In deciding which crimes to write about, we consider a range of issues including the severity of the crime, the threat to public safety and the wider context in which it happened. Some gangs were organized on racial lines and others were strongly influenced by their hometowns. If you go through a lot of middlemen, the take goes down". He told the pair: 'It was a business on a national scale which netted you vast sums of money, which fuelled your lavish lifestyles. Only now, though, can the circumstances behind the murder of Britain's biggest cocaine baron be revealed. The 57-year-old former lorry driver from Manchester travelled the world meeting the heads of Colombian drug cartels to arrange massive shipments into the country via Spain. It is a vicious tale of duplicity, violence and retribution in the shadowy world of international drug dealing. The drugs were probably worth around 1m on the street. The Spanish police and the growing success of Soca in interdicting cocaine shipments moving through Iberia was already causing alarm and rethinking in Bogot and Caracas. One spat with the Irish took place in the Nikki Beach Bar in Marbella when drinkers hurled themselves to the floor at the sound of breaking glass, followed by gunshots. The full story of how Barons gang imported 52 tons of drugs and laundered millions of pounds can now be told for the first time. Strong links to corrupt port officials and haulage contractors ensured its status as an accomplished smuggler. One of his houses in the UK was featured in a magazine spread in Lancashire Life in 2009. She moved about 1 million in drugs money in the UK, and bought a Bentley Continental GT sports car on his behalf. It will have a profound effect on him and his family. He was clever. Over the past 12 months, the brutal, macabre methods of the Mexican drugs cartels have made regular headlines. Ciro "The Artichoke King" Terranova was born in Corleone, Sicily like The Godfather, himself. Alan Tobin, a mental health nurse who worked at Rathbone Low Secure Unit in Old Swan, claimed he became embroiled in drugs to help support his five children. We are no longer accepting comments on this article. He holds dual bachelor's degrees from Pace University and a master's degree from New York University. If the Mexicans are doing business in Liverpool, they have met their match.". Mexican counter-narcotics officials say recent offensives by the army to crack down on the influx of cocaine north into the US have prompted the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas to seek fresh markets, scouring Europe for like-minded individuals willing to assist a global expansion. The rise of the father of five to the summit of Britain's cocaine trade came in 1996, 20 years after he started selling 5 bags of cannabis while a pupil at Liverpool's New Heys comprehensive. ", whose angry brother got revenge with a broken bottle, Tommaso "The Boss of Two Worlds" Buscetta, Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme was found guilty, 21 chilling photos of history's most infamous mob hits. As one Merseyside source said: 'Colin was a nice feller, but sometimes he didn't pay his bills. The Tobins both admitted conspiring to supply cocaine, heroin, ketamine and cannabis. It helps you to get an idea of what people like or not. It wasn't uncommon for one mafioso to never learn another mobster's full name. Sources on Merseyside have told the ECHO the villa belonged to the brothers from Cantril Farm and was the headquarters of their drug business. In May 2017 Spanish police and the National Crime Agency led a series of spectacular raids across the Costa Del Sol. Alderman or his men would then simply drag the lifeless body out of the bar without a single second guess from unsuspecting guests. Although not strictly part of a named gang, Curtis Warren is one of Liverpool's most notorious drug barons. These devices, costing 1,500, are usually Android-based smartphones that had their GPS sensors, microphones, and cameras stripped out, encrypted chat apps installed by default to allow people to sent private messages. Future Opioids Merseyside police are aware of at least one meeting in which the heads of Liverpool's cocaine trade met and agreed to avenge the death of Smith, a high-stakes player whose 1,000kg deals were legendary and sometimes affected the price of cocaine throughout Britain. They were a typical Liverpool family who moved from the heartlands of the city to a new estate. Detectives stopped the van, with the drugs secreted under floorboards and in a specially adapted 'hide', in the early evening of Thursday, August 2 that year. The Lam. "They were not into anything. The comparison was telling. Anthony "Big Tuna" or "Joe Batters" Accardo once ruled the Chicago Outfit, and earned his "Joe Batters" nickname during Prohibition from murdering three disloyal gangsters with a baseball bat. Liverpool's gangs have traditionally worked directly with their Colombian counterparts, with Smith's syndicate buying cocaine from South American networks whose origins can be traced back to the infamous cartels that controlled international cocaine traffic in the 1990s. Everyone expected Smith's allies to get revenge immediately. For the Bird of Prey, Pancake and their associates, the emerging Mexican connection follows a calamitous Spanish failure. Play it now! He was a good blagger. John Tobin's term was reduced because he had spent 110 days - the equivalent of a 220-day sentence - on remand over a discontinued matter. From Tommaso "The Boss of Two Worlds" Buscetta to Albert "Tick Tock" Tannenbaum, gangster nicknames let everybody know who it was they were dealing with. "They are heavily armed, they plant homemade bombs outside pubs. While it was previously assumed he garnered his nickname by working at a Boston autobody shop, the truth is more indicative of the gangster's immoral resourcefulness. Liverpool gangsters, including the Bird of Prey and an accomplice, James Taylor, known as "Pancake", are "certainly talking" to the Sinaloa, along with Los Zetas, classified by the US Drug Enforcement Administration as Mexico's most dangerous trafficking organisation. He also splashed out on a 86,000 Bentley GT Continental, enrolled two of his children in boarding schools and bought them both horses. But the head of Merseyside Police's intelligence and security bureau, Detective Chief Superintendent Steve Naylor, who has charted the shifting loyalties in Liverpool's drugs gangs, is adamant they will snare Smith's killers. Amid the ensuing chaos, the 500kg of coke vanished. Smith had amassed a personal fortune of at least 200m as he masterminded the distribution of cocaine across Europe using direct contacts with the South American cartels. In total 24 people were arrested in a series of raids from Barcelona to Alicante. 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Amounts of between 250kg to 500kg were used to reduce risk in case they lost track of the cargo. Vincent was notorious for kidnapping other gangsters for ransom money and his nickname resulted from one such kidnapping attempt in 1931. An established network of Liverpool gang members based in Amsterdam was secretly tasked with selling the drug. For nearly 30 years Liverpool gangster s have dominated the UK's illegal drug trafficking - creating and supplying the largest market in. According to reliable sources, the brothers flew a team of criminals over to Amsterdam to shoot their enemy. Court documents state that debt collector Broughton sometimes then relayed messages from 'The Banker' back to the Tobins. We knew about the boxing families who like to threw their weight around. Jason Smith, defending John Tobin, told the court his client was shot as part of a series of threats and intimidation by those higher up the drug trade. In the meantime, the one certainty is that the cycle of killing will continue. Louis 'Louie Bagels' Daidone was the acting boss of the Lucchese crime family. With counter-narcotics officers able to monitor emails and telephone conversations, the latest modus operandi of Liverpool's cocaine dealers relies on catching budget flights from Merseyside to contacts throughout Europe, relaying messages and instructions in person, often returning the same day. John Tobin had seven previous convictions for 12 offences, but nothing for drug trafficking, and was last in court in 2010 for possessing a blade in public. He was known as the "Cocaine King", the second biggest drug dealer Britain has produced, and an ally of Curtis Warren, the only trafficker to appear in the Sunday Times Rich List and currently behind bars in Jersey. A cocaine boss was shot on his doorstep over debt to an underworld crime queen dubbed 'The Banker' after police seized 20million of his drugs in the UK'sbiggest-ever land seizure, a court has heard. HedWeb "The Mexicans are shifting their operations. John Tobin's DNA was later found deposited on the bubble wrap of one of the drug blocks, which he had earlier watched being placed into boxes during the packing process. He had splashed out on a 5million mansion in Bolton which was featured in a lifestyle magazine. Police found he was working closely with another drugs kingpin Walter Callinan, 61, who lived in a mansion in Malaga. Sources in Amsterdam, where Liverpudlians and Colombians operate together to disseminate cocaine across the continent, claim that Liverpudlian expat dealers in Amsterdam, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Turkey and South America - allied to the Merseyside mafia - have been warned to prepare for a 'mafia-style bloodbath'. He was not only its primary enforcer in Las Vegas, but also operated an extremely lucrative sports betting empire in the desert city. Or at least it could only be reopened at prohibitive cost. A source close to Liverpool's cocaine scene said: 'Lawlor wasn't just your usual security boss pumped up on steroids. The dialogue with Smith's killers has already started, police believe. He said: 'This put me in a very awkward position because I was now responsible for washing nearly 1.5 (million) in total. Carle complained in an email to Callinan that he had given up his 50,000 annual salary to risk prison. However, UK police sent over intelligence to their Dutch counterparts which led to a raid by elite police. By puncturing the brain, he left no other sign of foul play or defensive wounds during subsequent autopsies. 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