FOUR men who sold cocaine bricks worth more than £5.6million including in Worcester have been jailed after a West Midlands Regional Organised Crime Unit (ROCUWM) investigation.
Vikram Virdee, Dean Riley and Richard Yarker were the key players in a group that sold large amounts of class A drugs which had been given designer ‘Prada’ branding by the gang.
The three have been jailed alongside Karl McQuillan who delivered drugs and collected cash from locations around the UK including Worcester, Wales, Gloucestershire and Nottingham. A fifth man was sentenced in August 2020.
The group operated partially on EncroChat, the encrypted mobile phone network which was shut down in June 2020.
Their large-scale drug supply operation was initially uncovered as part of Operation Venetic – the UK-wide investigation into EncroChat, led by the National Crime Agency (NCA).
The operation revealed some of the group’s conversations and started a huge operation conducted by investigators in the West Midlands.
More than six kg of cocaine, four cars – some with secret compartments – and more than 40 hours of CCTV were seized during the investigation along with images the group sent each other of bundles of money and the bricks themselves.
Between February and October 2020, the group bought, sold and delivered 56kg of cocaine with a value of £5.6million
Four of the group were sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court last Monday (January 24) after previously pleading guilty to being concerned in the supply of class A. They’ve been jailed for a combined total of more than 50 years.
Vikram Virdee of Newport Pagnell in Milton Keynes, co-ordinated the group’s involvement in buying and supplying the illegal drugs. He has previous convictions for similar offences and was out on licence at the time. He was jailed for 17 years
His co-defendant Dean Riley received, processed and distributed much of the cocaine. He handled the cash payments too – typically hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time.
He carried out much of his activity at his home in Swadlincote. When arrested in the summer of 2020, he had more the £17k cash on him and 2.2kg of cocaine was recovered.
Around 3kg of cocaine and £25,000 in cash was found at Richard Yarker’s address in Corley Ash after he was arrested in December 2020. Yarker was also on licence at the time after previously being convicted of conspiracy to supply cocaine back in 2012.
Both Riley and Yarker pleaded guilty to additional offences of possession with intent to supply class A and the acquisition, use and possession of criminal property. They were jailed for nine years, 10 months and 15 years respectively.
Karl McQuillan of Coventry was a drug runner for the gang and Yarker specifically and transported drugs and cash around the UK and was jailed for eight years three months.
McQuillan recruited a fifth man – jailed for 58 months in 2020 – to help him transport cocaine for Yarker and the gang. They conspired to buy a Vauxhall Insignia and had it fitted with a secret compartment to help them better hide drugs.
Speaking after sentencing, Det Chief Insp Leanne Lowe, said: “This was a complex investigation in which we worked through lots of evidence; conversations, images and CCTV footage as well as mobile phone data to piece together what these men were doing and how they were connected to one another.
“Not only have we disrupted a chain of supply, we have also removed a huge quantity of drugs.
To report drug dealing or suspected drug dealing call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
