One of Australia's most wanted men - dubbed the Facebook Gangster due to his love of social media - will never give himself up despite now being a possible target for other criminals, a top criminologist has said.
Hakan Ayik was unwittingly the key to the recent joint operation between the FBI and Australian Federal Police which involved the encrypted messaging app Anom - or AN0M - that resulted in hundreds of arrests and huge seizures of cash and drugs.
The app took off in the criminal underworld thanks to Ayik, who unwittingly promoted the app and the specially designed encrypted phones as a way to communicate without the police being able to access the messages.
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Australian Federal Police Superintendent Jared Taggart told the Australian Telegraph: "If you look at Ayik and his involvement, essentially he's almost like the prime sponsor of Anom among the criminal cartels and the criminal milieu.
"These devices exist almost everywhere... it's like a family tree, you could probably trace almost all devices back to him."
However, what Ayik - who is currently on New South Wales Police's Most Wanted Persons list - didn't know was that Anom was actually created by a former drug trafficker, turned smartphone developer, working on behalf of the FBI and police in Australia to covertly gather information from criminals.
Following the sting, Aussie police have urged Ayik - an alleged drug lord - to turn himself in for his own safety because he will now become a target for other criminals.
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Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said: "Given the threat he faces, he's best off handing himself into us as soon as he can.
"He was one of the coordinators of this particular device, so he's essentially set up his own colleagues."
However, top crime experts have said they don't believe the fugitive will be handing himself over to cops anytime soon.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Terry Goldsworthy, Associate Professor of Criminology at Bond University, agreed there could be people out to exact revenge on Ayik following the sting, but added that it 'would depend on individuals and how much blame they apportion to him'.
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Despite the possible threat, Professor Goldsworthy added: "But I don't expect these people to give themselves up."
Meanwhile, David Bright, a professor in Criminology at Flinders University also stressed the potential danger Ayik was in, telling the news outlet: "Ayik is a broker between groups and we know individuals in those sorts of positions are very influential and very powerful, but they are also usually highly trusted because they're negotiating between groups who are in competition one way or another.
"What the Operation had cleverly done is undermine trust within these groups, and that's probably the most important component of the criminal underworld... it's all they've got to rely on.
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"When that trust is undermined in a significant way that's when there's an increased risk of violence and retribution."
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