Fugitive 'Huyton Firm' boss jailed after extradition

Francis Coggins (l) was on the run for five years before being arrested

A fugitive gang boss who ran a major drug-trafficking operation alongside his brother has been jailed for 18 years after being extradited from Holland.

Francis Coggins, 60, was considered the joint "gaffer" of a notorious crime group known as the Huyton Firm, alongside his younger brother Vincent Coggins who was jailed in 2020.

For five years Francis evaded detection while hiding in the Dutch coastal town of Zandvoort - until he was arrested by local police for being drunk and disorderly in June this year.

Coggins, originally from Stockbridge Village in Knowsley, had pleaded guilty to conspiracies to import and to supply cocaine and heroin after he was extradited.

Liverpool Crown Court heard the Huyton Firm used a corrupt inside man at a UPS depot to smuggle hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and heroin into the UK.

Between May 2019 and October 2020 he had arranged the importation of at least 1.013 tonnes of cocaine and heroin with a minimum wholesale value of £16.2m.

• Huyton Firm: Brutal organised crime group brought down by its own text messages

Alex Langhorn, prosecuting, told the court: "The organised crime group were engaged in sourcing, storing and supplying wholesale, multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine and heroin.

"They sold to people locally on Merseyside, across the country, and up to Scotland."

He said Francis Coggins oversaw the importation of drugs from mainland Europe, while Vincent Coggins was responsible for the gang's domestic operation.

The court heard the gang did business with Thomas Cashman, a Liverpool drug dealer who was jailed for life over the murder of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel in August 2022 - killed by a stray bullet as Cashman tried to assassinate a rival.

Messages between Vincent and Francis revealed Cashman had asked them to help him import "botts", short for bottoms, a slang for kilogram blocks of heroin.

Vincent was arrested in June 2020 after French police hacked the Encrochat encrypted phone network, used almost exclusively by criminals.

The occupant of a stash house controlled by the Huyton firm was slashed with machetes by a rival gang who robbed £1m of cocaine

Detectives in the UK, who had been granted access to the French operation, began monitoring the Huyton Firm.

Over time it became clear the gang had been robbed of cocaine worth around £1m after a violent raid at a stash-house in Liverpool in May 2020, when the occupant was slashed with a machete.

Police were forced to step in when it became clear Vincent Coggins was considering unleashing a wave of murderous violence in response.

Mr Langhorn said Francis Coggins, who was in Holland at the time, was not involved in planning any reprisals, or in a plot to blackmail a father-and-son who Vincent wrongly blamed for the raid.

However the court heard Vincent had kept his older brother informed of what was happening.

In one message to Vincent, Francis asked how many people he had "terrorised" in his mission to get the drugs back, adding: "They're all terrified of you".

Vincent Coggins was jailed for 28 years later in 2020 after admitting conspiracy to blackmail and drugs offences.

According to detectives responsible for dismantling the gang, the arrests of Vincent Coggins and his associates was considered the end of a "well-disciplined and well-organised group" active for many years.

Det Ch Insp Dave Worthington from the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit told the BBC: "You don't fall into drug dealing at the level they're at overnight...

"The investigation showed that the scale and level of reach that they had was truly phenomenal really."

In court, Mr Langhorn said the gang used a sophisticated smuggling route devised by another Liverpool drug dealer, Christopher Gibney, to get drugs into the UK.

He said Gibney had "corrupted" Daniel Taylor, a team leader working at the Deeside depot of international shipping firm UPS, who would intercept consignments of drugs and pass them to the gang.

Sam Blom-Cooper, defending Coggins, argued that his client was a rung below his younger brother in the hierachy of the Huyton Firm.

'Pinnacle' of firm

He said: "If he really was sitting back in the background as a controlling mind, not getting his hands dirty, he didn't need to be in Holland in a bleak coastal town.

"But he did need to be there, inspecting the drugs and squeezing blocks into UPS packages."

Passing sentence, Judge Robert Trevor-Jones concluded the brothers were both "at the pinnacle" of the Huyton Firm.

He said Francis Coggins was involved in arranging "almost daily" shipments of Class A drugs and regularly arranging the transfer of hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash.

Judge Trevor-Jones told Coggins, who appeared over video-link from HMP Manchester: "You were directing or organising the buying and or selling of these drugs on a commercial scale.

"You had substantial links to and influence on others in a chain and you had an expectation of a substantial financial advantage."