I think when you’re living in a world of drugs and stuff like that,
you have to be violent because if someone doesn’t pay you the money
you’re not just going to sit on your arse and take it on the chin.
You’re going to end up kicking his door in
and kicking the **** out of him.
You have to kidnap the **** if you have to.
If he’s not paying you your money,
that’s your money to be paying the next shipment.r
So he needs to pay up, or he’ll be going missing.
I’m a former cigarette and drug smuggler,
and my totality of prison sentence was 23 years.
I didn’t get in the drug world to just do little bits of drugs
and earn a little bit of money and get arrested and go to jail.
I wanted to earn a lot of money
and make sure if I did go to jail, I’d come out to something.
[Informer]
[Former Drugs Kingpin]
I was 11 when I first got into criminal activity.
I got groomed by older people to go move stuff, to deliver stuff,
to pick stuff up, to drop stuff off.
I wanted to be in criminality, and that was the route I took.
So my parents were on the dole, on benefits.
We lived on a council estate.
It was all about
get what you can while you can
and try and get out of it as fast as you can,
earn as much money,
but it doesn’t work like that.
You get involved in the buzz.
You get involved in the money.
You get involved in the drugs.
And then, next minute,
it’s one of them things that just comes normality to you.
You just start moving stuff,
and then within, like, 14, 15, you’re actually selling trips,
ecstasy, weed.
So you were actually getting involved in the day-to-day.
I started getting involved in ecstasy,
and we started earning a lot of money in the clubs
by selling them.
From there, basically, you always want to go that step ahead.
So we went over to Belgium.
We bought a tablet machine, and we were making our own ecstasy.
We were making 10,000 a day, easy.
Ecstasy started making us a lot of money.
At one time, you know,
with the club scene and stuff like that,
you could have 100 people working for you at once.
And we did sell a lot to a lot of different people.
Some people I sold tablets, you wouldn’t believe.
Well, the politicians were more about cocaine.
The singers were more about cocaine and ecstasy.
I felt really good selling drugs because I felt like I was someone.
I was earning money.
I was doing what I wanted to do.
I was having parties constantly,
left, right, and center.
Even when you’re walking through clubs
with bottles of champagne with bloody fireworks on,
and the police are looking at you, saying,
“There’s a drug dealer.”
And the police started cracking down really, really big on ecstasy.
Then that’s when we got involved in the cigarettes.
I just sort of fell into place with someone,
and he offered me a role in getting to help him learn the tobacco trade.
I went and worked with him for a couple of months.
I didn’t like him. He was a **** rat.
He deserved to go. And, you know, he had to go.
In the end, I ended up taking over the whole of the operation.
So I think we were taking in between
340,00 to 425,000 pounds a day in cash.
We used to smuggle them on boats.
We used to smuggle them in wagons.
We used to have stashes in cars.
We’d have mini aeroplanes dropping stuff off.
You always have friendly lorry drivers,
who would take it to the destination,
but also keep an eye on what was going on behind them.
After a week of doing the cigarettes,
we were out of town in a hotel.
And two of my partners had come back to the hotel room,
and we had about 600,000 pounds just thrown all over the room.
And it was just...
when they walked in, it was just **** chaotic,
and it was like there was just money everywhere.
It had to be counted, like,
but we just threw it everywhere and just had a **** big party.
And that’s what our parties were like.
It was money everywhere, drugs everywhere, women everywhere.
It was just the norm, weren’t it?
When we were kids growing up,
we’d be playing around with guns and stuff like that.
And then, you know, we’ve shot at people.
People have shot at us.
But I’m still here today, so I’m happy.
A few of my mates have been shot, yeah.
Been shot, been killed.
Been stabbed, been killed.
Took drugs, died.
Happens all the time, doesn’t it?
It does have an impact on you,
and the one thing you need to do then is get back out
and get revenge.
And that’s the way the world goes, innit.
I got caught in 2000, so my totality of that was six years.
Then I got a 14 million pound fine.
So on my second sentence for the drugs,
I was put in a Cat A unit, in a secure unit,
and I was deemed one of the
highest-risk offenders in the country
for escape.
I was well-respected going into the prison anyway.
But once people found out what you were in for
and the type of money you were earning,
and what you were about,
you meet other people in prison who are just the same as you.
We were still selling drugs on the outside when we were in prison,
and we were using mobile phones for them.
Say I’d be sitting in jail with someone from Scotland,
and he wanted to buy drugs, but he wanted them from Liverpool.
You’d just make the connection with my mates and their mates
and let the ducks do the business themselves.
If I could stand back and change all that, I would.
I’ve done some serious damage to people.
And obviously seeing some of them people now with limps
and stuff like that,
it’s not very nice, you know.
But when you’re a kid, you don’t give a ****.
It’s when you get old, and you’ve got kids yourself,
and you realize the stuff you’ve done,
it’s not very nice.
But do you know what?
There’s **** all I can do about them now.
What’s done is done.
You know, you look at the past, and it’s there for a reason.
It’s called the past because it’s the past.
The way the world is now,
the technology’s too big and too better.
No matter what, if you’re involved in drugs or criminality,
if you’re not a grass, you’ll be going to jail.
And if you don't go to jail,
then you’re probably about nine times out of ten
getting shot and killed.