Drug network kingpin jailed for 17 years
THE members of a top-level drugs network, which was led by a Maghull man and supplied gangs in Liverpool and beyond, have been locked up.
Led by 37-year-old Ian Spackman, the nine men basked in the riches of their empire – taking luxury holidays, flashing watches worth thousands of pounds and parking expensive cars on the driveways of their often plush homes.
They now face a combined total of more than 130 years in jail, after it was revealed their wealth was funded on the misery of addiction.
Cocaine, heroin and cannabis with a street value of £1.25m was seized during the complex police investigation that led to the downfall of Spackman’s operation. But that was just a fraction of the true scale of the illicit business.
Operating on a senior level of the underworld, the outfit was removed from the turf wars and power battles of the street dealers beneath them in the criminal hierarchy.
Instead, Spackman – supported by key figures James Gannon and Tom Collins – used international contacts to supply those gangs, while hiding behind sophisticated anti-surveillance tactics.
Their activity directed the supply of cocaine from Liverpool to gangs all over northern England, bringing in sums thought to have run into the millions.
In a separate plot, some of them created a fake plumbing firm to import huge cannabis deliveries into the UK from Spain.
Over the course of the police investigation, between 20kg and 50kg of cocaine and about 200kg of cannabis is thought to have passed through the gang’s control. Those figures do not include the drugs thought to have been supplied to Mersey gangs.
Stephen McNally, prosecuting, said: “From Liverpool, the tentacles of the organisation reached out around England and even internationally.
“With Liverpool at its hub, Class A drugs were supplied to locations across England, including Blackpool, Cumbria and the North East.
“As well as Class A drugs, a number of those involved also took the opportunity to deal in cannabis.
“The prosecution case is that this was not street dealing. None of the drug dealers on this indictment were ‘end users’.
“Across those involved, there are, of course, people who play different roles, with differing levels of seniority or responsibility, but the prosecution say that all were drug dealers and on a significant scale.
“The quantities involved were substantial and accordingly the profits that could be realised were commensurate with that.”
The gang’s exploits came to an end in March last year, when police raided the homes of its most significant members.
Among them was the Thornton property of Mark Campbell, where police used an armoured Land Rover to smash through the gates and gain entry.
Those raids followed an investigation that began in 2015. Detectives monitored the criminals as they flew on luxury holidays and splashed their cash on designer clothes.
Spackman, of Rosslyn Avenue, and some of his co-conspirators set up a cannabis importat network using a fake business, P&M Plumbing, rented a unit at the Bemrose industrial estate, off Long Lane, and received four consignments of cannabis from Barcelona.
In the fourth delivery, about 50kg of cannabis was dropped off at that unit; it was seized when police moved in.
Some of the cannabis brought in formed part of another lucrative arm of the gang’s operation – the dispatch of the Class B drug to the Isle of Man.
The drug has a higher street value there than the mainland UK, and was smuggled in special compartments built into the floor of a van.
Sentencing the gang, Judge David Aubrey, QC, said: “You were acting as a team and you were all playing different roles, but leading or significant roles within the network.
“Your network had two aims – one was the distribution and sale of drugs to different parts of the country. The second aim was pounds, shillings and pence.
“The conspiracy ... was driven by greed, avarice and the desire for the good life.”
Spackman was sentenced to 17 years and four months in prison.