Three men have been locked up for their roles in a 10-month cocaine plot during the first COVID lockdown.
Carlisle Crown Court heard that trusted Leeds-based courier Elliot Bramley, now aged 26, supplied Maryport-based Robert Alan McNichol, 45, with vast amounts of cocaine during 26 separate trips.
A criminal conspiracy which also involved McNichol’s uncle, 61-year-old Leslie Reid, began in January 2020. Illegal journeys and activity continued during the early coronavirus lockdown restrictions when the public were told to stay at home, until late November of that year.
However, the trio were brought to justice by Cumbria police detectives who smashed the plot by painstakingly amassing evidence which included damning WhatsApp messages between uncle and nephew, along with cash transactions, traffic camera footage and mobile phone site data.
McNichol was said by the prosecution to have organised, bought and sold cocaine on a commercial scale. This came to an end when police made arrested and seized a 1kg block of high purity cocaine with a potential street value running into tens of thousands of pounds.
Examination of Reid’s mobile telephone revealed messages between McNichol and his “money man” relative Reid that indicated a total amount of cash changing hands during the conspiracy period of £263,420.
At the time, McNichol was on prison licence and subject to a tough Serious Crime Prevention Order (SCPO) which ran until May 2022 and banned him from possessing £5,000-plus cash and more than two mobile phones. This order was imposed more than a decade ago when he was handed a 12-year jail term for his role in a previous cocaine supply conspiracy.
McNichol, along with Bramley, admitted conspiracy to supply cocaine. McNichol, of Greenwood Terrace, Maryport further admitted cocaine possession with intent to supply, possessing criminal property totalling £45,000 and breaching the order.
Reid, of St Helens Street, Cockermouth, denied possessing £65,000 criminal property and money laundering to the tune of at least £263,420 but was convicted by a jury and jailed for two years on Friday when Bramley, of Meanwood Road, Leeds, received a prison sentence of five years seven months.
McNichol was punished this afternoon and received a total prison term of 16-and-a-half years. The court heard he had been in debt but was making steps to mend his ways while remanded in custody.
Passing sentence, Judge Richard Archer told him: “In this case, over the course of 26 trips over a nine or 10-month period, much of which whilst the country was in coronavirus lockdown or significant restrictions, you organised the buying and indeed selling of controlled drugs on a commercial scale.”
