£4M cocaine gang jailed for more than 100 years

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A GANG who shipped drugs worth an estimated £4million to Scotland were jailed yesterday.
Seventeen members of the gang - commanded from a married couple's Merseyside home - were given sentences totalling more than 100 years.
Ringleader Christopher Pimblett, 34, who ran a network of couriers in Scotland and on Merseyside, was jailed for 12 years and his wife Sharon for four.
Fergus Smith, 26, from the east end of Glasgow, who ran the Scottish end of the operation, got 10 years.
Cash courier John Dunbar, 26, of Hillhead, Glasgow, was jailed for eight years.
In the massive operation to smash the ring, £1million worth of drugs including heroin, cocaine and cannabis, was seized, along with two firearms and ammunition.
Cash in excess of £750,000 in English and Scottish banknotes was also seized.
The Pimbletts' home in St Helens was bugged and Pimblett was recorded telling an accomplice: "I don't mind when I get sent £35,000 to £40,000 a week, but when it's not sent for a week-and-a-half or two weeks, it's not on."
At a rate of £40,000 a week, Pimblett would have collected more than £4million in two years.
In another call, Pimblett told a fellow gang member he had £100,000 in a safe, £170,000 in cash and was owed a further £250,000.
And more than £300,000 in cash was found at the home of one of his relatives after his arrest.
Jailing the gang at Liverpool Crown Court, judge Brian Lewis said the case involved "wholesale supply on a large scale between April 2005 and April 2007".
All the defendants were involved for at least some of the time supplying drugs from St Helens to Glasgow and southern Scotland.
Most were arrested last April but before that police had intercepted large amounts of cash being taken from Scotland and thousands of pounds worth of drugs being transported northwards.
Judge Lewis said: "Some impression of the scale can be gleaned from what did not get through - 10 kilos of cocaine, 50 kilos of cannabis, one kilo of heroin and thousands of ecstasy tablets."
The extent of the operation was confirmed by a courier driver who told police following his arrest he had transported in excess of £800,000 in cash and £1.3million worth of cocaine in about 30 trips over six months.
On one occasion, he said, Pimblett counted out £125,000 in cash he brought back from a trip to Scotland.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/ne...6908-20372875/