130 years for ‘county lines’ gang caught with £43million of heroin
CRIME bosses who raked in millions of pounds running a ‘county lines’ drugs ring to fund lavish lifestyles have been jailed for a total of almost 130 years.
Police seized heroin with a street value of £ 43million after the gangsters employed mules to ferry the drug, along with cocaine and cannabis, from Liverpool to towns across the North. One crook raked in £80,000 in just two weeks.
Yesterday the Daily Mail revealed the disturbing scale of the county lines epidemic, which has seen the number of operations shipping drugs from cities to provincial towns double to 1,500 in a year.
The term refers to the phone lines used by gangs to sell and distribute drugs.
Police who smashed the Liverpool operation seized a huge haul of luxury goods from the crooks’ homes, including £30,000 Rolex watches, Cartier bracelets and designer clothing. Officers even took expensive rings from the hands of the girlfriend of one of the ringleaders during an early morning raid.
Top-of-the-range BMW cars plus valuable sporting memorabilia, including soccer shirts signed by legends Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Cristiano Ronaldo, were also recovered. The ringleaders enjoyed regular holidays to Dubai, New York and Las Vegas, Liverpool Crown Court heard.
Police said that while Liverpool was the hub of the drug network, its ‘tentacles’ spread to Blackpool, Barrow-in-Furness, Middlesbrough and the Isle of Man. Stephen McNally, prosecuting, told Judge David Aubrey QC: ‘ They were drug dealers on a significant scale. This was a thriving business.
‘They enjoyed an affluent lifestyle which the ordinary, hard-working member of the public could never hope for. ‘
The court heard that up to 110lbs of high-purity heroin and cocaine, plus 440lbs of cannabis, was imported from Spain via a bogus plumbing company and hidden in the Ubends of toilets and deliveries of cat litter.
During a surveillance operation, officers watched as the drugs were unloaded at an industrial estate in Liverpool before being sent out to towns in at least 200 trips. Ian Spackman, 34, from Maghull, Merseyside, who ran the ring with lieutenants James Gannon, 36, from Anfield, and Tom Collins, 34, from West Derby, used £2,000 encrypted phones in an attempt to thwart police.
However, specialist officers managed to break into one of the devices and ‘peek behind the curtain’ of their operation.
It revealed one message from Spackman in which he said he was ‘just ticking over’ after having made £80,000 in two weeks. Other messages said he was ‘undeterred’ despite having lost £75,000 in a deal which went wrong. Spackman was jailed for 17 years and four months, Gannon for 22 years and Collins 16 years.
Peter Mulvaney, 35, from Lydiate, who set up the fake plumbing company, got 19 years while Marc Campbell, 41, of Thornton, both Merseyside, was jailed for 14 years.
Another four members of the gang were jailed for a total of 41 years. All admitted or were convicted of charges relating to conspiracy to supply drugs.