Crime gang boss jailed for 26 years after cocaine find
A Bath man who organised the supply of cocaine with an estimated street value of £9m to the South West has been jailed for 26 years.
Romaine Hyman, 30, previously of Portland Place, Bath, was found guilty of 18 offences at Bristol Crown Court.
Hyman became a key target in a South West Regional Organised Crime Unit (SW ROCU) investigation after Operation Venetic, the UK law enforcement response to encrypted messaging service Encrochat which was used by crime gangs across Europe.
Also sentenced for his part in the supply chain was sprinter Leon Reid, 27, of Longmead Terrace, Bath. He represented Ireland at the 2021 Olympic Games, reaching the 200m semi-finals.
Yet Hyman was the real organiser - using the handle ‘Locksmith-rome,’ he operated at the centre of four conspiracies to supply cocaine and heroin from London and the Midlands to the South West and two conspiracies to launder the millions of pounds made from that supply.
He not only sourced and supplied multi-kilo quantities of drugs, but also smaller supplies to customers. He even cooked cocaine himself to produce crack cocaine to sell, and supplied heroin, MDMA and ketamine.
Hyman was arrested on May 29, 2020 after receiving a delivery of seven kilo blocks of cocaine from London and taking them to Leon Reid’s Bath flat.
Hyman sent a photo of the “Fendi” marked blocks with the words “Landed safe thank you” to his London supplier.
That was his final Encro message as five minutes later, as he left the flat, he was arrested.
When officers searched Reid’s flat, they not only found the cocaine, but also a padlocked suitcase containing a handgun, 25 rounds of ammunition, a silencer, a kit to adapt the weapon to function as a submachine gun, £23,000 stashed in a drawer, a money counter, and equipment Hyman used to cook his crack.
He also paid to use two other Bath addresses, one in Twerton where £24,000 was seized from a safe, and one in Snow Hill where 54g cocaine, 3.7kg crystallised MDMA, 3,000 MDMA tablets, one kilo of ketamine, 200g of cutting agent and a hydraulic press were seized.
Reid was arrested the same day and has been sentenced to 21 months’ jail, suspended for 18 months, and 220 hours’ unpaid work for allowing his flat to be used by Hyman to produce cocaine and for receiving payment, which text messages showed amounted to £500 a month.
He was found not guilty of concealing criminal property and three firearms offences, which all related to the items seized from his flat.
Jevaughn Rose, 28, from St Michael’s Avenue in Nottingham, was arrested in October 2020 and found guilty of conspiracy to launder money and possession of £15,500 criminal cash found at his home.
He was found not guilty of conspiracy to supply 15 kilos of cocaine. He was sentenced to three years’ jail.
A fourth man, Sheikh Maruf Rouf, 35, of no fixed abode, was sentenced last September to three years in prison after pleading guilty to money laundering and possessing criminal property.
He was arrested in April 2020 after collecting £300,000 cash from Hyman in Bath to deliver to London and went on to admit his role in conspiring to launder £4.4 million made through serious criminal activity.
Detective Inspector Charlotte Tucker, from the SW ROCU, said: “Hyman was a major supplier of class A drugs into and out of the South West and the images of the piles of cash represent just how much harm that supply will have caused, with each £10 and £20 note representing a separate deal.”
She continued: “Add in the gun, silencer and ammunition stashed in a flat in the middle of Bath and you get a picture of the level he was operating at and the risk he posed.
“The Encro messages not only show Hyman’s role in sourcing 89kg of cocaine, but his aspirations to become a dominant force in drug supply in the South West, with plans being made to import hundreds of kilograms at a time.
“While the takedown of Encrochat was a huge moment in
terms of turning the tables on criminals like Hyman and his associates, that evidence was just one part of a complex investigation. We still had to prove Hyman was ‘Locksmith-rome,’ which involved painstaking work across our teams.
“Twenty-two guilty verdicts after a ten-week trial are testament to the hard work and dedication across the SW ROCU and our collaboration with the Organised Crime Division of the CPS.”
DCI Tucker added that it had been a “mammoth” investigation and that the £3 million of cocaine would have had a street value of £9 million.
Chief Inspector Steve Kendall, BANES neighbourhood and partnerships lead for Avon and Somerset Police, said: “Today’s sentencings are a culmination of years of intensive investigative work by the SW ROCU and a number of law-enforcement agencies and we welcome the significant jail terms handed down to dangerous and exploitative criminals.
“We’d like to reassure our communities that we will never stop our proactive work to disrupt drug lines across Avon and Somerset. We are hugely grateful to members of the public for their invaluable support and crucial information that helps us tackle this important aspect of policing.”
Confiscation orders will be made to ensure all money and assets gained from the crimes committed are recovered under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
Toni Swaby, 41, of Landseer Road, Twerton, was found not guilty of concealing criminal property and acquiring criminal property.