Irish dealer may return home to serve sentence
A DRUG dealer who was caught redhanded making a delivery of kilos of cocaine to Swansea could return home to his native Ireland to serve his sentence.
Peter “Fatso” Mitchell was jailed for 10 years in January this year for his involvement in an organised crime group that shipped an estimated 42kg of coke into the city in just five months.
Mitchell is the former “lieutenant” of an Irish drug lord who fled to the Costa del Sol following the killing of a crime reporter in Dublin in the 1990s.
In July 2020 he was arrested after police intercepted his car on the M4 near Bridgend – on the back seat of the vehicle officers found 3kg of cocaine worth more than £133,000 hidden among boxes of nappies. Mitchell and his co-conspirators were subsequently jailed. It has now emerged the Irishman could serve the bulk of his sentence in the Irish Republic.
A hearing at Swansea Crown Court was told that the prosecution is no longer seeking a serious crime prevention order (SCPO) against Mitchell, meaning the last legal impediment stopping an application to repatriate the defendant has been removed.
A SCPO is a civil order which can be imposed on people convicted of certain serious offences to deter future offending by imposing conditions such as prohibiting them from associating with named people or requiring them to register phones with the police.
Mitchell’s barrister, Andrew Taylor, said an application for repatriation could not be made while the defendant was subject to legal proceedings but now the Crown was no longer pursuing a SCPO, the application could be submitted.
Mitchell and his cocaine co-conspirators, Nathan Webber from Ynysforgan and James Gallagher from Fforestfach, were identified after Dutch and French law enforcement agencies were able to crack the Encrochat phone system – a network of secure communications which was widely used by “crime syndicates” around the world. A wealth of messages from criminals were downloaded before the breach was discovered and the information was passed to police across Europe including in the UK.
Using the Encrochat intelligence the National Crime Agency and South Wales Police identified three people who were involved in a major conspiracy to ship large quantities of cocaine into Swansea – Mitchell, who went by the Encrochat user name “Gorilla Hawk”, Webber or “Cheeky Panda”, and Gallagher or “Diver Hawk”.
Analysis of the communications showed regular contact between the three men as they discussed drugs purchases and prices per kilo, along with delivery details including to addresses in Clydach, Morriston and Port Talbot.
One of the messages referred to dealers in Colombia who had 100kg of coke “ready to go”. Some of the packages of cocaine shipped to Swansea were stamped with the “Avengers” superhero logo as a way of identifying them. Other people in the conspiracy are yet to be identified.
As the drugs flowed into Swansea during the conspiracy hundreds of thousands of pounds in payments went the other way. Over the space of just five months the gang trafficked an estimated 42kg of cocaine into the city worth some £1.8 million.
Mitchell was arrested on July 7, 2020, as he drove from Bradford to Swansea with a consignment of drugs. Webber and Gallagher were arrested shortly afterwards, and in Webber’s house officers found £25,000 in cash and £3,000 worth of silver bullion, while a search of Gallagher’s house uncovered a suitcase in the attic containing £100,000.
In September Mitchell was ordered to pay £23,610 following a Proceeds of Crime Act investigation
Mitchell moved to the Costa del Sol after a police crackdown in the wake of the assassination of journalist Veronica Guerin in Dublin in 1996.
A former senior Irish police officer said the punishment handed down to Mitchell by the Welsh court in January this year was the first time he had received a heavy sentence as he has “really avoided incarceration most of his life”.
Speaking to the Irish Sunday Mirror Pat Leahy, former assistant commissioner with the Garda or Irish police, said Mitchell is “long gone from the memory of much of the public” but “not gone from the minds of those who deal in crime”, adding: “This is the first time he has been handed a very heavy sentence – he has really avoided incarceration most of his life.”