Man jailed for drug dealing and money laundering
A man given a suspended sentence 10 years ago after he was convicted in a multi-million pound money laundering case has been given a five-and-a-half-year sentence after admitting fresh offences.
Rory Trainor pleaded guilty in 2024 to 38 new charges including drug dealing offences and money laundering, committed over a 10-week period in 2020.
The 48-year-old from Dunbrae, Newry, was among hundreds of UK suspects arrested after European police infiltrated the EncroChat system.
Criminal gangs around the world had been using the encrypted messaging service in the mistaken belief it was inaccessible to law enforcement agencies.
The new charges Trainor faced included laundering or conspiring to launder more than £1.3m in cash in a series of communications with codenamed suspects.
The largest single sum he was accused of conspiring to launder was £227,435, but several of the offences involved sums of £100,000 or more.
His co-conspirators were referred to in the charges by their nicknames only, which included Knucklehead, Squarerevolver, Snailmallet and Restless.
Trainor also admitted being concerned in the supply of Class A and Class B drugs, namely cocaine and cannabis.
The offences all took place between March and June 2020.
The judge at Londonderry Crown Court on Tuesday sentenced Trainor to four years for the drugs offences and 18 months for the money laundering offences.
He ordered the terms should be served consecutively, giving a total sentence of five-and-a-half years.
Trainor has been in custody since October 2023.
Trainor was one of hundreds of people across the UK who were arrested as a result of the international EncroChat sting.
EncroChat was a secretive communication network in which users could exchange encrypted messages on mobile phones that they believed police could not infiltrate.
However, French and Dutch police managed to decode EncroChat's encryption system during the first Covid lockdown in April 2020.
They then shared the data with international police forces via Europol, including the UK National Crime Agency (NCA).
In response, the NCA began to monitor and then arrest hundreds of suspects who had used EncroChat to arrange drug deals and other crimes.
The investigation was codenamed Operation Venetic, which the NCA described at the time as "the UK's biggest ever law enforcement operation".
More than a decade has passed since Trainor was prosecuted for his role in one of the biggest money laundering cases to ever come before a Northern Ireland court.
He previously ran a bureau de change business on the Dublin Road in Newry which he used to launder millions of pounds for drug dealers and other criminals.
More than £63m passed through his small office in the space of two-and-a-half years and Trainor was put under surveillance by revenue and customs officers.
Covert footage filmed by HMRC showed Trainor handing over a bag filled with cash to a convicted drug dealer in a west Belfast car park.
Trainor's Newry home was also raided twice by HMRC officers during the original investigation into his bureau de change business dealings.
More than £150,000 in cash was discovered hidden in a floor safe and a beer cooler in his property at that time.
Prosecutors also established he had used a stolen identity to move money to bank accounts in Bulgaria.
At that time, Trainor pleaded guilty converting the proceeds of crime for several criminal gangs, primarily drug dealers.
Despite pleading guilty to laundering what amounted to several million pounds, he walked free from court in 2014.
Instead of a custodial sentence, Trainor was made the subject of a serious crime prevention order.
The judge in that case deferred the sentence for a year to see if Trainor would comply with the order.
He was then given a suspended sentence in 2015.
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