A cocaine trafficker known as "Stocky Giant" armed himself with hand grenades as he came under serious threats after racking up massive drug debts.
Peter Bradshaw and his business partner Graham Minards secretly plotted to ship tens of millions of pounds of illicit class A substances across the UK from Merseyside. They and a third conspirator, Michael Aboo, have now been jailed for a combined total of 45 years.
Liverpool Crown Court heard the two men organised their "very large scale and sophisticated nationwide drugs supply business" via encrypted communications platform EncroChat. A series of messages from between March and June 2020, recovered when the network was infiltrated by law enforcement authorities, showed they had been "involved in the purchasing and supply of multi-kilo quantities of drugs on a daily basis" and would also move drugs and cash on behalf of others - "believing they would make millions of pounds" in doing do.
