£250m drugs bust at Welsh farm ‘will hit organised crime in UK’
AWELSH farm at the centre of a massive heroin and cocaine operation had been monitored by police for months, detectives have said.
Tirlas Goch farm, Flintshire, was at the centre of a £250m smuggling operation that flooded the UK with tens of millions of pounds’ worth of Class A drugs.
Police have revealed more details about what happened at the farm and its role in a wider smuggling network with links to Dubai and South America. The operation was blown open on September 20, 2023, when officers raided Tirlas Goch in Alltami, near Buckley, and seized heroin and cocaine worth an estimated £64m.
It was the biggest-ever haul of its kind in the UK. Police from the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (NWROCU) have now said that smashing the drugs ring will have an impact on supplies right across the country.
Four men connected to the plot, which involved importing cocaine and heroin from Europe concealed in a trailer, were given prison sentences totalling 55 years after pleading guilty to serious drug offences.
DCI Ian Whitehead, who leads the NWROCU, has now spoken about the case and the blow it dealt to organised crime in the UK.
He said: “Nobody is untouchable in that world. For those higher-echelon criminals who think they are untraceable, undetectable, we will seek to bring them to justice.
“It is an unusual case and it’s quite rare to get seizures of that sort of quantity. This group was monitored over a period of four to five months. Over that time they brought large quantities of drugs from mainland Europe into the UK – between two to three tonnes of drugs.
“The farm premises were in a remote [and] relatively rural area. It was clearly thought by the group that would enable them to evade detection. We recovered over 600kg of heroin and cocaine. It’s a huge amount of drugs. We would estimate that over the four to five months those drugs were valued at in excess of £250m. They would have been due to be distributed right across the UK.”
The crime unit, which is based in Liverpool, is now a team of about 600 staff trained in tackling serious organised crime and is made up of officers from six forces covering North Wales, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cheshire and Cumbria. It has been investigating a drug-smuggling operation that is believed to be orchestrated from Dubai, with a network stretching to South America.
The court heard that between May 3 and September 21, 2023, disabled driver Guy Remington, from Herefordshire, drove to France, Belgium and Holland via the Eurotunnel, using a disability car with an empty trailer to hide his drugs. He would return to his Hereford home address 24 hours later.
A day later, Remington would then travel to Luke Hirst’s farm in Flintshire and remove the drugs from a hidden space behind his trailer’s wooden panels. The drugs were then sorted into boxes and bags for onward supply from the farm.
As Tirlas Goch is close to the A55, it gave easy access to Liverpool, Manchester and the UK motorway network. According to senior Crown prosecutor Nicola Wyn Williams, the drugs operation was “possibly the last thing that you could imagine happening at a farm in rural north Wales”.
Hirst, 38, would meet his customers at a nearby service station or in Pinfold Lane, Alltami, then take their cars to his property, where he would fill them with drugs before giving their vehicles back to them – the aim was to conceal the location of his farm. He played a leading role in the organised crime group, sourcing and distributing multi-kilo amounts of cocaine on an industrial scale.
But it was after Remington’s ninth and final drug run to Europe that the OCG came crashing down. Police intervened on September 20, 2023, as he was removing the drugs from his trailer at Hirst’s farm, ending their multi-million-pound drugs empire. He was arrested at the scene and taken into custody.
Following an extensive search of Hirst’s farm, NWROCU officers seized £183,865 cash from Remington’s vehicle, 505kg of cocaine, and 108kg of heroin estimated to be worth between £15m and £21m wholesale.
Luke Hirst was arrested later that day in the back of a taxi in Mold.
Searches of a number of Remington’s business premises on the same day led to the recovery of more than £700,000 in cash, numerous vehicles, and other high-value assets.
On October 18, 2023, NWROCU officers arrested Thomas Smith at his home address in Liverpool. Officers seized half a kilo of cocaine and 9,807
MDMA tablets, with a street value of up to £167,000 and approximately £16,000 cash. They also recovered a notepad containing extensive records of his onward supply network.
Eight days later, a search warrant was carried out in Station Road, Leatherhead, which led to the arrest of Morgan Towner. From his base in the south of England he had acted as a courier for an organised crime group.
Luke Hirst, 38, of Pinfold Lane, Flintshire, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply Class A drugs (cocaine/ heroin) and was jailed for 12 years. Guy Remington, 48, of Welsh Bicknor, Herefordshire, admitted conspiracy to import and supply Class A drugs (cocaine/ heroin) and was jailed for seven years.
Thomas Smith, 43, of Garrowby Drive, Liverpool, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply Class A drugs (cocaine/heroin), possession with intent to supply a Class A controlled drug and possession of Class B controlled drug (cannabis). He was jailed for 18 years.
Smith is a Class A drug supplier based in Liverpool. Smith was a leading member of the OCG, making regular trips to Hirst’s Farm to collect huge quantities of Class A drugs to take back to Liverpool for onward distribution.
Morgan Towner, 47, of Station Road, Leatherhead, admitted conspiracy to supply Class A drugs (cocaine/heroin) and was jailed for seven years. Towner is a courier based in Leatherhead, Surrey. He would make trips to Hirst’s farm to collect Class A drugs which he would then take back to Surrey for onward supply.
Speaking after the sentencing, an NWROCU spokesman from the Operations Team, said: “The offenders in this case were involved in a sophisticated criminal operation to import a significant amount of cocaine into the UK. Unfortunately for them, despite trying to evade law enforcement by using concealments in their trailer, we were watching their every move before moving in to arrest them.
“This is without doubt the biggest drugs seizure we have had at the NWROCU and our officers have worked tirelessly to ensure these offenders face the consequences of their crimes. We estimate this group imported between two and three tonnes of Class A drugs into the country over a four-month period, with a street value of several hundred million pounds. I’ve no doubt that had we not have intervened, they would have continued to import more.”