Prison drone gang brought down Huge operation to smuggle contraband into jails smashed in major police investigation
IT was Britain’s biggest-ever drone smuggling operation – flying halfa-million pounds worth of drugs over the walls of prisons.
Now 13 members of the Birmingham and Black Country gang have come down to earth with a bump.
They were jailed for a total of 37 years for a scheme described by the judge as a “sophisticated commercial operation”.
Deliveries of Class A drugs, mobile phones and steroids had resulted in increasing violence and self-harm inside, he said.
The gang flew drones to order into prisons in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Worcestershire, Warrington, Lancashire and Liverpool.
In just over a year they flew 55 smuggling missions.
Ringleader Lee Anslow, nephew of notorious drugs kingpin John Anslow, led the huge contraband network from behind bars himself.
The 31-year-old orchestrated around half of all flights from his prison cell at HMP Hewell, near Redditch.
It is estimated the gang dropped £550,000 worth of drugs over prison walls. Inmates were also supplied with mobile phones, SIM cards and memory sticks.
One or two members of the gang would liaise with inmates who used contraband phones to guide a drone directly into the prison. Attached parcels would then be hooked off by convicts using sticks.
A police investigation was launched after 11 of the drones either crashed or were recovered as they were being loaded and positioned for take-off.
Detectives discovered that over 14 months the gang flew almost 1kg of cannabis and 1.5kg of Spice or Mamba over prison walls. The first was seized by police near HMP Oakwood in May 2016, and was carrying 80g of synthetic cannabis and two mobile phones. Its flight tracker revealed it had been used to make nine previous jail drops, the first on April 23 at HMP Birmingham in Winson Green. Smith’s fingerprints were found on the drone and its flight history showed it had been flown near his home address just days before it was recovered. Officers found a second drone crashed near HMP Hewell in October, and a third containing a 200g Spice package, two phones and 10 SIM cards, was recovered near HMP Birmingham in December that year. Police raid- ed Anslow’s cell at HMP Hewell in September last year and found drugs with an estimated prison value of £20,000, fake food cans concealing mobile phones, earphones and a list of contacts.
A set of digital scales used to weigh drugs was hidden inside a tub of Nesquik.
Last Friday Anslow was handed an extra ten years in prison. Key players Paul Ferguson and Stefan Rattray, who had also distributed drugs from behind bars, also had their sentences extended.
A total of 15 people, including one woman, had been charged with being involved with the conspiracy between April 2016 and June 2017.
Judge Simon Drew QC said drug and mobile phone use in prisons had caused heightened levels of violence, an increase in self-harm and deaths, as well as allowing witness intimidation and illegal financial transactions.