Brutal organised crime group brought down by its own text messages
About ‘The Huyton Firm’ run by brothers Vincent & Francis Coggins who’ve run drug a smuggling gang for 30 years & just been convicted along with many others in the gang. They somehow went relatively under the radar for years - a police informer was suspected but has not been found.
Busted due to French police cracking EncroChat in 2020 & sharing messages about British criminals. It was thought to be completely secure by the gang, & they openly exchanged explicit texts.
They were known to be so violent that many were unwilling to talk about them. Their ’stash house’ got robbed of kilos of cocaine & after watching cctv, they come to the conclusion it was another gang. The leader of that one agrees to give Coggins £1m & sell his house to avoid himself, his son & 2 others being killed even though it wasn’t his gang that did it. It was later shown to be a different gang, since jailed. Coggins gets the proceeds off the wrong man & agrees that’s the end of it but to his enforcer guys talks about leaving it 4 months for things to quieten down then killing them anyway.
A fascinating story of dangerous & totally ruthless people. Many gang members now in prison. Vincent got 28 years, Francis is on the run somewhere abroad.
Thomas Cashman, hitman for the gang, was jalled for life last year for the murder of Olivia Pratt-Korbel, caught in the crossfire of the intended murder of someone else.
The programme ends wondering who will emerge to fill the vacuum left by the gang..
BBC Panorama obtained access to 10,000 of the firm’s texts after a successful challenge in court.
On iplayer, & story
here.