NF (2010) Hoods

by Carl Fellstrom

  The evening after the shooting, the two of them had fled to Skegness, where Griffin, like Colin Gunn, kept a caravan for holing up in. After a couple of days, Tirado was feeling the heat, not least because Skegness was full of people from Nottingham. He sent Griffin a text saying, ‘Ask what time I’m getting off it’s flaming here. T.’ Griffin replied with the calculated coldness of a man who had been there before. ‘No drama,’ he texted Tirado. ‘Just chill. No more texs.’ Shortly after, a third man, Andrew Pleasance, aged thirty-three, organised £100 for a taxi for Tirado to disappear down to Gloucester, where he intended to hide out. Despite dumping more than ten mobile phones they had used before and after the murder, the three were convicted on the basis of the CCTV footage and the ability of police to forensically map signal movements through mobile phone masts and calls made between the missing phones. After a trial lasting more than six weeks, the jury found Griffin and Tirado, who both lived in the Top Valley area, guilty of murder. Pleasance was found guilty of assisting an offender and was sentenced to four years. The jury failed to reach a verdict on a third man, from Birmingham, accused of murder. Sentencing Griffin and Tirado to life with a minimum twenty-eight years each, Mrs Justice Sharp said the scenes at the hospital were ‘utterly disgraceful’. She added, ‘This was nothing less than a cold-blooded execution motivated by revenge. Innocent passers-by could easily have been struck by a stray bullet and the public could have been caught up by something that resembled something from the Wild West.’

  After the case, Langton’s mother, Christina, recalled her son’s good nature. ‘I really miss his cheeky smile,’ she said. ‘He was always laughing and had a very bubbly character. He liked to make us all laugh and was a brilliant dad. His daughter was only one when he died. He would always be spending time with his son, going to the park and taking him to the cinema. It is hard to believe he is gone and they have to grow up without him. The people who did this have taken my son from me and ruined my life. Everyone needs to wake up and know what is going on around them and to understand gun crime devastates families.’

  CHAPTER 16

  ne man who has not featured yet in the pages of this book remains the most powerful organised crime figure in Nottingham. For legal reasons we shall call him the Taxman. The Taxman is a legend in his own right, controlling the money end of drug dealing throughout the East Midlands. He also has legitimate business interests stretching across the country. Many drug dealers who need collateral for the products they will smuggle into the UK will go to the Taxman for funding. It is a profitable route for them if they believe they can turn around their drugs quickly to beat his extortionate interest rates. If their shipment gets busted they know what to expect: they may be in hock to the Taxman for the rest of their lives. The Taxman prefers his borrowers not to pay up in full so the bill keeps going up and up with the interest. He is known to take protection money when business executives come to him seeking help after being pursued by other crooks. On one occasion a businessman who was being threatened by the Bestwood Cartel approached the Taxman to sort it out, saying he was not prepared to pay the Cartel but would pay the Taxman if he could deal with it. The Taxman said it would cost a couple of grand to do it and, true to form, the matter was sorted. What the businessman was not aware of was that the Taxman split the money with the Bestwood Cartel.

  The Taxman has had business dealings with other villains such as Wayne Hardy, Dave Francis and members of the Dawes Cartel. He is probably worth in the region of £50 million. Most of all it is the climate of fear that he generates, and not his wealth, which enables the Taxman to consolidate his power. The police have questioned him several times but they have never yet managed to nail him; he has the ability to slip from their grasp every time. On one occasion, National Crime Squad detectives came close after they stumbled across what they believed was a multi-million-pound money laundering exercise. It had involved a major land development that went bust after large amounts of money had been invested, not least several million pounds of his. At least that was what the paperwork showed. Detectives believed that in reality he was probably ‘losing’ money that had come in to him in cash from trade in illegal products. After a two-year investigation sifting through all the financial records for the deal, they had enough, they believed, to put a file together for the Crown Prosecution Service. It was not enough for the lawyers and because no one was talking, they didn’t have a case.

  He has taken over companies which have been about to go to the wall owing money to him and has used these companies to launder some of his illegal millions. The wall of silence that pervades his everyday work means that he can go about it safe in the knowledge that it is highly unlikely that anyone will squeal on him or get close enough to be able to hurt him. The other major factor that prevents law enforcement agencies getting close to him is that he has friends in the police. The Taxman has a number of former police officers who he can call upon for help and some of them have even gone on to work for him. One senior officer told me, ‘I’m getting sick and tired of losing officers and the following day I find out that he has gone to work for [the Taxman]. It often means that he is aware whether we are snooping around him and he can then adapt to any investigation and close up any chinks in his armoury.’

  He is able legitimately to have large amounts of cash going through his books at any one time and that is the kind of business that drug dealers like best of all. It means that they can wash the money and it will not be traceable without an extremely determined investigation. The Taxman also knows that senior police officers are loathe to sanction any major investigations into him for fear of failing and falling foul of the expensive lawyers he can afford to hire. He is well respected and known by almost all the major villains in Nottingham and by many legitimate businessmen as well.

  He does not overtly display his wealth but lives comfortably with his wife and children just a few miles from the city in a house worth around £750,000. He also resolves disputes such as problems between rival criminal gangs and has a huge influence within the criminal traveller community. On one occasion, a man charged with killing a member of the travelling community was under threat after the court case against him collapsed. He went to see the Taxman to sort it out, otherwise he would be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. The dispute was resolved but for twelve months the man was forced to carry out money collecting duties for the Taxman, visiting poor families who had been so desperate they had borrowed money and had fallen behind with payments.

  The authorities continue to keep a close check on the Taxman and he was arrested again in the spring of 2008 as a major drugs trial involving members of the Dawes Cartel was being prepared. The Serious Organised Crime Agency wanted to question him about transactions with Gary Hardy, the business partner of John and Rob Dawes. They believed Hardy sent him money for the sale of drugs in city nightclubs. The Taxman had already given officers from SOCA his explanation and they went on their way. He remains as elusive as ever.

  No sooner had police dealt with John Dawes than they began to set their sights on Hardy. He had been spotted at the scene of a drugs deal involving Dawes and police suspicions grew that he was a senior member of the Dawes Cartel. On 23 May 2005, Operation Normality was about to be brought to its conclusion with the arrest of John Dawes. With a decision having been made to arrest Dawes at the earliest opportunity, undercover police followed Dawes diligently that day. They knew Dawes had a meeting that day to pick up some money but they were not sure who would turn up at the liaison. Dawes hung around at a junction in Sutton-in-Ashfield town centre until a black Porsche appeared at high speed. It stopped at the junction long enough for John Dawes to get into the passenger seat. Gary Hardy was the driver. A plastic bag, which it later transpired contained £14,000 in cash, was handed to Dawes by Hardy, who promptly sped off in his Porsche without looking back. The police officers had been given no instructions as to what to do as far as Hardy was concerned, so they let him go. Dawes was arres
ted with the money. In interviews later Dawes refused to admit that Hardy was the man in the car who had given him the money, save to say that the money was for Apex Windows.

  Hardy was, on the face of it, a successful businessman with his company, Apex Windows, showing more than £1 million of assets and enjoying ever-increasing profits. He was also a former chairman of local football side Eastwood Town FC. Hardy went to trial in June 2008, along with his brother Paul and mother June Muers, accused of conspiring to supply heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis. Also accused was Carl Busby who faced money laundering allegations. The trial was held under the tightest security ever seen at Nottingham Crown Court, with a procession of police cars carrying secret witnesses under the protection programme, one of whom was Jonathan Guest, one of the gang’s lieutenants. The witnesses were ferried in and out flanked by police motorcycle riders and a helicopter which brought traffic to a standstill at the beginning and end of every day at court. Guest had pleaded guilty in 2002 to conspiracy to supply amphetamines and cannabis and possessing £150,000 of heroin. He was still serving his twelve-year sentence in 2006 when he decided to approach a solicitor in London and then got in touch with Crimestoppers from prison. He spoke to Notts Police in November 2006.

  Guest told the courtroom how he was kidnapped and ‘moulded’ into the organisation, sent on drug runs and left in charge of an amphetamine factory in Colwick. The former university student became involved in the drugs trade over an unpaid business loan to Rob Dawes. He told how Dawes had pointed a gun to his head because he could not sell a Range Rover to pay off the debt. Guest then became desperate, stole one of his grandparents’ cheques, wrote it out for £15,000 and gave it to the man. Dawes told Guest the cheque had better not bounce as he was going to put it through a car dealership in Kirkby-in-Ashfield belonging to Gary Hardy. When the cheque did bounce, Guest knew he was in deep trouble and his debt continued to increase. ‘As the problem developed, I ended up taking more money from my grandparents to pay off the debt,’ Guest told the court. ‘I believe it was forty thousand pounds in total. That was just a figure they came up with. I was in debt to them ... they owned me.’

  Returning from a holiday, Guest knew Dawes would be waiting for him. ‘They took me away in a car. I spent six months in an attic, in a house, more or less under lock and key.’ Dawes would also pick up Guest from the house and use him as a ‘bar prop’, ordering him to get drinks at a bar and then taking him back to the house. As their trust grew in Guest, he was given a Renault Clio and trusted to deliver cash, sometimes to Rob Dawes and sometimes to John Dawes, in bundles of £1,000 notes. ‘On one occasion I was asked to go to London with a holdall and I believe I had a hundred thousand pounds in it.’ Guest often used to meet drugs contacts at motorway junctions. He would be given their name and a description of their car and was ordered to make a quick cash exchange. He also started delivering drugs to Matlock, where he would be told to go to the car park of a garden centre. A man in a Toyota pickup truck would oversee the exchange. ‘His soldiers came on motorbikes and collected the drugs off me and drove off on the bikes at speed,’ said Guest. ‘It was literally pass the drugs to the person on the motorbike with his visor down.’

  Guest had first met Gary Hardy in the Devonshire Arms, Sutton-in-Ashfield. Guest came to believe that Hardy was one of the three drugs generals operating in the area. Each would receive £8,000 from the £40,000 that one kilo of heroin would bring on the streets. Guest, who would hide the heroin in buckets in the ground in woodland, said he was collecting a kilo every seven to ten days. Gary Hardy had also held a ‘drug dealer’s lottery’ for a Mercedes car he owned. Thirty tickets were sold for £1,000 each and among those who bought one each were David and Colin Gunn. The winner was determined by the bonus ball number each week on the National Lottery.

  The trial heard how Hardy was one of the three generals of the Dawes Cartel. Witnesses who had been part of the gang told how they were often asked to keep watch over lorry trailers containing cocaine worth up to £30 million and hundreds of kilos of amphetamine and cannabis. Hardy himself had a fleet of luxury cars which could not have come from his legitimate business dealings. Richard Latham, QC, prosecuting, said, ‘Gary Hardy, we suggest, for at least ten years leading up to his arrest on January 4, 2007, was a major player in the drugs scene in Nottingham and the area north of Nottingham. He had a cash-rich lifestyle, a stable of hugely expensive cars – Porches, Ferraris and Mercedes – and he bought and sold properties and his children were educated privately. To the outside world he had a legitimate source of funding for his lifestyle. He was a director of a number of companies, but the companies were not successful and incapable of paying for his very expensive lifestyle.’

  In August 2008, after a three-month trial, the jury came back with verdicts against Hardy. The forty-five-year-old was found guilty of conspiracy to supply heroin and amphetamines. Nottingham Crown Court also convicted him of money laundering, and possession of criminal property. His mother, June Muers, aged sixty-six, of Pearl Avenue, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, was found guilty of conspiracy to supply amphetamines and conspiracy to supply cannabis and his forty-seven-year-old brother Paul was found guilty of conspiracy to supply heroin, amphetamine, cannabis resin and possessing criminal property. Paul Hardy’s girlfriend Zoe Chapman, twenty-nine, of Willow Avenue, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, was convicted of conspiracy to supply amphetamines. Carl Busby was cleared of money laundering charges.

  Gary Hardy was jailed for twenty years, Paul Hardy for twelve years, Muers for three years and Chapman for three-and-a-half years. Before Gary Hardy was led away, still maintaining the jovial façade he had throughout proceedings, Judge Henry Morrison told him, ‘Those who deal in drugs are dealing in the misery of addicts. Heroin has a devastating impact on addicts, their family and society. You dealt in large quantities of heroin and amphetamines and made large sums of money. It was easy profits for you but it also means a long sentence. However you are not in the same league as John Dawes. You will serve twenty years in prison.’

  IN AUGUST 2008, two more Dawes Cartel members were jailed. Gavin Dawes, a thirty-year-old cousin of John and Rob, was jailed for fifteen years for involvement with a £14 million heroin consignment found in a garage in Ruddington, just outside Nottingham. Nottingham Crown Court heard that Dawes was laundering at least £1 million a month for his cousins. Fellow gang member Brian Peck was jailed for twelve-and-a-half years after both men pleaded guilty. It followed a joint investigation by SOCA and Nottinghamshire Police. The haul included sixty-five kilos of heroin, 89,000 ecstasy tablets and ten kilos of amphetamine and had been stored in the garage by Peck. Assets recovery investigators, however, failed to locate all the millions which the Dawes Cartel have earned from their drug dealing. At a hearing at Southwark Crown Court in September 2008, Judge Michael Pert placed an assets recovery order of just £355,000 on John Dawes, concluding that, although it was accepted during court proceedings that Dawes had made over £8 million during the course of his criminal activities, most of the assets could not be located.

  Another trial linked to seizure of the heroin in Ruddington revealed that, at a conservative estimate, at least £1 million in cash was being washed every month by the Cartel. A doctor from Leicester, Mohammed Aziz, was convicted after helping Gavin Dawes wash the fruits of drug dealing through a series of money transfers at exchange bureaus. Police discovered Aziz’s phone was hot with texts confirming regular cash transactions of £150,000, which were often heavily coded or encrypted. Aziz, who was codenamed ‘Spac’ by the gang, was trapped when police discovered a ledger of transactions in Dawes’s car, which implicated Aziz. Along with a number of others involved, he received three years jail time.

  In January 2009, another one-time associate of the Dawes Cartel who had built up his own drug smuggling operation was caught by Dutch police as part of a British-led operation. Anthony Spencer, a sixty-one-year-old career criminal from Coventry, had spent forty years of his adult life behind bars bu
t was still organising shipments of amphetamines and cannabis to Britain. SOCA and the Dutch monitored his Midlands-based gang on bugged mobile telephones as they talked in code about the ‘product’ being moved from Amsterdam to the UK. They used the words ‘garden work’ and ‘green paint’ for cannabis, ‘paperwork’ for money and ‘DVDs’, ‘CDs’ or ‘film’ for synthetic drugs such as amphetamine. They also used the words ‘horse and jockey’ to discuss when the drugs were being transported or when their couriers were arriving or leaving. As Spencer made one more trip to finalise details of the shipment, armed Dutch officers moved in on him and the drugs stored in the farmhouse just outside Amsterdam.

  During Spencer’s trial, details emerged of the technologies now used against organised crime. Spencer’s defence team presented the trial judge with a skeleton argument claiming that a ‘roving’ bug had been utilised by the Dutch at the request of SOCA, and planned to argue that the intercept evidence so gained was inadmissible. Dutch investigators and telecommunications experts were flown into the UK in preparation to defend the intercept evidence. Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which governs surveillance and eavesdropping in the UK, telephone intercept material is inadmissible as evidence in a British court unless it is recorded overseas, and then only with the proper authority of that foreign state. Telephone bugs usually intercept audible material while a phone call is in progress, but anomalies in the material received by defence barristers in the Spencer case indicated that police were able to record conversations taking place even when a call did not appear to be in progress. In a legal argument to the trial judge, defence barrister Charles Benson, QC, stated, ‘We are aware that a different technology now exists, known among other things as a roving bug. This enables a prospective eavesdropper to access the handset of the telephone in question and use it as a transmitter or microphone whether or not a call is actually in progress. Indeed, any conversation within some ten feet of the handset can thus be overheard.’