Dealer who made £3m ordered to repay £44k
A MEMBER of an organised crime gang which sought to flood South Wales with cocaine has been ordered to pay back £44,000 after benefiting by more than £3m.
Another member of the group was found to have benefited by £275,000.
Daniel Masher, 33, and Lloyd Stapleton, 37, were members of the gang which sourced drugs from Liverpool and operated across Porthcawl, Cardiff and Newport.
The gang was exposed after French police gained access to the encrypted EncroChat messaging system in 2020 and passed information to the UK’s National Crime Agency.
The gang was dealing in hundreds of kilograms of drugs worth several million pounds.
Another of the gang members, Martin Askew, used a “specially adapted van disguised as an NHS patient transport vehicle” to deliver cocaine and heroin during the Covid pandemic. When South Wales Police stopped Askew in June 2020 and asked if there was anything illegal in the van, he replied: “Yes, two keys of white.”
Officers found two packages hidden in a storage panel near a wheel arch, each containing a kilogram of high-purity cocaine.
A sentencing hearing at Cardiff Crown Court last year heard Masher was employed by the “Liverpool end” of the conspiracy. He was responsible for counting and packaging cash totalling £864,000. In one message to a gang boss, he said seven customers owed them £592,500.
He was also involved in supplying just over 90kg of Class A drugs.
When Masher was 18, he was convicted of manslaughter and locked up for a minimum of 42 months. He had fatally stabbed 21-year-old Marlon
Moran in a racist attack in Liverpool.
All defendants were convicted of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs.
Judge David Wynn Morgan said that the gang members “nearest the source” of importation had not yet been brought to justice and that “the leading lights who would receive the highest sentences are not here”.
But he added that none of those being sentenced had played “any less than a significant role in the conspiracy”.
Masher, from Liverpool, was sentenced to 18 years, while Stapleton, from Roath, Cardiff, was sentenced to 14 years and five months.
A Proceeds of Crime Act hearing at Cardiff Crown Court heard Masher had benefited to the tune of £3,225,740 from his involvement but only has assets worth £44,773.
Stapleton was found to have benefited to the tune of £275,000 but only has assets worth £19,432.
Judge Jeremy Jenkins ordered Masher to pay £44,773 and Stapleton to pay £19,432 within three months or serve a default period of an additional five months’ imprisonment each.