From the moment Liverpool's highest profile gangster was released from a Dutch jail in June 2007, he was looking for an opportunity.
Ten years behind bars in the Netherlands were not enough to discourage Curtis Warren from jumping almost straight back into a major drug trafficking plot. Today, weeks ahead of his release from his latest 14 year stint behind bars, questions are being asked about whether he will turn back to crime once again.
Back in 2007, from the moment Warren touched UK soil, he was being trailed by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA). Over the next two weeks, they watched as Warren toured around the North West, sometimes driving for miles at a time just to use a public phone box for a few seconds. Then, on June 30, he drove to the airport and boarded a flight to Jersey.
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SOCA detectives watched via CCTV as he joined the check-in queue, handed his mobile phone over to an associate and walked through security. They let police in Jersey knew he was on his way.
After landing in Jersey, Warren was confronted by plain-clothes Special Branch officers as he waited to collect his luggage. A detective constable asked what his business in Jersey was, a comment that appears to have needled Warren.
According to a court judgment, Warren was alleged to have replied: "I could take Britain back and could take Jersey easily" before waltzing out of the airport into the Jersey sun. That was the beginning of a doomed plot to smuggle £1million of cannabis from the Netherlands to Jersey, via a speedboat.
The plan was for Warren's old friend John Welsh, who himself was already under surveillance by Jersey Police, to travel to the Netherlands and meet contacts of Warren's to arrange the deal.
However things went south, and the cannabis never materialised after two local lads, recruited by Welsh to find money to finance the deal, failed to show up in Holland. In a controversial move, Jersey Police decided to bug Welsh's hire car as he travelled back from Holland despite not obtaining the relevant permission from the authorities in France, Belgium and Holland.
The recordings of Welsh discussing the deal were used to convict both men, and Warren was sentenced to 13 years behind bars despite no drugs or money ever arriving in Jersey. He appealed the verdicts but, despite heavy criticism of the police, the Court of Appeal allowed the conviction to stand.
As part of the original trial, the prosecution asked for permission to introduce the comment made by Warren in the airport as evidence before a jury. They argued the comment had "probative" and "explanatory" value as evidence.
However the Commissioner who presided over the trial, Sir Richard Tucker, agreed with Warren's lawyers that the comment's prejudicial effect outweighed any value it had as evidence.
He wrote in a written judgment: "In my view the words are neither relevant nor probative of any issue which the Crown have to prove. The only thing they go to prove is a propensity to commit an offence. They cannot prove that Warren participated in the alleged conspiracy."
In any event the evidence was not needed, and Warren has been in custody since he was found guilty when the trial finally concluded in 2009. The conviction was followed by a confiscation order demanding Warren pay nearly £200million or face a further 10 years in prison.
Warren failed to pay. He is due for release in November, but will face stringent conditions under a Serious Crime Prevention Order, restricting and monitoring his ability to travel, use mobile phones, own property or assets abroad, own vehicles and possess cash.
There have been reports that Warren is no longer interested in drugs trafficking and could even be set to profit from a major TV or film deal about his extraordinary life.
Stephen Mee, a former associate of Warren, and reformed drugs trafficker, recently told the BBC Podcast 'Gangster': "If you sit in prison and rot away, and you come out and technology is flying everywhere, you're just going to be like a caveman.
"And you'll have no choice other than to go back to your old ways and go back to prison. I hope he creates a life other than crime because if he gets caught again it's not just a prison sentence, it's a death sentence."
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