One of the UK's most wanted men has been arrested as he tried to fly on a fake passport, police said. Alex Male, 29, was arrested on Saturday (April 30) in Portugal after attempting to fly from Lisbon to Istanbul.
Male, from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, was added to National Crime Agency's Most Wanted appeal in January after he went on the run. He is believed to have used encrypted communications platform EncroChat to distribute class A drugs across the South West.
His arrest by the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit (SW ROCU) was part of Operation Venetic, a police takedown of EncroChat. NCA said the sole use of the platform was for coordinating and planning the distribution of illicit commodities, money laundering and plotting to kill rival criminals.
