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Daily Record
Daily Record
World
Paul Britton

Smiling drug kingpins caught counting stacks of dirty cash in living room after £20m cocaine haul

This is the astonishing mobile phone footage showing a group of smiling drug dealers counting piles of dirty cash.

The video was used to help secure the convictions of two gangs who had been flooding the streets of one of the UK's biggest cities with cocaine.

Oldroyd and Taluant Paja, 22, with £150,000 in cash on a coffee table (MEN)

Jamie Oldroyd, 29 and Taulant Paja, 22, can be seen covered in bundles of banknotes ready to be put in a counting machine.

Oldroyd controlled one of the gangs - and was observed by police driving 17 different cars over a 14-month covert investigation.

The other organised crime group was ran by Jamie Simpson, which was caught by police loaded with £20million of cocaine - the largest ever inland haul in the north of England, as the Manchester Evening News reports.

Surveillance footage recorded by a police helicopter captured the moment police interceptors swooped to stop the van and a car on the M6 motorway on the way to Warrington last August.

The man being handcuffed on the floor wearing white and grey is Jamie Simpson, 31, Cheshire Police said.

Both vehicles were searched and officers discovered the cocaine hidden inside.

The van had been adapted to conceal drugs packed and placed into large metal draws hidden underneath a false floor.

Together Simpson and four other members of the gang - Clare Smith, Andrew Daniels, Dean Brettle and Jamie Winterburn - have now been jailed for a total of almost 35 years.

Simpson, who admitted conspiracy to supply cocaine, was locked up for 11 years and six months.

Oldroyd and other other men have also been jailed.

He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply cocaine and was jailed for 14 years and three months.

£20m worth of cocaine laid out in front of their van (MEN)

Four other men who belonged to Oldroyd's gang are due to be sentenced in court on later dates.

The colossal, 186kg cocaine seizure came while Cheshire Constabulary's Serious and Organised Crime Unit were leading a covert investigation - codenamed Operation Dreadnought - into Oldroyd's Warrington-based OCG.

He was the owner of ProLease - a vehicle leasing company in Warrington.

Police said Oldroyd's gang were involved in a plot to supply cocaine to Warrington, Carlisle, Scunthorpe, Darlington, Manchester and London.

The gang regularly disposed of mobile phones, used messaging applications to communicate and changed cars.

Each man had a different role to play, Cheshire Constabulary said.

The massive haul of cocaine laid out in front of their van (MEN)

Paul Ferraiolo - a member of Oldroyd's gang - was even pictured posing in a luxury supercar.

Detective Chief Inspector Mike Evans said: "This operation has not only resulted in the largest haul of cocaine being seized in the history of Cheshire but also the largest national in land seizure.

"We have wiped out two organised crime groups, preventing them as well as other gangs from gaining extreme profits and in doing so have protected our communities along with vulnerable adults from criminals who bring with them intimidation, exploitation and violence."

One of Paul Ferraiolo's luxury supercars (MEN)

He added: "To transport such a colossal amount of cocaine you have got to be a confident, arrogant and greedy individual. Simpson has proved that he is exactly that and this is what led him to believe he could bring illegal drugs into Cheshire without being disrupted.

"Despite Oldroyd’s organised crime group going to great lengths to conceal their criminality and avoid being caught we were always going to be one step ahead. Let this be a warning to other organised criminals out there, Cheshire is and always will be, a very difficult place to operate.

"I want the public to be reassured that protecting our local communities by pursuing organised criminals will continue to be at the forefront of our priorities."

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