Liverpool starlet who became boss in drugs cartel is jailed for 13 years
AS A teenager he seemed destined for stardom.
Signed to the Liverpool FC academy aged 12, Jamie Cassidy grew up playing alongside the likes of future footballing legends such as Michael Owen and Jamie Carragher.
But yesterday, in an astonishing fall from grace, the once-heralded midfielder was jailed for more than 13 years for his role in a drugs conspiracy.
Back in his sporting days, Cassidy had become a regular scorer in England’s youth teams, netting three in the European under-16s Championships in 1994.
Two years later he won the FA Youth Cup with Liverpool. Photographs
‘Exceptional talent and promise’
of the victory show an ecstatic Cassidy holding the trophy aloft at Anfield.
But injury wrecked his fledgling career and – after he was released from his boyhood club in 1999 – aged just 21, he turned to drugs and organised crime to secure the riches he’d expected to earn on the pitch.
Prosecutor Richard Wright KC said Cassidy, now 46, played a ‘managerial role’, receiving a wage from the ‘business’ which saw huge quantities of cocaine imported from South America.
Headed by his older brother, Jonathan, 50, who compared himself to El Chapo, and his ‘financier’ associate Nasar Ahmed, 51, the gang imported 356kg of cocaine, with an estimated street value of £28million, in March and April 2020 alone.
Investigators believe the two consignments, which involved the cocaine being brought over via Amsterdam and smuggled into Britain in modified lorries and other vehicles, were the tip of the iceberg of an operation that had been running for years.
Mr Wright said the men used encrypted EncroChat mobile phones, described as ‘WhatsApp for criminals’, to co-ordinate the purchase, importation, sale and distribution of cocaine across northern England.
They used the vast profits from the deals to fund their lavish lifestyles and invest in property, including expensive villas abroad.
But when EncroChat was cracked by the French intelligence service in 2020, messages linking them to the drugs were revealed and Greater Manchester detectives moved to arrest them. Jamie Cassidy, whose username was Nuclear-Dog, was employed by his older brother to run a team of drug dealers who sold the cocaine to clients in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Glasgow, Mr Wright said.
He also oversaw the collection of cash and acted as his brother’s ‘book keeper’, the court heard.
In mitigation, Paul Greaney KC, for Jamie Cassidy, said his client earned a wage from the operation but did not share in the proceeds from the sale of the drugs.
‘He was acting under a significant degree of control with a limited degree of autonomy,’ he said.
Mr Greaney told Manchester Crown Court: ‘Jamie Cassidy was a footballer of exceptional talent and promise.’
In his 2008 autobiography Jamie Carragher said his youth teammate would have been a ‘certain Liverpool regular’ but for his injuries. Carragher wrote: ‘We were in the same FA Youth Cup-winning team and he played for England Under- 18s. Then he broke his leg and got a really bad ligament injury.’
Jamie Cassidy, from Knowsley, Merseyside, was sentenced to 13 years and three months after admitting conspiracy to supply drugs and conspiracy to transfer criminal property.
As well as these charges, Jonathan Cassidy and Ahmed pleaded guilty to conspiracy to evade the prohibition on the importation of controlled drugs and were each sentenced to 21 years and nine months.
A fourth gang member, Joshua Avis, 39, is still wanted by police.