A former contestant on popular competition series Ninja Warrior was arrested and charged as part Australia’s biggest ever police bust. Sopiea Kong, who was a contestant on Australian Ninja Warrior in 2017, was arrested in Australia during the first week of June when a raid at her home uncovered 154 grams of methamphetamine and a firearm.
Kong’s arrest came as part of the worldwide FBI-led Trojan Shield Operation, which has resulted in 800 criminal arrests globally, according to Motherboard. Along with Kong, fellow reality star Samuel Minkin, who appeared as a contestant on Season 6 of The Bachelorette Australia, was among the 200 arrests made in Australia alone in what has been dubbed Australia’s largest police bust ever. The global crime sting came after the FBI and other law enforcement agencies created the ANOM app on what criminals believed were “secure” phones that would allow them to communicate without police being able to read their messages.
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The Daily Star reports that the sting came to fruition after “an Australian underworld figure was duped into distributing the customized phones” in 2018. The phones could only be used to communicate with other ANOM users. After three years, the ANOM app was being used on 12,000 encrypted devices linked to more than 300 criminal gangs in more than 100 countries, with the alleged criminals sharing more than 25 million messages. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said “all they talk about is drugs, violence, hits on each other, innocent people who are going to be murdered. It was all just there to be seen, including ‘we’ll have a speedboat meet you at this point,’ ‘this is who will do this’ and so on.” The FBI’s Calvin Shivers said the app allowed police agencies to “turn the tables on criminal organizations.”
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In Australia alone, more than 200 arrests were made, with 3.77 tons of drugs, $45 million in cash, and guns, luxury cars, motorbikes, and watches being seized. The National Crime Agency in the U.K. also confirmed that it has carried out “multiple operations” as a result of the sting. The Europe-wide police body Europol said the Trojan Shield Operation was an “exceptional success,” with 70 people arrested in Sweden, where 10 murder plots were broken up. An additional 49 arrests were made in the Netherlands.
As for Kong, she is now facing charges of drug trafficking and possession. At this time, a court date has not been set. The 33-year-old notably competed in the 2017 season of Australian Ninja Warrior. She frequents the body-building competition circuit, and even previously revealed that she won a completion just three days after undergoing life-saving surgery.
