Category: Drugs & Gangs

Convictions

Sixteen people connected to a south London gang called the 67 were sentenced to a total of 61 years for county lines drug offences. Police sifted through hundreds of thousands of pages of call data to identify the culprits.

Fifteen men and one woman were convicted after a joint investigation by the Metropolitan and Kent police forces into five county lines supplying drugs in Berkshire, Hampshire, Kent, London, Surrey and Sussex.

Those found guilty included line holders, who managed them from London and directed younger members of the gang to “cuckoo” addresses, often belonging to local drug users, in the south-east where they would sell drugs.

Convictions

A drug dealer cuckooed the house of an occupant with a mental illness in Shrewsbury. The woman was arrested in August 2018 after police visited the property unannounced and found £800 worth of crack cocaine and heroin.

Jennifer Chigbo pleaded guilty at Shrewsbury magistrates court in February 2019 after being charged with possession with intent to supply drugs. She also received a four-month sentence for being in possession of a knife.

Convictions

A county lines gang was sentenced to a total of more than 56 years in prison for shipping class A drugs from London to Wiltshire. The gang of six managed a large-scale crack cocaine and heroin operation from London to Swindon and Marlborough between April and September 2018.

Their “Frank” line was contacted by more than 800 people and the phone was found at the home of the gang’s leader, Linford Goode, along with £20,000 cash and a Rolex watch worth £21,000. Goode and another gang leader, Sara Kokot, used some of the proceeds to travel from London to Swindon in luxury cars. Evidence of drug preparation, cocaine powder and MDMA were found at the homes of other gang members.

Scott Cadder, who worked on the ground in Swindon with Tiffany Smart, got into dealing to fund his own drug habit, as did Shaun Smith, who sold drugs to addicts in Marlborough with Dean Black.

Convictions

Two 17-year-old girls from London were found at a property in south Wales that was used as a county lines hub. One girl said she had been promised by someone called Rogue that she would earn £500 a day supplying crack cocaine and heroin.

Police discovered wholesale quantities of class A drugs – 90 wraps of crack cocaine and 24 wraps of heroin – along with £1,260 in cash and a BB airgun. The phone, the Rogue line used to facilitate drug deals, was also seized.

The gang’s leader, Kane Griffiths-Jeffries, and two of his dealers, Adam Harries and Ian Wilkins, were sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Convictions

The three men preyed on vulnerable adults and young people, and used their victims to bring drugs from London to Portsmouth and carry money back the other way.

In one incident, the eldest victim was stripped naked and a gun was forced into his mouth. He was threatened with death if he did not comply. When the victims arrived in Portsmouth they would be held in drug users’ homes and not allowed to leave until texts ordering drugs came in. They would then be sent to sell or drop off the drugs. Texts would be sent to users when heroin or crack became available and would typically result in 200-300 calls per day.

The victims would sometimes pick up as much as £2,000 a day, which they would deposit with the convicted men on their return to London.

Convictions

For the first time in Wales, a 20-year-old man was convicted under the Modern Slavery Act for facilitating the travel of a child with a view to exploit. Jerome Wallis, 25, who was part of a sophisticated county lines operation, also admitted to conspiring to supply heroin and crack cocaine while working with an accomplice, Savion Browne.

A 15-year-old boy went to Swansea Central police station to report he was missing from London and unable to get home. He said he had initially been contacted on Snapchat by Wallis, who then forced him to sell drugs. After meeting Wallis near Paddington station in west London, the boy was driven to Swansea, moved to various addresses and sent on drug deals. He was threatened with violence if he did not complete the deals and told he would have to remain in the area.

When Wallis returned to London for more drugs, the boy managed to escape from the house when his “minder” left briefly. Police raided the property and found evidence of drug production, mobile phones, thousands of pounds in cash and £4,000 worth of heroin and crack cocaine.

Convictions

Three men were convicted of county lines drug offences in Norwich, with one also convicted under modern slavery laws. Nathan Hamilton, 29, and Blaire Carpenter-Angol, 27, are from London, and Shaun Ellis, 26, is of no fixed abode.

Hamilton drove two boys, aged 15 and 16, to and from the capital and Great Yarmouth to deal class A drugs in September and October 2018. Police seized mobile phones and almost 600 wraps of crack cocaine and heroin.

Convictions

Two men were convicted in Norfolk after an undercover police investigation.

Kylann Grannum and Shaun Byers, who was the main runner of the county lines supply, were convicted of bringing drugs from London to sell to users in Norwich.

Convictions

Afsa Allen, a grime artist, organised at least four county lines routes from east London to the home counties. He used lower-level gang members to facilitate supply chains from Hackney. All six gang members were convicted under Operation Halmist, a project run by the Met’s specialist crime north unit to disrupt organised class A drug distribution routes.

About £25,000 in cash and approximately half a kilo of heroin were seized as well as phones, laptops, vehicles and designer footwear.

Convictions

Meshach Duncan recruited a team to transport drugs into Warwickshire. Rebecca Mannix, Kyle Crossley and Debra Walsh helped distribute the drugs in the county and a network of dealers supplied the drugs on the streets.

Between February 2015 and November 2017, detectives identified 429 class A deliveries made by the gang into Warwickshire with an estimated street value of more than £400,000.

Convictions

Mohammed Sohil was carrying more than 100 wraps of heroin when he was stopped by police on the M54 in Telford. Officers also found three mobile phones in his car. Police believe he had driven to the town to deal drugs as part of a county lines network.

Convictions

Artaf Hussain, a convicted murderer, was convicted of leading a county ines operation that supplied up to £300,000 of class A drugs. He is also serving a life sentence for murder.

Sixteen phones were used to coordinate deliveries by his couriers in Hereford, six of whom were also convicted on 27 June 2019.

Convictions

Two brothers ran a £300,000 drug network supplying crack cocaine and heroin to Hereford in what police called the most significant county lines operation ever identified in the city.

Officers suspected that more than 3.5kg of heroin and crack cocaine had been sold before the operation was discovered and that the brothers had been making about £1,500 a day.

Convictions

Two drug dealers from Shrewsbury, who were part of a county line network, were sentenced after pleading guilty to drug offences.

When police stopped their car they found drugs with a street value of about £500, a stolen mountain bike the pair had accepted as payment for drugs, and £900 in cash. Mobile phones used to arrange deals were also seized.

Convictions

Fifteen people were jailed for involvement in an operation that targeted addicts in Cumbria. The main players were based in the Liverpool area and assisted by local residents. Addicts were bombarded with “text bombs” offering the drugs for sale.

Residents played various roles including directly supplying drugs on behalf of the gang, or storing them and allowing their properties, some occupied by children, to be used as safe houses. Some helped in other ways, such as handing over crucial contacts lists for addicts or buying mobile phone top-ups.

The operation also involved cuckooing, meaning people from outside the county came to Carlisle to set up temporary “nests” from which they established a drug-dealing network.

Convictions

Matthew Hughes attacked a 51-year-old man who photographed him as he supplied drugs to a woman. Despite the damage to the phone, the images were retrieved and Hughes was identified as a street dealer who worked for an organised county lines team in Liverpool that supplied heroin and crack cocaine.

Convictions

Three people in a county lines operation brought drugs from Liverpool to be packaged and sold in Cornwall.

Convictions

Two women from Shropshire were sentenced after they cuckooed a house in Shrewsbury and forced the vulnerable resident to sell drugs as part of a county line operation.

Convictions

Three Portuguese men from Peterborough were jailed for county lines offences. Ruben Alexandre Viegas Simao, 30, was stopped while driving and police found cash and mobile phones. The other two defendants, Mario Alberto Periera, 26 and Alex Migel Goncalves Cid, 21, were found at a hotel in Rugby.

Police discovered crack cocaine and heroin with a street value of £16,010 hidden in the toilet bin and £3,000 in cash.