Husband waits at home in Bulgaria while drug-dealing gran serves time

MORAG Yorston led a double life.

One as a seemingly ordinary gran-oftwo approaching retirement. Another as a gang leader bringing million-pound drug deals to Dundee and beyond.

In part four of Gangster Granny, Dale Haslam talks exclusively to Yorston’s husband Daniel Nenchev, who travelled with Yorston to his native Bulgaria as she tried to evade justice.

Daniel was born in 1982 in Gorna Oryahovitsa, a northern Bulgarian town not much bigger than Arbroath. He moved to Italy in his early 20s then left for Scotland after the 2008 financial crash in search of a better life.

Daniel was himself charged with a drugs offence but a not-guilty plea was accepted in court. He told us he had no knowledge of the scale of Yorston’s offending – but he is still standing by his wife.

I spent nine years in Italy, working hard. Then my father got a girlfriend whose son was at Dundee College, so he moved to Dundee. Then my brother left for Scotland. Around 2014, I moved too. It was good. I was studying a part-time course at Gardyne Campus and working at Jahangir Tandoori in the kitchen.

Around 2017. I met her through a friend. We have always got on. There has never been anything bad between us. She would make me coffee, and wash my clothes. She would clean the house and do what I wanted, and what made me happy. We worked well together – she even started talking Bulgarian.

I have always been in opposition to drug dealing. Since I arrived in Scotland, I always worked honestly. I always told Morag drugs were bad. I would hear a phone call and understand the subject was drugs, so I just took the phone from her hand. I told her ‘if you keep doing this, police will arrest you’. Whenever I would say that, she just made it seem like there was no danger.

She was not living like a millionaire. The drugs didn’t come from Morag – they came from other people. And whenever she did earn money, she would give it away. Some people she knew would say they had no money, so she would help.

She has a big heart. I couldn’t believe she had done what the police said she did.

The age gap never bothered me, Morag just fell in love with me. My mother was a bit concerned about the age gap, but I knew Morag for about two years before we got married, so I was comfortable.

My brother had left Scotland and returned to Bulgaria. My father the same. I decided to move back too. Morag came with me and it was her choice to come. I took my wife away from that s*** with drugs. Morag didn’t know anyone, but she made friends with people. She liked it here. She wanted to start a new life.

I was worried the police were going to find her. Morag said, ‘They aren’t going to come from Scotland to Bulgaria, they won’t get a European Arrest Warrant’,