Merseyside was the Encrochat capital of the UK with hundreds of criminals here using secret handles, the ECHO can reveal.
Investigators say our region was responsible for the highest use of the shadowy communication platform devices than anywhere else in Britain.
The figures were higher than those seen in Manchester and London.
Up to 400 Encrochat handles were found in the North West, and the majority of them were in Merseyside.
The shock statistics were disclosed to the ECHO by the National Crime Agency (NCA) as a new Home Office-funded taskforce to stop guns and drugs being funnelled into Merseyside was unveiled.
The Merseyside Organised Crime Partnership is a ground breaking project and one of just three others similar link-ups by the NCA with other forces.
Those are with the Metropolitan Police, Police Scotland and the Paramilitary Crime Taskforce probing terrorist related activity in Belfast.
The NCA also revealed how Merseyside was the second largest exporter of County Lines activity, after London.
County Lines bosses, often based in big cities like Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, with already well-established drug markets, target smaller towns with less criminality, and try and set up a lucrative drugs trade.
Areas in Cumbria, Devon and Cornwall and parts of Scotland have seen sharp rises in this type of offending and pattern of crime, with Merseyside criminals wading into their territories.
Up to 120 County Lines gangs are said to be operating from Merseyside with children as young as 10 groomed to join them.
The cross-country mobs trade on the misery of addicts, peddling often heroin and crack cocaine, with crack having seen an increase in recent months.
Gangs could be making £2,000-£5,000 every day in their evil line of work, it is estimated.
Nikki Holland, NCA Director of Investigations, told the ECHO: "There were two reasons why we picked Merseyside for this new taskforce, one was County Lines, as its the second largest exporter of County Lines activity which has continued throughout Covid.
"And in Operation Venetic, the highest number of Encrochat handles were in the northwest, and predominately in Merseyside.
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"Both of those reasons say that although there has been huge success in tackling serious organised crime in Merseyside, there are still criminals who have been flying beneath the radar and have been untouchable for a long time.
"This is a really good opportunity in terms of what we can do to enhance our good performance tackling organised crime."
Ms Holland said guns were entering the country, often from Eastern Europe, before they were illegally converted for their use in the UK.
Weapons are also being shipped to Britain from places like America using express parcel companies to import deadly weapons destined for our streets.
Organised crime gangs are exploiting the rise in online shopping by concealing their illicit goods among legitimate traffic coming into the country.
Air travel and boats are used by criminals to ferry in guns, but there is a growing trend of ever more sophisticated hides in lorries and cars to try and conceal firearms being driven to different parts of the country, with a popular destination of Merseyside.
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Ian Critchley, Assistant Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, said the recent successes of Operation Venetic had "made a real dent in those seeking to exploit the vulnerable for their own greed" in the county.
He added: "Tackling organised criminality is a huge priority or Merseyside Police for a number of years.
"We've made more than 700 arrests for County Lines drug dealing and protected 250 vulnerable children and adults.
"We don't hide from the fact that criminals from Merseyside cause significant harm in Merseyside and have a national and international reach.
"Violence is often used between criminals to enforce territory but we will relentlessly target those who seek to arm our communities.
"There's no glamour being involved in organised crime, there are two endings, one is a significant custodial sentence and the other is a knock on the door to inform a family their loved one has been seriously hurt or killed.
"There is a better life than being involved in organised crime."
Last year, after Encrochat collapsed following undercover cyber intelligence work, top-level criminals spoke of their terror after realising the UK's law enforcement teams were poised to "come in hard and fast" like a "pack of hyenas."
A catalogue of damning messages shared among "kingpins" from the underworld - which signalled their anxiety when they realised the National Crime Agency were on their tail.
Execution and kidnap plots in Liverpool and its surrounding boroughs were identified by police and halted as part of an overall assault on serious crime described as the biggest the UK has ever seen.
Among the conversations, which took place as detectives closed the net around the controversial EncroChat military-grade encrypted communications hub, were those who fretted: "That’s naughty when the big boys like NCA and flying squad come, it's not good, they wont stop."
One wannabe gangster told his associates: "I’m moving my family from UK this year because NCA is getting too smart."
Another admitted on the modified Android phones, which cost £1,500 for just six months of use: "Yeah if NCA are on him.
"Defiantly[sic] not the firm that go away. That like a pack of hyenias[sic]."
It was added: "….When NCA come…….., they gona[sic] come in hard and fast."
Another sighed: "The police scoring goals...mother f*****r."
