Crime gang convicted over industrial-scale drug lab
- Published
Terrence Earle, Stanley Feerick, Stephen King, and Lee Baxter.
Four members of an organised crime gang have been convicted of running an industrial-scale amphetamine lab in Scotland.
The group, who also trafficked heroin and cocaine from the site, were caught after a National Crime Agency investigation.
They used a garage in Motherwell to store chemicals to make amphetamine.
The men were arrested after police spotted two of them meeting up in Lanark.
The group was based in Merseyside and run by kingpin Terence Earle, 48.
He used the encrypted communications platform EncroChat to organise his crimes and enlisted the help of Stanley Feerick, 68, Stephen King, 48, and Lee Baxter, 48.
NCA branch commander Richie Davies said that the NCA was not able to identify the exact location of the Scotland lab.
However, the agency believes the lab is no longer in operation as the main people involved have been arrested.
Mr Davies told BBC Scotland that Covid restrictions made it difficult for the gang to bring heroin in from outside of the UK.
"With the restrictions that were in place, they were looking elsewhere for that particular commodity, i.e. heroin," he said.
"They were working with crime groups in Scotland in order to provide them with the heroin so that they could sell it down in Merseyside and further afield.
"I think it just exemplifies the significant reach that the organised crime group had within the UK."
Terence Earle and Lee Baxter were arrested in March last year
Lancashire Police seized more than 560kg of alpha-phenylacetoacetamide (APAA) from the group in December 2020.
APAA is a chemical used in the production of amphetamine.
This amount could have produced around £1.1m worth of amphetamine at the Scotland lab.
It was found in a lorry loaded from a warehouse at a caravan park in Weeton in Lancashire on the orders of Feerick.
Home searched
As the UK entered its first lockdown in March 2020, the group arranged for boxes of APAA stored at the same warehouse to be loaded and driven to a Motherwell garage.
Earle also oversaw the trafficking of heroin and cocaine from Scotland to Merseyside, and in the opposite direction, with the assistance of Baxter.
In November 2020, Feerick met King in Lanark and shortly afterwards Feerick was arrested as he drove a lorry southbound on the M6 motorway.
Officers discovered a holdall which contained 2.9kg of heroin worth £300,000 and £20,000 in cash.
A search of his home found £9,370 in cash.
Heroin found in Feerick's lorry
NCA officers arrested Earle, Feerick, Baxter and King in March last year.
Earle and Baxter pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court in October and Feerick changed his plea to guilty on 5 December before he was due to stand trial.
King, from Dumbarton, was convicted by a jury on Thursday following an eight-day trial.
The men are due to be sentenced on 18 January.
"Terence Earle's criminal organisation posed a serious threat to communities across Scotland and Merseyside, said Mr Davies.
"They were determined to make money from producing or supplying illegal drugs, despite knowing the risk those drugs posed to users, and to many others affected by the violence and exploitation fuelled by the trade.
"Our investigation has dismantled their crime group, and demonstrates the NCA's constant work to protect the public from the highest-risk criminals impacting on the UK."
The NCA's investigation formed part of Operation Venetic, the law enforcement response to the takedown of the EncroChat service in July 2020.