Dealer jailed for role in drugs plot
Man, 38, played part in country-wide operation to supply class A drugs
AWEST Lancashire man was one of 10 members of a gang jailed for dealing Class A drugs around the country.
Michael Longworth, 38, of Plex Lane, Halsall, supplied members of the network with amphetamine sulphate.
He was among those captured on the ringleader’s cameras and was sentenced to six years in prison after standing trial.
They were led by 37-year-old Jamie Hughes, who kept a stun gun disguised as an iPhone, and used his job as a car dealer to transport the drugs out of the North West.
The Warrington man, of Olympia Place, Great Sankey, would smuggle bulk loads of drugs to clients in locations stretching from Scotland to London in white vans with hidden compartments.
Along with the cash seizures and damning emails, evidence used against the group included traces of ketamine found in the concealed floor of a white Peugeot Partner van and a hidden compartment in the back of a white Vauxhall Vivaro van.
Both were operated by switches in the cabs.
After a National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation the gang were jailed for a total of 31 years at Liverpool Crown Court.
Hughes was imprisoned for five years and four months after pleading guilty to his role in the conspiracy.
He claimed to be a car dealer but was exchanging vehicles as part payment for drugs such as cannabis, amphetamines and ketamine.
Hughes installed a CCTV system to monitor his driveway, which eventually proved his downfall, as NCA investigators used the footage as key evidence against his network as they left his address with parcels.
David Whalley, 37, of Francis Street, St Helens, was jailed for three years and four months after pleading guilty.
He provided the base for the group’s couriers at his transport yard which also housed the adapted vans he supplied to the group.
NCA officers exposed the group in an investigation that ran from October 2014 to January 2016.
Officers from the Metropolitan, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Merseyside forces gave key support.
Cheshire police stopped Kevin Smith, 29, of Palmerston Road, Garston, Liverpool, on the motorway and found £135,000 cash in his car.
Smith, who was a courier for the group, received four years and six months in prison.
The Met stopped Daljeet Singh Juttla, 42, of Priors Gardens, Ruislip, London, with £90,000 of drugs money that Richard Hunt had taken down to the city on Hughes’s behalf.
Juttla received 20 months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, and 200 hours’ unpaid work, for money laundering.
Hunt, 35, of Cuckoo Way, Woolton, a close associate of Hughes’s from Liverpool, was an occasional courier and chased drug debts.
He received two years and four months in jail for conspiring to convert criminal property and money laundering.
Alistair Welding, 28, of Clock Face Road, St Helens, and Hughes’s brotherin-law, and associate Matthew Morgan, 41, of Main Street, Frodsham, brokered drugs deals for the group and pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges.
They received five years and four months and five years and three months in jail respectively.
Alan Oliver, 37, of Lune Way, Widnes, received a three-year community order for his part as a courier, while John Ellis, 60, of Roosevelt Drive, Aintree, who supplied cash to Juttla, was given a rehabilitation order.
Jane Lloyd, branch commander at the NCA, said: “Established trafficking routes like these present a complex and troubling threat to the UK.
“With well worked-out logistics a criminal group can turn its hand to anything from gun running or drug smuggling, expanding their own operations or hiring out their services to others.
“NCA officers are alert to the tactics criminals use to shift commodities and hide their activity and are equipped with the skills and tools needed to bring them to justice.”