Drug kingpin Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson jailed for 20 years over global plot to flood Scotland with £100m worth of cocaine
The hood concealed drugs in bananas destined for Glasgow Fruit Market
SCOTLAND’S biggest crime kingpin Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson has been sentenced to 20 years for heading up a £100 million cocaine-in-bananas plot.
Amid dramatic scenes at the High Court in Glasgow, Judge Lord Ericht caged the mob boss along with his gang for a total of 49 years.
Career criminal Stevenson, 59, showed no emotion as he was taken down to the cells amid ramped-up security in court number three.
Lord Ericht sentenced him to 12 years for the importation plot and a further eight years to run consecutively for heading up a street valium factory.
He told Stevenson the sentence was “fair and appropriate” and that he had directed a “complex operation” to import and supply cocaine and produce millions of pills destined for Scotland’s streets.
Thomas Ross KC, for Stevenson, earlier told the court his client did not wish to blame any others for his actions and was candid that he “knew what he was doing”.
He added: “I acknowledge at the outset that anything I have to say to mitigate the offence in the traditional sense would be an exercise in futility.”
Mr Ross said his client had been led to this point by “a series of bad decisions” – motivation for which “was obvious”.
ICEMAN MEETS BANANA MAN
A POLICE surveillance photograph of James Stevenson at a meeting with David Bilsland at the Melia Hotel in Alicante, Spain. It was taken on 14 February 2020 and is believed to be the first time the two men met in person.
Read more HERE
Fruit merchant David Bilsland, 67, who provided a front for the operation, was jailed for six years.
Lloyd Cross, 32, who followed Stevenson’s orders in the cocaine importation racket, got six years.
Paul Bowes, 53, who admitted his role in a ‘street valium’ factory in Rochester, Kent, was caged for six years too.
Gerry Carbin, 45, Stevenson’s stepson and etizolam drug factory boss, was locked up for seven years while drug factory conspirator Ryan McPhee, 34, was sentenced to four years.
Stevenson pleaded guilty midway through a trial at the High Court in Glasgow to two charges:
- OF directing a serious criminal offence
- OF importation of cocaine
- OF being involved in organised crime through the production and supply of etizolam, often known as street Valium.
He was jailed for 20 years when the case called for sentencing at the court on Wednesday.
The court previously heard that Border Force officers at the Port of Dover seized 18 consignments of bananas addressed to Glasgow Fruit Market between May and September 2020 which contained 119 foil packages of cocaine with a purity of 73%, a street value of £76 million and weighing almost a tonne.
ICEMAN'S CRONIES CAGED
MEANWHILE Stevenson's cronies were slapped with the following sentences:
- DAVID BILSLAND – six years
- LLOYD CROSS – six years
- GERARD CARBIN – seven years
- PAUL BOWES – six years
- RYAN MCPHEE – four years
Others involved in the plot are also due to be sentenced on Wednesday.
The plot was smashed by French law enforcement officers who infiltrated the encrypted EncroChat network in April 2020.
Vehicle recovery firm owner Lloyd Cross, 32, pleaded guilty to involvement in the plot before the trial, and is also due to be sentenced on Wednesday.
The court previously heard Stevenson and Bilsland, a trader at Glasgow Fruit Market, met at a hotel in Alicante, Spain, to discuss the plan on February 14, 2020.
Messages suggested Cross and Stevenson met in a park to discuss plans in April 2020, while Bilsland arranged banana consignments and colluded with Cross to use their businesses to fund the importation of drugs, with recovery vehicles used to deliver and collect cash, the court heard.
The court was also told delivery was being arranged of more than 13 million street valium pills and during a raid in Rochester in June 2020, equipment capable of producing 258,000 pills per hour was discovered.
Stevenson was arrested, released and later fled to the Netherlands, but he was captured there in 2022 and extradited.
Stevenson and Carbin were both jailed in 2007 for organised crime, and the National Crime Agency named the older man as one of the UK‘s most wanted men in 2022.
We told how the 59-year-old had last month blamed four other hoods for shipping millions of pounds worth of cocaine from South America to the UK under the guise of banana shipments.
But he sensationally changed his plea to guilty on the fourth day of evidence in a bombshell organised crime trial at the High Court in Glasgow.
Thomas Ross KC, representing the notorious hood, told Judge Lord Ericht his client was pleading guilty to two charges on the seven-page indictment.
ICEMAN EXECUTION FEARS
BY GRAHAM MAN
JAMIE ‘Iceman’ Stevenson feared he was about to be executed by gangland rivals when he was nicked by undercover cops at a luxury hotel, we can reveal.
Scotland’s number one mobster bolted for cover – leaving his EncroChat mobile device behind on a picnic table – when he saw plain clothes officers circling at the plush Sherbrooke Castle in Glasgow.
It was only when the terrified mob boss, 59, fell down a grass embankment and got cuffed by cops he discovered they weren’t sinister underworld hitmen out for his blood.
A source said: “When he realised he was being arrested by cops he was actually relieved because he thought he was about to get assassinated.”
Read more HERE
Stevenson admitted importing cocaine, a controlled class A drug, between January 25, 2020 and September 21, 2020.
He directed and instructed David Bilsland, 67, 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, and Puerto Bolivar, Ecuador, and Nurai Island Resort, Abu Dhabi.
He also admitted concealing, possessing and transferring criminal property, namely money and to use said money to finance the set-up of the Importation operation and to purchase equipment for the said Glasgow Fruit Market and Glasgow Fruit Market Scotland Ltd.
Career crook Stevenson further admitted being involved in a street valium plot along with co-accused Garry Carbin, 45, and Ryan McPhee, 34, who admitted the offence the day before.
It detailed an astonishing crime conspiracy that 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 called the shots on the massive 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 handsets to communicate and share details about their illicit plan to bring in high purity cocaine with a potential street value of £100million.
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.”
The 119, 1kg blocks of coke with a purity of no less than 79 percent were hidden in banana boxes with a ‘Calypso’ brand delivered in a series of shipments to the Port of Dover in 2020.
They were labelled for onward delivery to a unit in the city’s Kennedy Street – but Border Force officials unearthed the haul, leading to a hunt for those involved.
Stevenson had earlier stuck to a not guilty plea and lodged a special defence, blaming other hoods James ‘The Don’ White, John Gurie, Lloyd Cross and Stephen Jamieson, whose whereabouts is unknown.
ICEMAN AND THE CRONIES
DAVID BILSLAND
DAVID Bilsland had been a respected fruit merchant in Glasgow for decades before his stunning fall from grace, using his business as a front for importing cocaine.
GERRY CARBIN
STEVENSON’s step-son Gerry Carbin is his closest and longest-serving underling who also happens to be his step-son.
PAUL BOWES
CAREER crook Paul Bowes was nicked in Spain as part of the probe into James Stevenson’s global cocaine importation plot.
RYAN MCPHEE
RYAN McPhee was part of the street valium arm of Stevenson’s global drugs racket.
LLOYD CROSS
LLOYD Cross was the first of the original seven accused of being involved in the cocaine conspiracy to admit his guilt.
But as the evidence began to pile up he changed his mind and admitted his part in the conspiracy, amid a dramatic twist that brought an end to a trial that was expected to last five weeks.
On the day the trial began on August 7, co-accused Cross admitted his role in the coke plot before jurors were sworn in.
They heard four days of evidence in a trial that was expected to last up to five weeks but Carbin and McPhee admitted producing and supplying ‘street valium’ as part of Stevenson’s gang.
ENCROCHAT ALIASES
THE EncroChat handles used by Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson and his drug conspiracy mob:
- Jamie Stevenson – Elusiveale and Bigtasty – Arrested in Holland on February 4, 2022
- David Bilsland – Trendymutant – Arrested in Glasgow on May 5, 2021
- Lloyd Cross – Shaggygoat – Arrested in Malaga, Spain, on September 16, 2021
- Gerry Carbin – Specialsmith and Lucidfudge – Arrested in Glasgow on June 24, 2021
- Ryan McPhee – Fortressmoth – Arrested in Glasgow on June 15, 2021
- Paul Bowes – Hollowbutter and Silverjaguar – Arrested on a Majorca-bound ferry on April 30, 2022.
Then the following day Stevenson, Bilsland and Paul Bowes, 53, threw in the towel and admitted their roles in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Ferry, Police Scotland’s Head of Organised Crime, said: “The sentencing of Stevenson, Bilsland, Bowes, Carbin, McPhee and Cross following their guilty pleas sends out a clear message that the activities of those who think that they can bring illegal drugs into our communities will not be tolerated.
“I want to acknowledge the hard work and diligence shown by the officers who investigated the group and provided the evidence in what was a complex investigation and shows the value of working with our law enforcement partners including the National Crime Agency and those abroad.
“It also shows Police Scotland’s unwavering commitment to the Serious Organised Crime Taskforce and its national strategy.
“This multi-agency operation, which spanned several countries, prevented a huge haul of illegal drugs reaching our communities and will have undoubtedly saved lives.
“However, we cannot be complacent, and our officers will continue their work to ensure Scotland remains a hostile environment for organised criminals.”
LORD ERICHT'S SENTENCING
At the High Court in Glasgow, Lord Ericht sentenced James Stevenson to 20 years’ imprisonment after the offender was convicted of directing others in the importation and supply of cocaine and being involved in serious organised crime through the production and supply of etizolam.
David Bilsland was sentenced to 6 years’ imprisonment for being concerned in the importation of cocaine, Lloyd Cross was sentenced to 6 years’ imprisonment for being concerned in the importation of cocaine,
Gerard Carbin was sentenced to 7 years’ imprisonment for being concerned in the production and supply of etizolam, Paul Bowes was sentenced to 6 years’ imprisonment for being concerned in the production and supply of etizolam, and Ryan McPhee was sentenced to 4 years’ imprisonment for being concerned in the production and supply of etizolam.
On sentencing, Lord Ericht stated:
- JAMES STEVENSON
You have pled guilty to two charges.
Your guilty plea was not tendered until the sixth day of the trial, the first day being the day of the ballot. In these circumstances I shall not discount your sentence in respect of your plea.
I have given careful consideration to the Criminal Justice Social Work Report and all that has been said on your behalf in mitigation. You have a previous conviction for money laundering for which you were sentenced to 12 years and nine months in prison.
Charge 3 is a charge of directing David Bilsland and other to commit a serious offence contrary to sec 30(1)(a) of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act 2010. The maximum sentence under that section is 14 years.
You directed a complex operation for the importation and supply of cocaine. The operation involved cash being provided by you to fund Mr Bilsland’s apparently legitimate imports. It also involved removing Mr Bilsland as company director of Glasgow Fruit Market Limited, and registering as a director in his place the name of a vulnerable individual who allowed his signature and identity to be used without having any knowledge of the operation.
Messages show you discussing with Mr Cross the importation of kilo blocks of cocaine. They also show you discussing the use of Mr Bilsland, and his business experience and contacts, to provide the appearance of legitimacy. They also show you discussing the need to start to sending dummy loads. 18 banana consignments were duly received in Dover. The last of these contained almost a tonne of cocaine, with a purity of not less that 73% by weight, and with the potential to realise in the region of £76 million.
In respect of charge 3 I sentence you to a period of imprisonment of 12 years, backdated to 9 February 2022, the date of your arrest in the Netherlands.
Charge 8 is a charge of being involved in serious organised crime under sec 28(1) of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act 2010 for a period of around two and half months. The maximum sentence under that section is 10 years.
You played a leading role in a complex operation to manufacture and distribute Etizolam tablets, a class C drug.
The operation included a manufacturing facility in an industrial estate in Rochester. When the factory was raided police seized almost 13.5 million tablets, with a wholesale value of around £400,000. The machinery in the factory was capable of manufacturing 258,000 tablets per hour.
You arranged customers for the sale of the tablets. In addition you exercised control over aspects of the operation: you assigned Mr Carbin to a different role in the operation, moving him from sales to manufacturing in order to “run it make sure they don’t steal” You were involved in setting the amount of the wages to be paid to workers in the operation such as Mr McPhee and the person known as naturaljerky.
In respect of charge 8, I sentence you to a period of imprisonment of 8 years.
Because the cocaine operation and the Etizolam operation were different operations, the sentence for charge 8 will be consecutive to the sentence for charge 3 and I am satisfied that the total period of 20 years imprisonment is fair and proportionate. - DAVID BILSLAND
You have pled guilty to one charge.
Your guilty plea was not tendered until the sixth day of the trial, the first day being the day of the ballot. In these circumstances I shall not discount your sentence in respect of your plea.
Charge 4 is a charge of being involved in serious organised crime under sec 28(1) of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act 2010. That is a lesser charge than the charge to which Mr Stevenson pled guilty in respect of the cocaine operation, and carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.
I have given careful consideration to the Criminal Justice Social Work Report and all that has been said on your behalf in mitigation. You are 68 years old, have no previous convictions and have had a long and successful career in the family fruit business and have made a substantive contribution to the good of the community.
You, and your business contacts and experience, were used by Mr Stevenson to provide the appearance of legitimacy to the cocaine operation. You met with Mr Stevenson in Spain. You arranged for the importation of the banana consignments, including the one which contained the cocaine. One of your primary roles was to engage in email and telephone communication with the shipping lines, port authorities and others involved in legitimate importation.
In view of your lack of previous convictions, I sentence you to a period of imprisonment of 6 years, backdated to 29 August 2024. - LLOYD CROSS
You have pled guilty to one charge.
The guilty plea was agreed on 24 July, around a fortnight before the start of the trial, and tendered on the day after the ballot. Discussions had been ongoing since the preliminary hearing stage.
Charge 4 is a charge of being involved in serious organised crime under sec 28(1) of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act 2010, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.
I have given careful consideration to the Criminal Justice Social Work Report and all that has been said on your behalf in mitigation. You own a vehicle recovery business. You have a previous High Court conviction for aggravated assault.
You had a significant role in the cocaine operation, relaying Mr Stevenson’s instructions to Mr Bilsland and passing back updates to Mr Stevenson. You provided cash to fund the apparently legitimate imports. In person meetings took place between you and Mr Stevenson in the park behind your home. Vehicles from your recovery business were used to collect and deliver cash to finance the operation.
Had you not pled guilty at the start of the trial, I would have sentenced you to a period of imprisonment of 7 years. In view of your guilty plea, the period of the sentence will be 6 years. The sentence will be backdated to 19 July 2024, which takes into account the 19 days spent in custody after your arrest in Spain. - GERARD CARBIN
You have pled guilty to one charge.
Your guilty plea was not tendered until the fifth day of the trial. In these circumstances I shall not discount your sentence in respect of your plea.
Charge 8 is a charge of being involved in serious organised crime under sec 28(1) of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act 2010. The maximum sentence under that section is 10 years.
I have given careful consideration to the Criminal Justice Social Work Report and all that has been said on your behalf in mitigation. You have a previous conviction for money laundering for which you were sentenced to five years and six months in prison.
You had significant involvement in the Etizolam operation.
You were involved in arranging onward supply of tablets and sales, and were then asked by Mr Stevenson to take on a role in manufacturing. You gave instructions to Mr McPhee. Following the police raid on the factory, and the arrest of Mr Stevenson, you made arrangements for the wiping of Mr Stevenson’s encrochat devices.
I sentence you to a period of imprisonment of 7 years, backdated to 28 August 2024 - PAUL BOWES
You have pled guilty to one charge.
Your guilty plea was not tendered until the sixth day of the trial. In these circumstances I shall not discount your sentence in respect of your plea.
Charge 8 is a charge of being involved in serious organised crime under sec 28(1) of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act 2010. The maximum sentence under that section is 10 years.
Your convictions are few and minor and I place no weight on them.
I have given careful consideration to the Criminal Justice Social Work Report and all that has been said on your behalf in mitigation.
You had significant involvement in the Etizolam operation. You took delivery of large quantities of tablets and assessed them for quality control. You arranged delivery of 500,000 tablets to a person known as hollowbutter. A London flat used in the operation was indirectly leased by you.
I sentence you to a period of imprisonment of 6 years, backdated to 29 April 2022, the date of your arrest in Spain. - RYAN MCPHEE
You have pled guilty to one charge.
Your guilty plea was not tendered until the fifth day of the trial. In these circumstances I shall not discount your sentence in respect of your plea.
Charge 8 is a charge of being involved in serious organised crime under sec 28(1) of the Criminal Justice and Licensing Act 2010. The maximum sentence under that section is 10 years.
Your role in the Etizolam operation was an important one, that is to take delivery of and store large quantities of pills. You agreed to take delivery of 2.5 million pills and transport them by van. You were then advised by Mr Carbin that “we have the full job going forward” at 10 million tablets per time. You delivered one million tablets to a person called trustytooth. Another delivery Mr Carbin discussed with you was for 5 million tablets.
I have given careful consideration to the Criminal Justice Social Work Report and all that has been said on your behalf in mitigation. You are a family man with a good employment and business history and no previous convictions.
However despite all of that you became involved with serious organised crime in the Etizolam operation. The delivery to trustytooth was not meant to be a one-off: you were to take delivery and store large quantities of pills and would have done so but for the police raid on the factory. Although Etizolam is a Class C drug, the large quantities with which you were involved means that there is no alternative to a custodial sentence.
I sentence you to a period of imprisonment of 4 years backdated to 28 August 2024.