 tons of cocaine was taken by police throughout the entire operation, with a record shipment of almost 11 tonnes being seized on April 3.

Pretty crazy, check out this news report on the Antwerp port way back in October to get an idea of how badly the drug trade ravaged it.