A man who likened himself to the infamous drug dealer El Chapo and was later jailed for more than two decades has lost an appeal against his sentence.
Jonathan Cassidy played a leading role in an international drug plot which saw cocaine imported from the Netherlands and used to supply users across north-west England, Birmingham and Leeds.
Manchester Crown Court heard last year that the operation dealt with 356kg of the drug, worth around £26 million, with £10 million in cash changing hands in the space of three months.
Prosecutors also said that Cassidy sent an associate a picture of the actor playing Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman in the TV programme Narcos, known as El Chapo, and joked that they shared the same birthday.
Cassidy was jailed for 21 years and nine months in March last year, having admitted importing drugs, conspiring to supply drugs and conspiring to transfer criminal property the previous month.
At an appeal hearing in London last month, his lawyers claimed that the sentencing judge gave him insufficient credit for his guilty pleas and that not enough weight was given to mitigating factors.
But in a ruling published on Monday, three senior judges dismissed the challenge.
Lord Justice Fraser, sitting with Mr Justice Hilliard and Mr Justice Constable, said that they were “not persuaded” that the sentence was “manifestly excessive or reached after an error of principle”.
They also dismissed an appeal bid brought by Cassidy’s co-defendant, Nasar Ahmed, who admitted the same offences and received the same jail term.
Prosecutor Richard Wright KC told Manchester Crown Court last year that Cassidy played a “leading role” in drugs importation and the buying and selling of class A drugs while Ahmed acted as a middleman and “facilitator”, transferring vast sums of cash to buy and sell on drugs.
One associate was arrested in a car in Liverpool, where police found two Asda bags for life containing £249,940.
After the encrypted EncroChat network used by Cassidy and Ahmed was compromised by law enforcement agencies, Cassidy travelled to Dubai in July 2020 and inquired with estate agents about purchasing a villa with a budget of £2.3 million, including a £22,000 bed.
He travelled back to the UK in October that year, but was arrested upon his return.
Cassidy was sentenced alongside his younger brother, Jamie Cassidy, a former Liverpool football prodigy who played alongside Jamie Carragher and Michael Owen in the Liverpool side that won the FA Youth Cup in 1996.
Jamie Cassidy received a sentence of 13 years and three months for conspiring to supply drugs and conspiring to transfer criminal property, after prosecutors said he was “drawn in” to crime by his older brother.
Dismissing Jonathan Cassidy and Ahmed’s appeals, Lord Justice Fraser said that both knew “what their conduct had been and the degree to which it was unlawful”.
He continued that despite defendants in other EncroChat cases being given greater credit for guilty pleas, there was “no one single ‘EncroChat discount’” that should be applied.
