MAN JAILED FOR ROLE IN COCAINE PLOT
Ex-football club owner helped distribute drugs
A FORMER football club owner has been jailed this week over £5m cocaine supply plot where ‘apparently harmless’ middle-aged people drove cars and caravans to stay under the radar.
James Rushe, an ex-owner of semi-pro outfit Northwich Victoria, involved himself in the fringes of a well-established Class A conspiracy that saw hauls of coke and amphetamines transported around Merseyside, Cheshire, Lancashire and Manchester.
In March 2016, 13 people were jailed for more than 60 years after the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit - Titan - rounded up the gang as part of Operation Pitscale, which monitored their illegal activities between February 2014 and June 2015. The ‘professional and carefully organised’ drugs plot involved legitimate businesses being used as cover, taxis being used, and vans bought and liveried to appear legitimate.
Rushe, 55, who lives in Runcorn, was sentenced to six years in prison at Liverpool Crown Court, along with accomplice Mark Fishwick, 47, of Greencroft, in Preston, who got the same jail term.
Mobile phone traffic between the two defendants and others implicated them in the drugs conspiracy, detectives said, and Rushe, of Runcorn Road, in the rural village of Moore, was arrested last August.
Recorder Simon Medland, QC, told Rushe and Fishwick: “You both struck me as being intelligent, middle-aged businessmen.
“Your motivation was entirely commercial, neither of you were a drug-taker.
“You saw this as a business opportunity by playing a vital role in the distribution of drugs.
“You both know of the appalling and corrosive effect drugs have on people, on their families and on society as a whole. “Drugs ruin people’s lives. “Neither of you were at the top [of the conspiracy] – that was Paul Berry.
“But on this part of the evidence you were both senior participants.”
He added: “Both of you have fallen from a great height, but you are both authors of your own misfortune.”
Both men were found guilty by a jury of conspiring to supply Class A drugs after a two week trial.
Peter Wright QC, representing former Northwich Vics owner Rushe, described his client’s actions and resulting jail sentence as ‘the most monumental fall from grace’.
The barrister also spoke of Rushe’s ‘positive and exemplary conduct throughout his adult life’.
He said: “His life has been shattered. He goes to prison with a very heavy heart.”
Rushe spent many thousands of pounds to keep Northwich Vics afloat, but lost it all and went bankrupt, but his defence team denied that loss of cash prompted him to get embroiled in high-level drug dealing.
Pitscale ringleader Berry – who co-owned an internet tickets and events company and was jailed for 11 years – worked with his righthand man Stephen Reeves, 48, who used his furniture business Skemersdale Furnishings as a cover to transport drugs.
He was jailed for nine years at a previous court hearing.
Others, from Huyton, Prescot, Skelmersdale, Preston and Sheffield, were also locked up as part of Operation Pitscale.
Among the locations used to store drugs were a timber yard in Burscough, while £720,000 worth of cocaine was found stashed in a bed on board a van travelling from Skelmersdale to Glasgow, and 45kg of amphetamine, valued up to £900,000, was discovered in Meadow Lane, Ormskirk.