A man who supplied guns to organised crime groups across the UK including in Manchester has been jailed for more than 19 years. Using the encrypted communications platform EncroChat, Michael Derrane, 50, orchestrated, supplied and transferred firearms and multiple kilos of class A and B drugs wholesale, selling them on to criminals for a profit.
Derrane, who used the handle "Big Corey", was well known to serious organised crime groups in Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, the Midlands, and London and would travel up to 700 miles to exchange illicit goods. In one series of messages he discussed the sale of 30 kilos of heroin split between locations in London, Leicester and Oxford.
Today (1 March) at Leeds Crown Court, he was sentenced to 19 years and two months imprisonment after he had previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transfer prohibited weapons (firearms) and conspiracy to supply class A and B drugs namely heroin, cocaine and cannabis.
