Jailed pair were couriering drugs from Liverpool
A FORMER ice cream man and a charity worker turned to couriering drugs and cash from Liverpool to Swansea, a court has heard.
Anthony Little and Luigino Serpa were stopped as they drove out of Merseyside with £200,000 worth of heroin and cocaine in their car. Police later found out it was the fifth such round trip the car had made.
Swansea Crown Court heard that on September 8 this year Merseyside Police stopped a Seat Leon car heading out of Liverpool on the M62. Jim Davis, prosecuting, said at the wheel of the car was 58-year-old Little while Serpa, aged 46, was sat beside him in the front passenger seat. In the passenger footwell of the vehicle were three packages – one contained a kilo of cocaine and the other two each contained half a kilo of heroin.
Also in the car was a Sainsbury’s carrier bag containing two kilos of a browncoloured powder which turned out to be a mixture of caffeine and paracetamol. The prosecutor said such a mix was commonly used to “cut” with Class A drugs before being sold. The value of the Class A drugs was put at between £180,000 and £200,000.
When the defendants were searched Serpa was found to have £1,140 in cash in his pocket.
The court heard the pair were arrested and later transferred to South Wales Police and taken to Bridgend police station for questioning. Little told officers he know nothing about any alleged drug supply while Serpa gave a “no comment” interview.
The prosecutor said police then carried out automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) checks on the red Seat Leon and found it had made four previous round trips from Swansea to Liverpool on September 23, 2020; April 28, 2021; May 12, 2021; and July 17, 2021. Mr Davis said it was not possible to say what quantity of drugs the car may have been transporting on those occasions “but it was obviously of a sufficient value to make the round trip worthwhile”. He said it was the Crown’s case that the defendants were acting as couriers collecting drugs and cash from the “upstream suppliers in Liverpool”
Anthony John Little, of Gwynedd Avenue, Townhill, Swansea, and Luigino Serpa, of no fixed abode, both admitted possession of heroin with intent to supply and possession of cocaine with intent to supply. Serpa had also pleaded guilty possession of criminal property in respect of the money found in his pocket.
The court heard Little has “a large number of offences” on his record starting when he was a juvenile and mainly consisting of thefts, burglaries, and other offences of dishonesty. He also has convictions for the simple possession of cannabis, heroin, and LSD. Serpa has convictions for dishonesty on his record but also has multiple convictions for drug supply and drug trafficking, including of heroin.
James Hartson, for Little, said the prosecution accepted his client’s role had been limited to that of a courier being paid a couple of hundred pounds to make the journey to Liverpool and back though the barrister acknowledged that without couriers there could be no national movement of drugs. He said the defendant worked as a driver for wellknown local charity – a charity Little had asked him not to name in open court so as not to cause it embarrassment – and had written a letter to the judge in which he expressed his shame at what he had done.
John Allchurch, for Serpa, said since his client had been released from his last custodial sentence in 2009 he had worked in a variety of jobs including ice cream van driver, parcel delivery driver, and in a warehouse. He said in 2018 the defendant had set up his own gardening and odd job business but when work stopped due to the Covid pandemic he had returned to drugs, began making trips to Liverpool, and his life fell apart. The advocate said Serpa now realised he was going to miss out on precious years in the lives of his young sons.
Judge Paul Thomas QC told the defendants they had been caught redhanded bringing a consignment of heroin and cocaine back to Swansea where it would no doubt have ended up on the streets of the city and neighbouring communities bringing “degradation and misery” to users.
He said Little and Serpa would have known the consequences that faced them if caught and that people like them who were willing to take the risk of spending years in prison in return for a couple of hundred pounds were a “vital part” in the drug supply chain.
With one-quarter discounts for their guilty pleas Little was sentenced to six years in prison and Serpa to nine years. The defendants will serve up to half those periods in custody before being released on licence.