How crime boss masterminded global coke web & become ‘Scotland’s Tony Soprano’

A CRIME boss once described as ‘Scotland’s Tony Soprano’ has admitted heading up a worldwide cocaine importation plot.

James ‘Iceman’ Stevenson, 59, admitted being behind a trafficking ring caught bringing £76million worth of cocaine into the UK.

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David Bilsland, 67, and Paul Bowes, 53, also admitted serious organised crime and drug offences at the High Court in Glasgow.

Gerard Carbin, 45, Ryan McPhee, 34, and Lloyd Cross, 32, earlier admitted their involvement.

Stevenson coordinated the cocaine shipment which arrived in crates of bananas from Ecuador in South America as he plotted to flood Scotland with the Class A drug.

Here is how the gangland figure rose up to mastermind the global cocaine smuggling gang and become ‘Scotland’s Tony Soprano’.

Stevenson cut his teeth in Scotland’s brutal underworld as a trusted enforcer for the notorious McGovern clan.

He made his way through the ranks of the so-called McGovernment as the mob grew in power during the 1990s, becoming one of the most feared drug-dealing operations in the city.

Stevenson’s status within the group seemed set in stone as he performed best man duties at the wedding of kingpin pal Tony McGovern in July, 1992.

Their bond was further cemented six years later in August 1998 when McGovern returned the favour for Stevenson who tied the knot with Caroline Adam, mother of long-term sidekick Gerry Carbin.

But loyalty in gangland Scotland bends in the wind and a bitter fall-out in the McGovern clan ultimately saw Stevenson go from a brother-in-arms to bitter enemy with a target on his back.

It was dog eat dog and the McGovernment didn’t take long to bare its teeth.

Any aspirations Stevenson had to become a boss in his own right almost ended in a classic Mafia style when he managed to escape a botched hit.

And the next devastating move in the bloody feud would pave the way for The Iceman’s rise to prominence.

The McGoverns turned to gangland killer Robert “Birdman” O’Hara in a bid to tackle Stevenson.

But their plans came unstuck when Iceman and O’Hara joined forces.

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Soon after it was Stevenson’s old pal and best man Tony who was slaughtered in a now notorious gun murder that remains unsolved to this day.

McGovern – in no doubt about the looming threat – had been wearing a Kevlar bullet-proof vest when a professional hitman pounced on September 16, 2000, outside the New Morvern bar in the city’s Balornock.

The protective kit didn’t live up to expectation as a shower of bullets ricocheted through McGovern’s body, giving him no chance.

Stevenson was the prime suspect and fled to Spain in the aftermath as cops probing the shocking crime were met with a wall of silence.

He was accused of being at the heart of the murder plot and later charged but insufficient evidence forced prosecutors to drop the case.

O’Hara, meanwhile, was later caged for life for the murder of rival Paul McDowall in 2005 and Stevenson too would soon discover he hadn’t dropped off the police radar.

Cops were determined to get their man and in 2003 they bugged Stevenson’s former home in Burnside when he was in Seville to see his beloved Celtic take on FC Porto in the UEFA Cup Final.

It was a crucial step in a three-year long investigation that ended with The Iceman and sidekick Carbin being swept up in a multi-million pound heroin and cocaine-dealing sting.

Stevenson, by then 41, had set up a taxi firm and splashed out on a collection of luxury watches using dirty cash generated from an international class A drug racket.

He and Carbin, then aged 26, appeared at the High Court in Glasgow in May, 2007, where they admitted a series of charges relating to concealing and receiving criminal property.

Stevenson was sentenced to more than 12 years while Carbin was given five years and six months for his part in the scheme.

Their criminal enterprise came crashing down thanks to a massive police surveillance op orchestrated by the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency.

ENCROCHAT EXPLAINED

BY GRAHAM MANN

THE Encrochat network favoured by criminals was one of the largest encrypted communications services in the world.

Around 60,000 people across Europe used it, with around 10,000 of those users being from the UK.

Mystery continues to surround the people who made and supplied the handsets to hoods eager to keep their activities off the radar.

But the users came unstuck when French law enforcement cracked the system using software they have kept a closely guarded secret.

We told last week how a leading crimebuster said the takedown of Encrochat phones gave Scots cops the upper hand – and “turbo-boosted” their fight against gangsters.

Miles Bonfield, deputy director of the National Crime Agency, hailed the impact of Operation Venetic, a hi-tech blitz that unearthed the activities of hundreds of hoods.

He said: “It made a real difference to turbo-boosting some investigations that were already running and giving them the vital insight and evidential assistance they needed to prove their heinous criminality.”

A digital forensics expert told The Iceman’s trial the vast data haul gathered from an EncroChat sting was “the most information ever seen” in any single Police Scotland probe.

Detective Constable Paul Graham revealed the scale of the messages harvested by French and Dutch authorities as he gave evidence at the High Court in Glasgow.

The info gathered from the encrypted devices formed a key part of Operation Pepperoni which ultimately triggered the downfall of Stevenson and his gang.

The 46-year-old told jurors he has been part of Police Scotland’s Cyber Crime Unit for a decade and has 24 years’ experience in the force.

He was asked by Advocate Depute Alex Prentice KC about how the force managed the haul provided via Europol and the National Crime Agency (NCA) after French law enforcement infiltrated the encrypted device network in 2020.

He said: “It was the most information in any single inquiry Police Scotland has ever seen.

“We had to find a way to get that into the system to be able to search by the appropriate means.”

Operation Folklore sleuths used listening gizmos and hidden microphones to earwig revealing chats in the gangsters’ homes.

The info helped them uncover bags of cash with nearly £600,000 inside, 55 luxury watches worth £307,000 as well as an attempt to set up the taxi firm.

Judge Lord Hodge said at the time: “It’s clear that you occupy an important position in the world of organised crime, money laundering provides an essential service to the drugs trade and contributes materially to its profitability.”

The duo may have lost their freedom for a while but that didn’t stop them continuing to pull the strings behind bars in preparation for their release when Stevenson’s upward underworld trajectory would be rocket-propelled.

He was back on the street in late 2013 after serving seven years, triggering the start of a decade that would see him amass millions through an international drugs importation network.

The scale of Stevenson’s illicit operation started to emerge when he was arrested again in June 2020.

He was nicked with five others over a £14million ‘street Valium’ factory raid in Rochester, Kent, but astonishingly given his criminal past was granted bail and fled to Spain.

Three months later he was named Scotland’s most wanted man after the discovery of a £100million cocaine haul in a cargo of bananas.
Detective Chief Superintendent Stuart Houston branded the hood “a dangerous individual” who was also wanted in connection with two firebombings.

We told how authorities swooped on a South American ship as it docked in Dover, Kent, and discovered one tonne of powder hidden in crates of fruit.

Gangland insiders claim a syndicate chipped in on the shipment amid a cocaine drought in Scotland following the EncroChat secret phone network hack.

The find ramped up the heat on fugitive Stevenson whose whereabouts remained unknown until he was traced to a quiet corner of The Netherlands.

A Dutch tactical unit swooped on March 4, 2022, as the crime boss took a midday jog in the southern municipality of Bergen op Zoom.

National Crime Agency regional head of investigation for Scotland Gerry McLean said after he was lifted: “Stevenson was arrested while jogging and was clearly trying to keep fit.

“Any arrest of a fugitive over extremely serious allegations is a great result.

“The Agency’s been working endlessly with Police Scotland and international partners to trace Stevenson and return him to the UK.”.
Stevenson was later extradited back to Scotland and remanded in custody before his conviction today.

Today, the kingpin – who was once one of Britain’s most wanted men – submitted a guilty plea after facing 14 charges.

Stevenson admitted importing cocaine in banana shipments and making and supplying etizolam, often known as street Valium.

His not guilty pleas to the remaining charges on the seven-page indictment were accepted by the Crown.

Stevenson, from Burnside, Glasgow, had originally submitted a special defence of incrimination at trial.

He blamed four other hoods for shipping the lucrative cocaine haul to the UK.

The illicit blocks, with a purity of no less than 73 per cent, weighed a tonne.

They were uncovered at the Port of Dover in Kent on September 21, 2020.

Stevenson had been subject to an international manhunt coordinated by the NCA, Dutch National Police and Police Scotland before he was arrested in the Netherlands in February 2022.

In 2007, when Stevenson admitted to money laundering, he was compared in court to Tony Soprano – the fictional mafia boss from the iconic HBO TV series The Sopranos.

Earlier today, Thomas Ross KC, representing the notorious hood, told Judge Lord Ericht his client was pleading guilty.

He admitted importing cocaine, a controlled class A drug, between January 25 and September 21, 2020.

He directed and instructed Bilsland and others to carry out said serious offence by concealing the drugs in “deliveries of imported fruit” destined for Glasgow Fruit Market for onward supply.

The offences were linked to locations in Glasgow as well as Plaza del Puerto, Alicante, Spain, Puerto Bolivar, Ecuador, and Nurai Island Resort, Abu Dhabi.

He also admitted concealing, possessing and transferring dirty cash and using the funds to finance the set-up of the importation operation and to purchase equipment for Glasgow Fruit Market and Glasgow Fruit Market Scotland Ltd.

Stevenson further admitted being involved in a street valium plot along with co-accused Carbin and McPhee who admitted that offence yesterday.

The astonishing crime conspiracy linked a Glasgow Fruit Market in the city’s Townhead to a port in Ecuador – one of the world’s biggest producers of the Class A narcotic.

Stevenson also directed the huge trans-Atlantic scheme from a luxury Gulf bolthole known as the Nurai Island Resort off the coast of Abu Dhabi.

The hoods involved used encrypted Encrochat devices to communicate and share details about their illicit plot to bring in high-purity cocaine.

The 119 1kg compressed blocks were stashed in banana boxes with a ‘Calypso’ brand.

They were labelled for onward delivery to premises in the city’s Kennedy Street.

But Border Force officials unearthed the haul, leading to a hunt for those involved.

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Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Ferry, Police Scotland’s Head of Organised Crime said: “The conviction of those men involved in this dangerous organised crime group are testament to the hard work and determination of those who undertook a complex investigation which spanned countries across the world.

“The multi-agency operation prevented a massive haul of drugs reaching our communities across Scotland and ruining lives. It also underlines the value of working in partnership with our law enforcement colleagues in this country and abroad.

“Police Scotland officers work tirelessly every day to disrupt the activities of serious organised crime groups who think they are above the law, and in some way untouchable. The guilty pleas tendered today show this not to be the case.”

NCA Regional Head of Investigations Gerry Mclean said: “The drugs trade causes immense damage and devastation, fuelling violence on our streets and the exploitation of young and vulnerable people across the country.

“Following his arrest in 2020, career criminal Stevenson fled the country but continued to direct the importation of cocaine into the UK from abroad, falsely believing he could evade justice.

“His plea today, and the earlier admissions of guilt by five of his co-conspirators, are testament to the dedicated work of NCA officers, our Police Scotland partners and our many law enforcement colleagues right across the globe.

“Together, we are working tirelessly to disrupt and dismantle organised crime groups who supply class A drugs, ensuring that all those involved, wherever they choose to hide, are brought before the courts.”

Another man, Lewis Connor, 27, was jailed for three years in July after the same investigation found encrypted phone messages which proved he had set fire to properties and vehicles across Central Scotland.