A FUGITIVE Scots hood snared in Spain for running an industrial-scale drugs lab has been caged for 13 years.
Colin Wright, 38, plotted with notorious Merseyside mobsters to traffick millions of pounds worth of heroin and cocaine on both sides of the border.
Wright, a senior member of an organised crime gang, was banged up after having earlier pleaded guilty to his high-ranking role in the plot.
He was being watched by sleuths at the National Crime Agency (NCA) as part of Operation Venetic -the nationwide takedown of hoods compromised through their use of encrypted Encrochat phone network.
Wright, of Motherwell, fled to Torre Pacheco in Murcia in August 2020 to evade justice but was eventually nicked by Spanish National Police in March this year.
He was extradited back to the UK on October 4 and later admitted his role as the “Scottish arm” of a notorious crime gang headed up by cousins Terence Earle, 50, and Stephen Earle, 52.
Wright – who used the Encrochat handle ‘Jack-Nicklaus’ – was a key cog in the wheel that helped the mob flood Scotland and England with cocaine and heroin.
We told last month how he was in charge of sourcing drugs and assessing supply routes as well as finding customers to distribute the illicit hauls.
He created the amphetamine lab in Motherwell March 2020 as the nation entered its first Covid lockdown.
NCA crimefighters discovered a criminal associate of Wright’s delivered boxes of alpha-phenylacetoacetamide (APAA), part of the amphetamine production process.
Over the next few days the gang began preparing the lab, but despite messages between them saying the ‘farm’ (or lab) was ready, they struggled to obtain the necessary solvents for the production process.
Terence and Wright also exchanged photos of the liquid being treated, to check what colour it should be.
Wright helped ship at least 20 kilos of cocaine and 10 kilos of heroin, with the former moved from Merseyside to Motherwell and the latter in the opposite direction.
ENCROCHAT EXPLAINED
BY GRAHAM MANN
THE Encrochat network favoured by criminals was one of the largest encrypted communications services in the world.
Around 60,000 people across Europe used it, with around 10,000 of those users being from the UK.
Mystery continues to surround the people who made and supplied the handsets to hoods eager to keep their activities off the radar.
But the users came unstuck when French law enforcement cracked the system using software they have kept a closely guarded secret.
We told last how a leading crimebuster said the takedown of Encrochat phones gave Scots cops the upper hand – and “turbo-boosted” their fight against gangsters.
Miles Bonfield, deputy director of the National Crime Agency, hailed the impact of Operation Venetic, a hi-tech blitz that unearthed the activities of hundreds of hoods.
He said: “It made a real difference to turbo-boosting some investigations that were already running and giving them the vital insight and evidential assistance they needed to prove their heinous criminality.”
A digital forensics expert who gave evidence at the trial of Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson the vast data haul gathered from an EncroChat sting was “the most information ever seen” in any single Police Scotland probe.
Detective Constable Paul Graham revealed the scale of the messages harvested by French and Dutch authorities as he gave evidence at the High Court in Glasgow.
The info gathered from the encrypted devices formed a key part of Operation Pepperoni which ultimately triggered the downfall of Stevenson and his gang.
The 46-year-old told jurors he has been part of Police Scotland’s Cyber Crime Unit for a decade and has 24 years’ experience in the force.
He was asked by Advocate Depute Alex Prentice KC about how the force managed the haul provided via Europol and the National Crime Agency (NCA) after French law enforcement infiltrated the encrypted device network in 2020.
He said: “It was the most information in any single inquiry Police Scotland has ever seen.
“We had to find a way to get that into the system to be able to search by the appropriate means.”
The lab was also capable of producing 1,000 kilos of amphetamine.
Wright was the final member of the mob to be caged yesterday following the imprisonment of kingpin Terence who was jailed for 16-and-a-half years in April last year and Stephen who was jailed for 11 years and four months in August.
We told how undercover cops photographed Wright at his former home in Motherwell and in St Helens during a meet-up with Terence in March 2020.
Images also showed valuable items seized at the property where Wright was finally nicked in Spain after being made the subject of a ‘Red Diffusion’ notice by Interpol.
NCA Branch Commander Cat McHugh said: “Wright’s case shows that criminals who seek refuge abroad are never immune from law enforcement’s reach as the NCA has the international scope to find them, bring them back to the UK and put them before the courts.
“His sentencing means that we have completely dismantled this organised crime group, who posed a grave danger to communities in Scotland and Merseyside, with the drugs they trafficked helping to fuel violence and exploitation in these areas.”