A grandmother who headed a £80 million family-run drugs empire flooding the UK with nearly a tonne of cocaine has been jailed.
Deborah Mason, 65, known as “Queen Bee”, had a team of couriers distributing packages across London as well as Bradford, Leicester, Birmingham, Bristol and Cardiff while getting £50,000 per year in benefits.
It is estimated each individual earned more than £1,000 a day and some took their children as young as two on trips.
Matriarch Mason lived an extravagant lifestyle with her profits, having bought a £400 Gucci collar and lead with a nine-carat gold name tag for her bengal cat, Ghost.
She was looking to go Turkey to have cosmetic surgery and the rest of the clan booked holidays and purchased luxury goods with their earnings.
Footage of her arrest shows her denying any involvement, telling an officer in May 2024: “Shut up! Me? Mate, no come on?”
But Mason was unaware she and her drug runners had been put under police surveillance and had their mobile phones tracked.
A car hired by Mason left her house in Crayford Road, Tufnell Park at 4.30am on April 20 2023 and arrived at Harwich Port, Essex.
After just 20 minutes spent collecting a shipment of cocaine, the car headed back.
Mason and the other defendants completed various drop-offs and collections throughout a seven-month period moving drugs with an estimated street value of £80 million.
Metropolitan Police officers discovered that trips were made to Harwich regularly, as well as south London, Rotherham, Southend, Leicester, Walsall and various other locations.
The crime network used encrypted messaging site Signal to communicate and detectives trawled through thousands of messages following their arrests.
A number of hire cars and hotels were expensed as part of their spending.
Mason recruited her sister, Tina Golding, 66, whose children Roseanne Mason, 29, Demi Bright, 30, Lillie Bright, 26, and Reggie Bright, 24, also became involved.
Reggie roped in his partner Demi Kendall, 31, and more than £15,000 in cash was seized during a search of their home address.
Kendall in turn had enlisted friend Anita Slaughter, 44, and Lillie recruited her girlfriend, Chloe Hodgkin, 23.
At Woolwich Crown Court on Friday, Mason was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for conspiracy to supply.
Golding, of Beecholme Drive, Ashford, Kent, received 10 years; Roseanne Mason, of Grosvenor Avenue, Canonbury got 11 years; Demi Bright, of Samuel Peto Way, Ashford, 11 years; and Lillie Bright, of Evergreen Way, Ashford 13 years.
Reggie Bright and Demi Kendall, of Frittenden Road, Staplehurst, were jailed for 15 years and 13 years and six months respectively.
Anita Slaughter, of Pearmain Way, Ashford, was given 13 years.
Chloe Hodgkin, of Abbots Walk, Wye, Kent will be sentenced at a date to be set.
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Judge Philip Shorrock told Mason: “You were effectively the site foreman working under the direction of a site manager.
“You recruited members of your own family – as a mother you should have been setting an example for your children and not corrupting them.”
The judge noted that several of the women have young children but said their involvement in the drug network only “makes it easier for unscrupulous” dealers to seek to recruit mothers.
Earlier, prosecutor Charlotte Hole said: “All of the offenders participated in a conspiracy which involved the nationwide supply of around a metric tonne of cocaine, collected usually from areas near ports such as Harwich, and delivered across the country to Bristol, Cardiff, Sheffield, Bradford and so on.”
She added: “Everyone involved had an expectation of significant financial advantage, at least £1,000 per trip, and it is one of the most significant parts of the motivation of the conspiracy.
“They all had an awareness of the scale of the operation.”
Mason played a “leading role” and was “top of the organisation and provided cocaine for the upstream supplier known as Bugsy”.
When she was on holiday in Dubai, her daughter Roeseanne made seven trips delivering about 166kg of cocaine, stepped in to the directing role, the court heard.
The prosecution said Roeseanne collected cash for her mother and also “provided childcare so that others could work”.
Mother-of-two Demi Bright made a single trip in August 2023 which involved 60kg of cocaine.
She took her children with her on the two-day trip, which involved an overnight stay in a hotel.
Demi agreed to deliver more drugs in November 2023 but dropped out.
It appears she stepped back from the drug plot after her sister Roeseanne was arrested “saying she wanted to go straight but she continued to help her mother in the organisation and was aware of its scale”, the court heard.
The prosecution said that “most significantly” she recruited Slaughter to the gang, whom she offered work on a daily basis.
Lillie Bright was involved in 20 trips involving 195kg of cocaine.
Her partner Hodgkin is awaiting the birth of her baby.
Ms Hole said: “The two of them took Lillie Bright’s son with them, who was two at the time, in a car with cardboard boxes containing kilogrammes of cocaine.”
Lillie Bright also had 35g of cocaine she offered for sale, the court heard.
Reggie Bright’s 12 trips as part of the gang delivered at least 90kg and there were times he collected wages for the group.
He usually took trips with his partner Kendall telling her “not to get the hump because we need the money”, the court heard.
Reggie had been a cocaine user and an addict since his teens and had a brain injury as a result of his misuse.
He claimed he did not know where the drugs were coming from, but encrypted messages on the Signal app show this was not true.
Ms Hole said: “He used the Signal alias Frank and was clearly known to, and in direct contact with, the upstream supplier.”
Kendall carried out 15 trips involving 98kg of cocaine, and “often” took her toddler with her in a car.
She also recruited her friend, and later, talking about the plot, told her “you’d get years if u got stopped with the amount that we carry – serious jail time”.
Golding made four trips and delivered at least 75kg of cocaine and collected at least £10,000 in wages.
Slaughter took part in a single trip, which amounted to 55kg across four drops, in October 2023.
George Payne, defending for Deborah Mason, claimed his client was not the top director of the gang’s actions.
In his mitigation argument, he said: “It is precisely because she does not look like someone who is involved in drug dealing that she was chosen to be part of the plot.”
He added: “I submit that all of these individuals are expendable, without experience and without a lot of knowledge.”
Detective Constable Jack Kraushaar, who led the investigation, said: “This was a sophisticated operation which was extremely profitable for those involved.
“Following months of work by the Met Police to relentlessly pursue these perpetrators, we were able to arrest and eventually convict them, preventing more drugs flooding streets across the UK which leads to violence, antisocial behaviour and misery for communities.
“The group were sucked into criminality, selfishly attracted by the financial benefits of the drug-dealing to fund lavish lifestyles. They were unaware we were coming for them and this sentencing should act as a deterrent to those who think about committing this type of crime.”
After sentencing Crown Prosecution Service specialist prosecutor Robert Hutchinson said: “This was no ordinary family.
“Instead of nurturing and caring for her relatives, Deborah Mason recruited them to establish an extraordinarily profitable criminal enterprise that would ultimately put them all behind bars.”
