kingpin

A DRUG kingpin arrested while partying at an Ibiza nightclub for a £20million drug ring he ran with his ex-girlfriend has been jailed.

The couple from Merseyside plotted to smuggle over 300 kilos of drugs in two lorries in the summer of 2022.

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Eddie Burton, 23, from Liverpool was jailed for 19 years at Canterbury Crown Court on Friday, September 26.

His glam ex-girlfriend, Sian Banks, 25, was sentenced to five years in February of this year.

Burton had been living in mainland Europe in 2022 when two lorries were intercepted at Dover Port containing heroin, cocaine and ketamine.

The first of those lorries was stopped by Border Force on July 3 and the second was intercepted the following month on August 12.

Overall, officers discovered a whopping 307 kilos with an estimated street value of £20million.

Burton’s fingerprints were found on both the drug packages as well as the modified fuel tank that was used to conceal them.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) launched a huge manhunt for Burton who was living between the Netherlands and Spain after he left the UK in 2021.

Burton was put in cuffs by Spanish police in August 2023 at the Pacha nightclub in Ibiza for unrelated drug dealing offences.

He had been using an alias to avoid being caught at the time but was extradited to Germany and charged with drug offences before he was returned to the UK in March last year.

Following that, Burton pleaded guilty to four counts of importing Class A and B drugs.

According to the MailOnline, Burton was involved in drugs from an early age and started dealing them at 10 years old.

Those who knew him said he was engaging in serious criminal activity while he was still at primary school and weren’t surprised by his life’s trajectory.

Whereas Banks had a love of luxury holidays and high-end goods with a fondness for men with money, according to those who knew her.

She was arrested in December 2023 before she pleaded guilty to seven charges including importing Class A drugs and money laundering earlier this year.

She had visited Burton in the Netherlands and Spain on a monthly basis between June 2022 and October 2023.

Her phone had also revealed that she had twice smuggled cocaine and ketamine into her luggage after visiting Burton in Amsterdam in August 2022.

Messages were also uncovered between the pair two days after the first lorry was intercepted.

They showed that Banks had flown to the Netherlands and helped prepare the first shipment of narcotics.

One of the messages to Burton revealed Banks was concerned her fingerprints were on the bags of ketamine.

He replied: “You’ve never been nicked or had ye prints took anyway so doesn’t matter.”

It was also discovered that banks had sold scam Covid-19 travel documents during the pandemic.

NCA Senior Investigating Officer John Turner said: “Burton, with Banks’ help, attempted to smuggle huge quantities of harmful drugs into the UK, believing he could operate with impunity overseas.

“Banks held a crucial role in the criminal enterprise, laundering the illicit profits and acting as the UK-based facilitator for the multi-million pound drug importations.

“The drugs, had they reached their final destination, would have had a destructive impact on our communities, fuelling violence and exploiting vulnerable people throughout the supply chain.”

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A FLASHY crime lord was snared for a murder plot and major cocaine smuggling racket by his clothes and tattoos featured in selfies he posted from Dubai.

Drug baron James Harding, 34, masterminded a drug empire which made £5 million in profits during a 10-week period.

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But the vain villain took selfies of himself posing shirtless in front of the mirror flexing his muscles and sitting in supercars while living a life of luxury in the desert kingdom.

Harding sent the photos and messages about his opulent lifestyle to criminal cronies on the EncroChat encrypted mobile phone system believing it was totally secure.

But the swaggering poser’s boasts rebounded on him when the communication network was infiltrated by cyber cops in 2020.

Messages uncovered Harding’s cocaine empire – and his plan to rob and kill a rival drug courier.

Harding was yesterday convicted at the Old Bailey of conspiracy to supply class A drugs and of conspiracy to murder following a heavily-guarded eight-week trial.

His right hand man Jayes Kharouti, 39, earlier admitted the same drug offence and was also found guilty of the murder plot.

Jurors heard how Harding used the EncroChat handle ‘thetopsking,’ while Kharouti went under the tags ‘besttops’ and ‘topsybricks.’

They sent 9,136 messages to each other via EncroChat between March and June 2020, detailing their vast shipments of cocaine from the Netherlands into the UK, where it was distributed across the country.

The pair spelled out how they were laundering their money – as every message was read by Scotland Yard detectives following the penetration of the EncroChat platform by French law enforcement.

Harding, originally from Alton, Hampshire, and his lieutenant Kharouti were making £70,000 every day during the period their phones were being hacked by cops, jurors heard.

Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson, KC, said the pair were responsible for “approximately 50 importations of cocaine into the UK with a total weight of approximately 1,000 kilograms.”

He went on: “The messages also show that once the cocaine was in the UK, it was broken into smaller parcels, of between 5kg and 10kg, and distributed across the UK to wholesale purchasers, who would then sell to end users.

“An analysis of the messages that discuss money and financial gain suggests that the conspirators made £60-70,000 per importation, and about £5m in profit overall in just 10 weeks.”

The messages also revealed how Harding and Kharouti tried to hire a hitman for £100,000 to rob and kill a drug mule.

They arranged a gun and ammunition for a hitman to carry out the “full M” – murder, jurors heard.

Cops moved in and arrested the alleged hitman before the contract murder could be carried out.

Harding claimed in court he was not the EncroChat user known as ‘thetopsking’ – and claimed the handle belonged to a mystery gay lover he identified in court only as ‘TK.’

But cops were able to prove Harding was the ‘thetopsking’  because of his love for selfies and boasts about his luxury lifestyle.

A phone seized from an associate had a video showing Harding in the driver’s seat of a £2.5 million Bugatti Chiron car with a tattoo on his leg clearly visible.

There were pictures of him living it up in his lavish villa at The Nest development in Dubai, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows, a swimming pool and rooms for maids and drivers.

Harding lived there with Liverpudlian girlfriend Charli Wylde, 33, and her daughter Milly-Mai, 15, who he treated as his own.

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The court heard that on May 6, 2020, EncroChat user ‘thetopsking’ boasted to pals how he was taking his “Mrs” out that evening to Zuma, an award-winning Japanese restaurant in Dubai.

Investigations found that two days earlier Harding made the booking from a personal email account.

And eight days later ‘thetopsking’  boasted in messages how he was staying at the five-star Waldorf hotel in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE, and sent an image of the hotel pool area via EncroChat.

Mr Atkinson said: “Enquiries with the Hilton Hotel Group showed that Harding stayed at the Waldorf Astoria in the United Arab Emirates and gave (his) mobile telephone number and produced a UAE identification card.

“During the stay, thetopsking had sent an image of James Harding relaxing on a sun lounger at, of all places, the Waldorf.”

One March 26 2020, thetopsking also wrote a message about how he had got back a Lamborghini Urus and sent an image of the dashboard.

Mr Atkinson said: “The person who took the image caught their leg in the photograph, and on that leg is a tattoo which matches the tattoo on James Harding’s leg.”

Kharouti’s home in Epsom, Surrey, was searched in 2020 after he was linked to the messages.

Police found a handset with the same number he gave to Harding.

He fled the country before being found in Turkey and extradited back to the UK.

Harding was arrested on 27 December 2021 at Geneva Airport, Switzerland, and from there Switzerland to the UK the following May.

The pair will be sentenced on Thursday.

Met Detective Chief Inspector Jim Casey,  said: “This conviction sends a clear message – no matter how sophisticated the methods, criminals cannot hide behind encrypted software.

“This operation dismantled a major supply chain and is a testament to the relentless work of our officers.

“We monitored their drug-dealing activity but then we saw the group discussing the contract killing of a rival.

“We moved fast to protect those in danger.”

“Harding and Kharouti planned to kill, we stopped that and put them before the courts.”

Harding was previously jailed for nine years when he was aged 21 for running a drug racket.

Previously, Calvin Crump, 29, of Redhill, Surrey, was jailed for 13 years and six months while Khuram Ahmed, 38, of Slough, Berkshire, got 15-and-half-years after admitting conspiracy to smuggle cocaine.

Peter Thompson, 61, of South-West London, received 21 years after he  pleaded guilty to the  same drug charge and  possessing a pistol.

A man alleged to have been the gang’s proposed hitman was cleared.

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WASHINGTON — A close ally of fugitive Jalisco New Generation boss known as “El Mencho” for years orchestrated a prolific drug trafficking operation, using a semi-submersible and other methods to avoid detection, and provided weapons to one of Mexico’s most powerful cartels, prosecutors say.

On Friday, José González Valencia was sentenced in Washington’s federal court to 30 years in a U.S. prison following his 2017 arrest at a beach resort in Brazil while vacationing with his family under a fake name.

González Valencia, 49, known as “Chepa,” along with his two brothers, led a group called “Los Cuinis” that financed the drug trafficking operations of Jalisco New Generation, or CJNG — the violent cartel recently designated a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration. His brother-in-law is CJNG leader Nemesio Rubén “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, whom for years has been sought by the U.S. government.

Meanwhile, El Mencho’s son-in-law, Cristian Fernando Gutiérrez Ochoa, appeared in the same courtroom earlier Friday to plead guilty in a separate case to a money laundering conspiracy charge. Gutiérrez Ochoa was arrested toward the end of the Biden administration last year in California, where authorities have said he was living under a bogus name after faking his own death and fleeing Mexico.

Together, the prosecutions reflect the U.S. government’s efforts to weaken the brutal CJNG cartel that’s responsible for importing staggering amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl into the U.S. — and track down its elusive leader. The Trump administration has sought to turn up the pressure on CJNG and other cartels with the foreign terrorist organization designation, which gives authorities new tools to prosecute those associated with cartels.

“You can’t totally prosecute your way out of the cartel problem, but you can make an actual impact by letting people know that we’re going to be enforcing this and showing that Mexico is being cooperative with us and then ultimately trying to get high-level targets to sort of set the organization back,” Matthew Galeotti, who lead the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in an interview with the Associated Press.

Trump’s Justice Department has declared dismantling CJNG and other cartels a top priority, and Galetotti said the U.S. in recent months has seen increased cooperation from Mexican officials. In February, Mexico sent 29 cartel figures — including drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985 — to the U.S. for prosecution.

The Trump administration has already charged a handful of defendants with terrorism offenses since designating CJNG and seven other Latin American crime organizations as foreign terrorist organizations in February. Galeotti said several additional indictments related to CJNG and other cartels remain under seal.

“We are taking a division-wide approach to this,” Galeotti said. “We’ve got money laundering prosecutors who are not just focused on the cartels themselves … but also on financial facilitators. So when we’re taking this broad approach … that’s why I think we’ve had some of the really significant cases that we’ve had, and we’ve seen a very significant pipeline.”

González Valencia pleaded guilty to international cocaine trafficking in 2022. Authorities say he went into hiding in Bolivia in 2015 after leading Los Cuinis alongside his brothers for more than a decade. He was arrested in 2017 under the first Trump administration after traveling to Brazil, and was later extradited to the U.S.

Los Cuinis used “air, land, sea, and under-the-sea methods” to smuggle drugs bound for the U.S., prosecutors say. In one instance, authorities say González Valencia invested in a shipment of 4,000 kilograms of cocaine that was packed in a semi-submersible vessel to travel from Colombia to Guatemala. Other methods employed by Los Cuinis include hiding drugs in frozen shark carcasses, prosecutors say. He’s also accused of directing the killing of a rival.

He appeared in court wearing an orange jumpsuit and listened to the hearing through an interpreter over headphones. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell sealed part of the hearing, keeping the press and public out of the courtroom while lawyers argued over the sentence. It was not clear why the judge determined it had to be sealed. González Valencia’s lawyer declined to comment after the hearing.

In the other case, Gutiérrez Ochoa was wanted in Mexico on allegations that he kidnapped two Mexican Navy members in 2021 in the hopes of securing the release of El Mencho’s wife after she had been arrested by Mexican authorities, prosecutors have said. Authorities have said he faked his own death and fled to the U.S. to avoid Mexican authorities, and El Mencho told associates that he killed Gutiérrez Ochoa for lying.

El Mencho’s son, Rubén Oseguera — known as “El Menchito” — was sentenced in March to life in prison after his conviction in Washington’s federal court of conspiring to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine for U.S. importation and using a firearm in a drug conspiracy.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.