55 JERSEY children COERCED into delivering drugs worth £2 million around the Island

MEMBERS of a drugs syndicate coerced 55 schoolchildren to deliver nearly £2 million worth of drugs around the Island, stuffed in toy bears and karaoke machines as part of a complex network of couriers, are jailed

OPERATION STRIDE & OPERATION JAVA,  

Jersey police, with Health, Education, the Youth Service and Probation, uncovered the drug syndicate with 55 children and 11 adults involved.

At the top was Mohammad Babrul Hussain, who lived in Birmingham but had business links to Jersey.

In September, 32-year-old Hussain was sentenced to seven and a half years’ imprisonment after admitting two counts of fraudulent evasion and pleading guilty to many money-laundering offences.

• AG v Hussain 05-Nov-2024 = https://www.jerseylaw.je/judgments/unreported/Pages/[2024]JRC235.aspx
• AG v Hussain 12-Sep-2024 = https://www.jerseylaw.je/judgments/unreported/Pages/[2024]JRC183.aspx

PROCEEDS OF CRIME:-

• The Jersey police seized between £128,298 and £183,317 of drugs, but it is thought the network has brought in around £1.8 million of drugs.

LOCAL BUSINESSES AND BANKS.

• 21 warrants executed in Jersey, over £40,000 of cash recovered, and over £30,000 in clothing and jewellery, including two Rolex watches.
• They also found evidence of money laundering, with local businesses and banks used to hide the money, although no prosecutions have been reported to date

55 CHILDREN RECOMMENDED TO SAFEGUARDING (43) AND OR PROSECUTED IN THE YOUTH COURT (7) AND OR PROSECUTED IN THE ROYAL COURT (5)

• 43 of the children and teenagers involved were recommended for safeguarding, using specialised agencies to help them return to everyday life.
• Another seven were prosecuted in the Youth Court.
• And FIVE pleaded guilty to drugs and proceeds of crime offences as follows

THE JERSEY GANG OF FIVE PLEADED GUILTY TO DRUGS AND PROCEEDS OF CRIME OFFENCES AS FOLLOWS

1. Elijah Michael Albert McManus (20), who received three years’ imprisonment for conspiring to import cannabis and MDMA, conspiring to supply cannabis, dealing MDMA and ketamine, and failing to disclose his phone PIN to police
2. Joseph James Barratt (20), who was jailed for two-and-a-half years for conspiring to import and supply cannabis, dealing MDMA, possessing cannabis with intent to supply, and possession of criminal property (cash and a Rolex watch)
3. Rory George Ribeiro (19), who received two years in prison for conspiracy to import and supply cannabis, and supplying MDMA and cannabis

  4. Monica Aguiar Nobrega (20), who was sent to HMP La Moye for two years for conspiring to import MDMA and cannabis, and conspiring to supply MDMA and cannabis

  5. Malibu Brennan (20), who was given a 100-hour community service order (equivalent to four months’ imprisonment) for possessing criminal property (cash and a Rolex watch)

In addition, in the UK

• The West Midlands and Metropolitan Police arrested a further three men in the UK, and
• Two males in Lancashire were arrested for operating social media channels.

THIS POST IS SOURCED FROM

https://app.jerseyeveningpost.com/teddy-bears-karaoke-machines-and-drugs/content.html

https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/news/i-will-litro-burn-your-house-down-how-nearly-50-jersey-children-were-manipulated-into-joining-a-major-drugs-network/

THE REPORTED STORY HIGHLIGHTS THE FOLLOWING

Key issues from this story

• The local ringleaders – one aged 19 and three aged 20 – who were all jailed yesterday,

• forced some of the children to pretend to their parents that they were ill and had to stay off school for the day before being sent items stuffed with drugs and instructions on where to take them.
• A number of the children were paid for their services, while others were threatened with violence if they didn’t comply.
• Some ended up in the Emergency Department with “mystery” injuries.
• All of the children were being controlled through various communication apps on their mobile devices.
• The ringleader of the operation was Birmingham-based dealer Mohammed Babrul Hussain, who was jailed in Jersey last year for seven and a half years.
• Mohammed Babrul Hussain was given the addresses of children, to whom he would send drugs, before the four local gang members put pressure on the children to carry out their part in the operation.
• Many schoolchildren caught up in the operation are now receiving specialist safeguarding support from the authorities, while a small number have been prosecuted themselves.
• Messages read out in court showed how Nobrega threatened one of the children, texting:  
• “If you f**king try anything I will litro burn your mf house down break all your windows f**king punch the s**t out of you rob your mf dog and Elijah will go after your dad so now pick what u want.”
• MESSAGES like these, sent to dozens of Jersey children, some as young as 12, show how a drugs network convinced them to stay home from school to receive parcels of drugs at their homes.
• Many of these children had no previous criminal backgrounds, but the network lured them in by offering clothes, free drugs, free vapes or small amounts of money.

The lawyers representing the accused said

• Advocate Nicholas Mière, representing McManus, said
• that his client had been bullied as a child and that his parents said “he exchanged one set of bullies for another”.
• “He himself was exploited,” the lawyer said and added: “He accepts that he in turn exploited others.
• “He realises that he became part of this perpetuating cycle… and he is deeply ashamed of that.”
• McManus was glad to see that other children were able to escape this cycle “before becoming entrenched in it”,  
• Advocate Julia-Anne Dix, representing Nobrega, said
• She had been influenced by her boyfriend, Mr McManus, and her role only extended to contacting young people.
• Advocate Olaf Blakeley, defending Ribeiro, said
• Because he was 17 at the time of the offence, his client should be sentenced at most to one year in youth detention and asked to perform community service.

Acting Inspector Kate Young explained.

• Networks on Snapchat and Telegram offered a selection of drugs, with cannabis and “various magic mushrooms”, ketamine and an amphetamine called “Netflix” on offer.
• “The more you buy, the cheaper the quantities are,”
• The children then received the drugs at their homes, carefully concealed inside teddy bears and a karaoke speaker. Sometimes, they didn’t even know what they were getting.
• Some of the children would sneak out of their houses at night, or they were pressured into staying at home from school unsupervised. In that time, they would receive the parcels and pass them on to local dealers.
• They were being used by a drugs syndicate who offered them “nice things” and preyed on their young age.

According to Insp Young.

• The rewards were sometimes meagre – with one child who received a £40,000 parcel being given a “very very small amount of that”,
• “The manipulation outside of that then turned into threats of violence.
• If a parcel was intercepted by Jersey Customs and Immigration and was never actually delivered to the intended recipient, then that debt was then passed on – and that’s where some of the threats and the violence and everything stepped up a little bit.”

The young people would be forced into debt bondage, she said:

• “Sometimes permission wasn’t even asked. They were told that parcels were going to be delivered to their addresses.
• “The control wasn’t with the young person, and the choice very much wasn’t with them.”

CUSTOMS SEE SOMETHING UNUSUAL

While the children were getting packages at their homes, customs officers were finding drugs hidden in teddy bears, in a karaoke machine, and always sent from the same UK postcodes.

Customs and immigration senior manage Luke Goddard, who is in charge of the investigations unit, explained that cuddly toys – particularly teddy bears – were used by the syndicate to hide drugs.

• “Whether that made life easier for us or not, it was certainly something that we could identify relatively well.”

When, two years ago, a karaoke speaker was found filled with 1.7kg of drugs, Mr Goddard said his team were able to link it to similar importations.

• “We were able to link this importation to a previous 17 importations of similar kinds of goods going to similar people with similar weights and identical postcodes.
• And these we could all link to an individual who, at the time, was 15, and it showed the kind of level of exploitation that was being taken at that time by this individual.
• “We estimated that it was over £500,000 worth, over 20kg, of cannabis that would have come in over that year prior to the one we seized.”

Mr Goddard’s customs officers were part of a broader team brought together by the police.

Acting Inspector Kate Young had previously been on the Community Policing Team, where she started to notice

• “a cohort of young people who were coming to the notice of the police and were showing signs of exploitation and signs of concern”.

Acting Inspector Kate Young

• ‘‘ We found that young people were going out because they were being told drugs needed to be delivered, or somebody was asking for a drug deal, and so they were going out late at night for a short period of time

Mohammad Babrul Hussain

• Working for him were the five young Jersey adults sentenced, who were all sentenced yesterday.

Insp Young said.

• “They were directly arranging drugs to be delivered to Jersey,” “What they didn’t do is get them delivered to their own addresses.
• “They used young people’s addresses, sometimes through promising rewards and sometimes through threats of violence, and they used these young people to receive the controlled drugs and to move the controlled drugs around the Island.”

The young people were ones that they knew, and their friends.

‘‘ THE MULTI-AGENCY WORK ON ALL LEVELS IS REALLY WHAT MADE [OPERATIONS STRIDE AND JAVA] A SUCCESS

Acting Inspector Kate Young said:

• “One of the ways Jersey is so good is that there is a real community spirit here. Everybody knows everybody.

• “But that was also a negative in that there was always links to more and more young people. So they had a sort of an indefinite accessibility to that.”
• The conspirators would then send money and expensive items bought with it back to Hussain.

Watch out parents

• Police have said parents should look out for a set of warning signs – which some of the children involved were displaying.
• They include children missing school a lot, reporting feeling ill all the time and being left home alone.
• They also cited “sudden decline in behaviour”, having a new phone, and leaving the house late at night for a short period of time.

Insp Young said.

• “We found that young people were going out because they were being told drugs needed to be delivered, or somebody was asking for a drug deal, and so they were going out late at night for a short period of time,”
• Some also had new clothes or vapes, but it wasn’t clear to the family how their child was paying for these things.

Mr Goddard reflected on the work, which was a collaboration of a number of different agencies.

• “This was a really, really good example of so many different agencies getting involved,” he said.
• “I think it could be put as a bit of a landmark, that when we come across this kind of thing in the future that we’re not feeling we have to push against the tide in order to do that.”

Insp Young said:

• “I think this is the first time that we’ve looked, not only collaboratively from a safeguarding point of view, but we’ve looked at the whole picture.
• “When we look at the network, when importations have come in, we’ve not looked at them in isolation. We’ve looked at everything contextually. So we’ve looked at why, who it’s linked to. We followed everything right back as far as it goes, into the UK and with our partner forces there.
• “We looked at everything holistically and contextually, which is obviously why we ended up with such a big, complex investigation.”
• “The multi-agency work on all levels is really what made [Operations Stride and Java] a success, not only in terms of the enforcement, but also in terms of the safeguarding.”

Delivering the court’s sentence, the Deputy Bailiff, Robert MacRae, told them:

• “The most aggravating feature in the case of the four of you is your use of these young teenagers to help you in dealing drugs in our community, using their addresses for importation and using them to sell drugs on your behalf.”
• This was “very serious”,   

The Justice and Home Affairs Minister, Mary Le Hegarat, said:

• “I commend colleagues at both the Jersey Customs and Immigration Service and the States of Jersey Police and all involved who worked with them to bring this complex case to court.
• “The work undertaken covered not only criminal aspects, ensuring criminal activity was interrupted at all levels but also, importantly, safeguarding of young people in Jersey.
• “I hope Islanders are reassured by the work which takes place on a daily basis by both the Jersey Customs and Immigration Service and States of Jersey Police to ensure they are kept safe, and ensure that, whenever possible, people responsible for committing crimes are brought to justice.
• I thank the colleagues who make up these services for all they do, and everyone who works with them.”

Source

https://app.jerseyeveningpost.com/teddy-bears-karaoke-machines-and-drugs/content.html

https://www.bailiwickexpress.com/news/i-will-litro-burn-your-house-down-how-nearly-50-jersey-children-were-manipulated-into-joining-a-major-drugs-network/