A longstanding investigation by GMP Serious Organised Crime Group into drugs trafficking has come to an end after three years, with Greater Manchester Police securing prison sentences totalling 203 years and two months.
The final man embroiled in the multi-million-pound drugs conspiracy has been jailed for 16 years.
Christopher Paul aged 35 of Hill Place, Nelson, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class A drugs.
Following a retrial which concluded in August 2024, three men were found guilty of drug offences and possession of criminal property.
In April 2024, twelve defendants were sentenced following a 14-week trial in 2023, where they were found guilty of conspiracy to supply drugs and possession of criminal property.
In the summer of 2022, specialist detectives launched a covert investigation into an organised crime group believed to be in control of a multi-million-pound drug conspiracy across the Northwest. The investigation began when Jonathan Smith and Louis Cleworth featured in connection with an existing surveillance operation into James Mulligan, who was head of another organised crime group at the time operating across the region.
This investigation, codenamed Operation Bowler, was into Mulligan and his co-conspirators and detectives secured jail sentences for eleven men in 2023 for almost 70 years.
During Operation Bowler, Louis Cleworth and James Mulligan were in regular communication with one another, and James Mulligan and David Keenan were witnessed by surveillance meeting Jonathan Smith.
In October 2021, when police arrested James Mulligan as part of the original investigation, the following day, Jonathan Smith stopped using his mobile device and stopped activating ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras in Nelson and Blackpool, clearly feeling the pressure of Greater Manchester Police. To further remove him from the potential attention of police, the OCG replaced him with Jacob Smith, who took over his courier role until March 2022.
By March 2022, feeling confident that any potential police investigation had now dried up following Mulligan’s arrest, Jonathan Smith confidently came back to work.
However, unbeknown to him, the entire criminal group were still under surveillance. Four months later, detectives had gathered enough evidence to execute a strike and arrest the entire criminal network and bring them in for questioning.
The conspiracy involved in this investigation ran between 1 September 2021 until 20 July 2022, when police executed simultaneous strikes on their addresses. During this period, the group were responsible for the movement of at least 75 kilos of high purity cocaine, which has an estimated street sale value of £7.5million. However, the total figure this group were involved with is suspected to exceed this.
Louis Cleworth played a leading role in the OCG, and working beneath him, several individuals played vital roles to ensure the operation ran smoothly, with customers based across Greater Manchester, Lancashire, and West Yorkshire.
Through months of surveillance, customers and co-conspirators across the region were identified, with clear evidence of multi-kilo transactions occurring. ANPR, telephone analysis and surveillance revealed the OCG made an excess of 150 journeys between Middleton and various delivery sites across the region during the conspiracy period, delivering class A drugs to paying customers.
In May 2022, surveillance officers observed an exchange between Storey and Hague on Stakehill Lane, Middleton. Hague was observed back to West Yorkshire where he was stopped by police on Scholes Street in Bradford.
In the back of his car, police recovered two solid parcels wrapped in brown parcel tape and plastic, bearing a distinctive tiger emblem on the packaging. The parcels were later analysed and confirmed to be high purity cocaine.
The following day, officers attended Cleworth’s address on Hawkshead Drive where he was arrested. A search of his house revealed over £3000 cash, a mobile phone, and keys for a property on Boarshaw Clough Way, which police believed was being used as a safe house.
Police forced entry to this property on Boarshaw Clough Way and found Kilcourse asleep on the sofa. From this house, police seized approximately six kilos of cannabis bush contained in vacuum sealed bags, two blocks of cocaine wrapped in brown parcel tape with a distinctive tiger emblem on – identical to the packages seized from Hague the previous day, and drugs paraphernalia containing residue of cocaine. Police also recovered brown plastic wrappings from blocks of cocaine discarded in the in the kitchen. These were almost identical to wrappings recovered from a different location earlier in the investigation.
Following the period of surveillance and after several crucial arrests, police executed thirteen simultaneous strikes at properties across Greater Manchester 27 July.
In total, police seized tens of thousands of pounds of cash, designer clothes, high value jewellery, and debtor lists from the defendants.
At Riley’s address in Middleton, police watched as he tried to run out the back of his house in his underwear to evade arrest. He didn’t account for police to be waiting in his back yard, so when he saw them, he ran back into the house where he was detained by police. Officers noticed a smell of burning plastic in his house and smoke coming from the toilet bowl. Police recovered two mobile phones from the toilet which had both been shattered and snapped in half in an attempt to destroy evidence. Riley also had several small cuts on his hands as a result of trying to break the phones.
Detective Sergeant Mark Rigby from GMP Serious Organised Crime Group said: “This has been an exhaustive investigation which has resulted in over 200 years of prison sentences. This is a true testament to years of hard work and dedication by officers across the serious crime division and colleagues at the Crown Prosecution Service who have given us endless hours of their time, insight, and expertise throughout this entire investigation.
“Drugs trafficking is a major source of revenue for organised crime groups, and it brings a culture of violence and addiction to our communities. Through conducting hundreds of painstaking hours of surveillance, we were able to build this case and bring each and every offender operating in this conspiracy to justice, despite their efforts to evade police.”
