A man who was dubbed 'Britain's Pablo Escobar' and even managed to make his way onto the Sunday Times Rich List while a wanted international criminal has been released from prison - and has been given an incredibly strict list of rules to follow. Curtis “Cocky” Warren, 59, was once worth an estimated £300 million, but he's spent most of the last 25 years behind bars.
He's now left Whitemoor maximum security prison in Cambridgeshire, after his latest 14-year jail term, and while he may be free, Warren has to abide by a strict set of requirements - as he's banned from using WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, it has been reported. It's expected that the former drug lord will return to his roots in Liverpool, but once there he will need to notify the police if he gets in a car - and he's not allowed to buy cryptocurrency either.
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Other conditions prevent Warren from going to Scotland, and a failure to comply with the conditions, which were given to Warren in the UK in 2013, could see him return to jail.
He will be able to return to Liverpool, where he is understood to still have support from senior crime figures who control the illegal drugs trade.
A source close to Warren told The Sun: "Cocky always planned on coming back to Liverpool."
His barrister Anthony Barraclough also told the newspaper: "The first thing he wanted to do was to see his mother. He just wants peace and quiet. He is allowed to have a decent, ordinary life."
Warren was arrested by undercover police in 2007 just days after he had been released from jail for a previous offence.
He got a 13-year term in 2009 over a plot to smuggle £1 million of cannabis into Jersey and was later handed another 10 years, of which he had to serve half, for failing to pay a £198 million confiscation order, one of Europe's biggest ever.
One insider had said: "There'll be eyes all over Curtis when he gets out and he knows he'll be restricted as to where he can go and who he can see.
"He's an intelligent man so I'm sure he'll be keeping a low profile on his release."
Nicknamed "Cocky Watchman", Warren built a £300 million drugs empire before he was reduced to surviving on £20 a week in prison, leaving him struggling to afford deodorant and other basic items.
It is a far cry from the days when he boasted of making up to £15 million in a week.
Jail bosses have allowed the Liverpool-born former kingpin to keep a maximum £20 a week of his earnings from prison jobs.
The rest goes to pay off his massive crime bill after a judge ordered him to hand over £198 million or face another ten years behind bars.
Speaking at the time, a pal said: "It's left him with nothing. He can't even afford basic toiletries.
"All his money is spent phoning his lawyers in Jersey, and sometimes he doesn't have enough to do that."
But police believe he has millions stashed away for when he is eventually released.
In his heyday, Warren's cocky attitude made him a perverse celebrity in Liverpool, with his face appearing on T-shirts.
The barrel-chested fitness freak left school with no qualifications and was a bouncer before building one of the world's biggest trafficking rings.
After a five-year sentence for armed robbery, he hit the big time by teaming up with a Colombian to set up an efficient cocaine supply into the UK.
He was arrested in 1992 but acquitted during his trial because of a lack of evidence, earning him the nickname of the "Teflon gangster".
It was claimed he sneered at police as he left the courtroom with the arrogant taunt: "I'm off to spend my money."
Warren became the only drug baron on the Sunday Times Rich List and was named as Interpol's Target One, making him the most wanted international criminal.
He moved to Holland but Dutch police tapped his phones and he was jailed for 12 years in 1997 for importing cocaine and cannabis worth £125 million into Britain.
Dutch police couldn't understand his Scouse accent so they brought in British cops to translate. In jail, he boosted his tough reputation by beating to death a Turk who was doing 20 years for murder.
On his release in 2007, he moved to Jersey but was caught within weeks when cops bugged his hire car. He was caged for 13 years in December 2009 for a plot to smuggle £1 million of dope into Jersey and he has been locked up in La Moye prison on the island ever since.
Warren insists he has no money left but authorities believe he has millions of pounds squirrelled away in a murky web of hidden assets around the globe.
They claim that he has invested in a £4 million Guyana gold mine, a Dutch pallet business, Turkish petrol forecourts and a string of European properties.
Authorities also suspect he has funds in third-party Swiss bank accounts and will be swimming in cash within days of his release.
Judges in Jersey heard how police intercepts of phone calls showed he had invested his millions.
They were told: "The stark fact is that Warren had ways of laundering his assets in ways that are simply untraceable."
In one recording he was heard to say that he used a 'cheap' launderer who charged only one per cent commission.
It was said that on ten separate occasions between 1991 and 1996 he passed £10 million through this contact, meaning he laundered £100 million.
In a rare interview, Warren said a recording of him boasting how much money he made was, he said, merely "bragging like an idiot and just big-talking".
Asked about the £198 million, he insisted: "There is no money."
Warren's longtime barrister Anthony Barraclough said: "Assertions that Curtis has millions hidden away are pure fantasy."
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