'Mate, any of us got lifted I'd be gutted'
EncroChat messages reveal the sheer scale of the empire of the biggest firearms trafficking gang the UK has ever seen. Members watched their mammoth operation crumbled... and couldn't hide their sheer panic.
READ MORE: Mum left to die after being mowed down by speeding driver in hit-and-run days before Christmas - before coward blamed HER The latest case before a court in Manchester was different. It was a huge bust for Greater Manchester Police. Seven men have now been convicted of a raft of offences following a month-long trial. Mohammed Omar Malik, Daniel Gibbons, Daniel Waters, Sean Hogan, Andrew Cooney, Conor Sandlan and Adrian Gonzales face lengthy sentences. They will go before judge to learn their fates later this year.
'Sweets' is a term for bullets. The court heard 30 bullets were usually supplied with firearms orders. Before the last picture in the sequence was sent by Sandlan, Malik responded: "Perfect bro." Between the April 9 and 13, Cooney - ‘fernpirate’ - and Hogan - ‘dullhyena’ - talked about Cooney shifting a 'metal thing', with Hogan asking for a picture: "And calibre as well mate".
'Bad news... just read M.E.N... wow' In the early hours of April 23, following Sandlan's arrest, Gonzalez - ‘terryf*****gtibbs’ - made numerous desperate attempts to get hold of Malik. During these attempts, he sent a message reading 'Ted been arrested for firearms', ‘Ted’ being a nickname for Sandlan.
But business continued, with Malik sending Gonzalez a message reading 'OK we have 5small 3big', believed to have meant five handguns and three Skorpion sub-machine guns. Gibbons was arrested at his home in Reddish. When police asked him if there was anything they needed to be aware of, he said: "There are a load of tablets upstairs in the cupboard in the bedroom... also some cocaine and some guns… and there's some amphetamine in the fridge."
As the investigation continued, it soon became clear the scale of the gun ring, not just in Manchester, but across the UK.
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