A Longsight man who boasted about his criminal exploits in several rap videos that were published to YouTube has been jailed for nine years
Twenty two year old Justin Shaw of Richmond Grove East’s videos glorified the criminality that he was engaged in and how much money he was making from these exploits.
When police raided a property connected to him they found iPhones, over £1,000 in cash and a quantity of cannabis.
The two phones were examined and following a review, both were littered with messages and videos that clearly showed Shaw being involved in the supply of class A drugs to members of the community.
Officers seized another device and arrested Shaw on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of class A drugs in September 2023.
The evidence gained by officers showed that over the five-year period, Shaw was running a drug line known locally as the MJ line, which was an extremely busy class A drug line supplying both crack cocaine and heroin to users.
The line would also be utilised to sell cannabis. Shaw was shown to be the leading figure of this drug supply line operation and employed vulnerable people in the community to supply drugs on his behalf. Shaw also targeted vulnerable people to use their addresses to prepare and store drugs for onward supply.
In a one-week period in February 2024, the MJ line made was found to have made 732 outgoing calls, with 3,026 incoming phone calls. Detectives calculated that if the line was this busy between 2019 and 2024, Shaw would have conducted drug deals of crack cocaine, heroin and cannabis totalling over £5,234,000.
Shaw boasted of his criminal exploits in several rap videos that were published to YouTube under his rap name “JS” or “J SHAW”. These videos glorified the criminality that he was engaged in and how much money Shaw was making from these exploits.
Shaw was charged with numerous offences of being concerned in the supply of class A drugs over a five-year period starting in 2019 and ending in 2024.
