Gangster who ran £300m crime empire claims he’s skint
A GANGSTER who built a £300million drugs empire is reduced to surviving on £20 a week in prison.
Curtis “Cocky” Warren struggles to afford deodorant and other basic items.
It is a far cry from the days when he boasted of making up to £15million in a week.
Jail bosses have allowed the Liverpool-born former kingpin to keep a maximum £20 a week of his earnings from prison jobs.
The rest goes to pay off his massive crime bill after a judge ordered him to hand over £198million or face another ten years behind bars.
A pal said: “It’s left him with nothing. He can’t even afford basic toiletries.
“All his money is spent phoning his lawyers in Jersey, and sometimes he doesn’t have enough to do that.”
But police believe he has millions stashed away for when he is eventually released.
Murder
In his heyday, Warren’s cocky attitude made him a perverse celebrity in Liverpool, with his face appearing on T-shirts.
The barrel-chested fitness freak left school with no qualifications and was a bouncer before building one of the world’s biggest trafficking rings.
After a five-year sentence for armed robbery he hit the big time by teaming up with a Colombian to set up an efficient cocaine supply into the UK.
He was arrested in 1992 but acquitted during his trial because of a lack of evidence, earning him the nickname of the “Teflon gangster”.
It was claimed he sneered at police as he left the courtroom with the arrogant taunt: “I’m off to spend my money.”
Warren became the only drug baron on the Sunday Times Rich List and was named as Interpol’s Target One, making him the most wanted international criminal.
He moved to Holland but Dutch police tapped his phones and he was jailed for 12 years in 1997 for importing cocaine and cannabis worth £125million into Britain.
Dutch police couldn’t understand his Scouse accent so they brought in British cops to translate. In jail he boosted his tough reputation by beating to death a Turk who was doing 20 years for murder.
On his release in 2007 he moved to Jersey but was caught within weeks when cops bugged his hire car. He was caged for 13 years in December 2009 for a plot to smuggle £1million of dope into Jersey and he has been locked up in La Moye prison on the island ever since.
Warren insists he has no money left but authorities believe he has millions of pounds squirrelled away in a murky web of hidden assets around the globe.
They claim that he has invested in a £4million Guyana gold mine, a Dutch pallet business, Turkish petrol forecourts and a string of European properties. Authorities also suspect he has funds in thirdparty Swiss bank accounts and will be swimming in cash within days of his eventual release.
Judges in Jersey heard how police intercepts of phone calls showed he had invested his millions.
They were told: “The stark fact is that Warren had ways of laundering his assets in ways that are simply untraceable.”
In one recording he was heard to say that he used a ‘cheap’ launderer who charged only one per cent commission.
It was said that on ten separate occasions between 1991 and 1996 he passed £10million through this contact, meaning he laundered £100million.
In a rare interview Warren said a recording of him boasting how much money he made was, he said, merely “bragging like an idiot and just big-talking”.
Asked about the £198million, he insisted: “There is no money.”
Last night Warren’s longtime barrister Anthony Barraclough said: “Assertions that Curtis has millions hidden away are pure fantasy.”