BY CHRIS OSUH From Evening Standard UK

Six men have been jailed for their role in flooding Manchester with cocaine from the Caribbean

The Salford gang members jailed over the huge cocaine smuggling operation

A gang who tried to smuggle £13.5m of cocaine into the country have been jailed for a total of more than 70 years.

The Salford criminals netted 50 high-purity kilos from suppliers in the Dominican Republic.

But their international conspiracy unravelled after the contraband was seized by customs at London Gateway Ports.

The Class A drugs had been hidden in the battery compartments of car jumpstarter devices, which had been specifically lined with lead in an effort to foil X-Ray machines.

The parcels were then replaced with a dummy load, which was sent on to the gang’s hiding place in Ormskirk.

Investigators also discovered how the gang had used encrypted Blackberrys to communicate with each other and their overseas connection ‘Napoleon’. A Dutch connection to the plot was also uncovered.

Now several members of the gang have each been given lengthy sentences at Manchester Crown Court for their respective roles in the 2015 conspiracy – although a judge said he believed that others involved in the network were still at large.

The Salford gang smuggled 50 kilos of cocaine from suppliers in the Dominican Republic
Darren Cleary, 37, of Windsor Avenue, Clifton, who has a previous conviction for farming cannabis with his co-defendant Jonathan Gregg, was described by sentencing Judge Martin Steiger QC as having a “leadership role in the conspiracy”, and was jailed for 16 years.

Anthony Seddon, 52, of no fixed address, was a senior member of the plot who recruited his son Lloyd as a “helper”. He was jailed for 14 years.

Jonathan Gregg, 31, of Ellesmere Street, Swinton , also had a managerial role, and was jailed for ten years and eight months.

All three admitted drug smuggling offences.

Reece Cole was the youngest of the defendants, and also received the longest jail sentence

Reece Cole – who at 24 was the youngest of the defendants but also the most heavily convicted – has been jailed for 12 years. He was also involved in another drugs operation, and was arrested in a Liverpool ‘crack house.’ Cole, of Brierley Road East, Swinton, admitted conspiracy to import and two offences of possession of class A with intent to supply.

John Farnworth, 35, of Gladstone Street, Pendlebury, held a “shadowy” but central role in the plot, the court heard. He denied importing drugs but was found guilty and has been jailed for 12 years.

Lloyd Seddon, 27, of Charles Street, Swinton, was linked to a 15kg stash of cutting agents for the drugs, and was jailed for six years after being found guilty of drug importing.

Sending them down, Judge Steiger said: “This was a highly skillful and professionally-run operation which was fortunately intercepted by customs and police. I do not doubt there may be others in the UK and abroad involved who have not been brought to justice…yet.”

More details of how the operation was foiled and the men were caught have emerged following the sentencing.

After the cocaine-filled batteries were swapped for a dummy load, the consignment was delivered to a unit in Ormskirk leased by Anthony Seddon.

On Sunday, November 22, Jonathan Gregg employed a night watchmen at BST Trading, the company based in the unit.

Then in the early hours of the following morning, the dummy delivery arrived at the unit and was unloaded and stored.

Seddon also had another unit in Leigh registered to his firm A580 Batteries, where his son Lloyd Seddon was appointed as a director

Police say this business was set up ‘purely as a guise’ to store the battery devices once the drugs had been removed, in a bid to ‘legitimise’ the delivery.

The afternoon of the delivery, at about 4.20pm, police executed a search warrant at a farm in Clifton and found four men had fled

Lloyd Seddon and Anthony Seddon were found after a police dog was deployed. Darren Cleary was found hiding in a bush.

Cole, Gregg and Farnworth were arrested some time later.

On February 25, 2016, while being interviewed by police, Lloyd Seddon claimed he had no knowledge of the companies involved in the drugs operation and stated he only went to the farm to stroke the animals.

He also denied knowledge of any of the other defendants and denied he ran from police claiming he was merely walking across the field.

For more on this story and video go to: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/drugs-gang-jailed-smuggling-14m-12838806