 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live. All of a sudden he's pulled a fucking gun on him. I thought to myself, this is a bad fucking idea, you know what I mean? So he's looked at him, called as a cucumber. Alright, okay. He's walked downstairs, gone. He's gone missing for 10 minutes. Everyone's flaring upstairs. He's come back, him and another member of dormant. He took two guns, put one in his head there, one in the other guy's chest. The other dormant's got a gun in his head and he's got this yardie with a gun there. So you've got four guns now, all pointing at each other. And you've got us in the middle of this. And thinking, what the fuck? In Cambodia, cocaine was $600 a kilo, okay? By the time it crossed in Jamaica, you could buy cocaine in Jamaica for about $3,000 a kilo. And, you know, so it was still a strong profit marker on that, you know? Not as much obviously as places like Ghana, where there are low land boards and stuff like that. And because of Jamaica's proximity to the Miami, it was obviously slightly dearer. I guess, alright, so, before putting myself back in prison, I'd say alleged, okay, I'd say alleged. In the region, say, 2,000 kilos a month of cocaine, allegedly. And in terms of cannabis, perhaps maybe 14,000 pounds. That's seven and a half tonne. Here, we had something which no everyone wants to have. We had a whole team of customs officers at the docks. And how that looks is basically, how it works is a whole team of unit. They basically control the docks. They're called fast team, threatening, smuggling. So any content that comes with a wolf, they have to examine it, technically speaking. But they've got complete control over it. Now, for a million quid, they'll clear whatever you want. Which, in the biggest scheme of things, isn't a lot of money, really. Because you can load it with whatever you want. Ben, we're on. Today's guest, we've got Andrew Pritchard. How are you, brother? I'm really well, James. Thanks for coming on today. It's a pleasure. Seeing your documentaries, Andrew, read your books. You started the rave scene. People up to 10,000 at that. Made your first million at 22. You'd cocaine and coconuts, 500 kilo with a cocaine you were involved in. You're just out of prison again just last year. Fascinating story, Andrew. Very fascinating. Yeah, it's been a journey. But I think before we start, if you say it's really important, I've got to put out there, is that any young person who listens to this today, the last thing I want them to do is think that this is a road to go on. Because it can, you know, at parts seem quite glamorous, but it will end up bad. It will end up, you know, destroying your life and other people's lives. But, you know, it's a journey, and everyone goes on that journey, James, so... Yeah, it's an all-out course. You've got to get your seatbelt on and you're trying to make the changes now, which is a great thing. But I'll always go back to the start of my guess, brother, where you grew up and how it all began. Yeah, so to get my story, I think you have to go back a little bit further before I was born. Because the fabric I became, the person I became, was a result of obviously who my parents were. And my mother, she's Jamaican. She came over to England when she was 22 years old, in 1951, December. That was three years after the empire being rushed, which was the first generation of Westinians coming here. She was married in Jamaica and she came here to be with her husband. That was a beautiful relationship. He used to beat her quite badly. But she was a very spirited person, a very ambitious person. She wanted to help her people. She was one of the first Jamaican real homeowners here in England. The reason being, one day, she had rented a house in Stafford Hill, had some friends there. They went to the market to buy some water coconuts. They were breaking them open on the doorsteps. The Irish, I'm sorry, Jewish landlord passed by. He saw what was going on and evicted everybody that night. So her ambition was to not ever have a roof over her head because she didn't own herself. By 1954, she bought her first house, which was on Homedale Terrace. That was done quite ingeniously. She had a partner system. For those who don't know what a partner system is, it's a bank, basically, where you have lots of people who are working, who you have to trust. They have to trust you. You look after that person's money every week. You take a contribution. It revolves around where someone gets that partner's draw. This was the first deposit for most West Indian houses, cars, businesses, that kind of thing. So she used that instrument to put herself on the property ladder. She left her husband and met my dad. Met my dad in 1954. My dad, he was East End boy. Him and his brother used to have a paraffin business. Used to sell paraffin door to door. West Indian people were coming in at that time, the first generation. He had a friend guy called Billy Hill. Him and his wife, Sadie, wanted to get a club. My dad knew they would never be able to get a licence. He decided to be the director of that club for them. They opened the first West Indian club, contrary to what anyone else thinks, because they were saying that there were places in the West that weren't the first. It was the Peppa Pop, 60th Greenlands Hurring Game. That was it. Met my mum. That was it. They hit it off straight away. In 1961 they bought their first property, and in 1966 I was born. So, you know, I grew up. My parents are good, strong people. Had very good, fast, strong values. My mum and my dad, dad was a bricklayer, master builder by this time, besides doing the paraffin. And they were very ambitious. My mum used to have a boutique in the bottom of the house. She used to buy what they called cabbage dresses. When the catalogs put them out to the factory, there's usually a certain amount of cloth left over. And what the factory owners would do is they'd produce run-off additional dresses. So she'd buy the dresses from them and sell them from the basement of the house to women who were coming to the Ridley Road Market down the road of Saturday. So I grew up around business. I saw, you know, this is what they'd done, you know. And when I got to a certain age, you know, I'd go and build my dad and I thought that was a bricklayer, so I'd labour for him. And I got familiarised with kind of the understanding of work, understanding the making of money. And I was a decent child, actually, you know. I was very sort of toe-of-the-line. It wasn't until I got to secondary school that things started to take a little bit of a dip for me. I went to a school called Philip Magnus, which is quite a notorious school. I'd say many very well-known crime figures had went through that school. But I think Terry went through there. And I think Patsy Adams went through there as well. And yeah, quite a few other people from other families and stuff that have been quite known. You know, I've talked about Impress and stuff like that. But yeah, that was Philip Magnus. The other one was William Collins. If you didn't go to Magnus, you went to Collins and those schools used to fight. You had a right to launch people coming out of there. So then I started to mess about, smoke, all kinds of other bad stuff. My parents wanted to get me out of the area. A little bit too late for that. So they moved to Jinxford and wanted to send me to school up in Edmonton. Well, of course, that didn't work very well. Boris Tom had a love for music. And I started building speaker boxes. I was putting on little events, which were like a book called Blues Parties. And I was actually making money. I was just a young age, just like, you know, 15, 16 years old. And I hence didn't go to school. So I bunked off every single day. I spent, you know, time with my friends, building speaker boxes, you know, planning what was small events, Blues Parties. And then started getting involved in silly things, silly bits of marijuana, stuff like that. And it just sort of continued. And I just started to find myself in that pattern, driven by the element of music. But where it sort of really lifted up and changed was my parents bought a shop in Hackney, which is a very... It was an awful license. But it was more of a community-based, you know? People would come now. No person could ever say they didn't have, you know, a meal. In other words, if someone had no money, my mum would make sure they got a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread. Do you know what I mean? A pint of milk. Worst case the rest. They were feeding their kids regardless, you know? And I was there. And their aspirations for me is to be this legitimate business man that would, you know, have a string of awful licenses, no doubt. But that wasn't going to happen. I remember one day, I think it was like 1988, by this time I was already kind of pretty much out there. A friend came into the shop, said he was putting on a party. And I wanted to know if I did a sound system, said not a problem. And I turned up, a little place called Oxford House in Bethnal Green with, you know, equipment, said it all up. And that was the day my life changed. It was the advent of ecstasy. And the party kicked off to about 200 people in there. They were all, you know, sweating, you know, buzzing. And it was a mad thing to see, considered I didn't take class A drugs at that time. I smoked weed, you know, and it was a completely new atmosphere for me. That led to another party the following week, party after that, party after that. At that time I was involved as a, you know, pride in the sound system and stuff. Wasn't even actually playing now. But, you know, eventually I saw the money it could be made and I thought, this is something I want to do. It wasn't un-new to me because I'd been doing blues parties where we would break into houses and set up speakers and set up a legal makeshift bar. It was in my blood to do that. And the next step was warehouses. And December 1988, that was when Genesis was born. How old were you? I was 20. So you're still on that young kid? Yeah. You've got that business mentality from your mum and dad? I'd seen it, you know. Everything I'd seen with my parents, I said, mum used to actually encourage me to count money. So when people would buy dresses, stuff like that, she would actually, you know, give me the money to count because she knew I'm white and she said, I've got familiarising money from a young age, you know? When I was seven years old now, you know, she always felt that I would understand, you know, how it was to have money and not be, you know, overly, you know, green towards it, you know? And she was right. It did help me a lot. So what was it like then when you started Genesis when people, 10,000... Some sailors, parties up to 10,000 people, everybody lovingly flexed the same, DMA. Just what was the main objective again was to get ticket sales and then flood it with drugs? Or did you have everything like a business module just to cause a rave, make money? Did you realise how big it would be also? Well, the thing with Genesis, and this was what was quite mad about it, the parties before then were relatively quite a small scale. So when we'd set up Genesis, it'd originally been done because we were actually generally interested in the scene. So we were, you know, attached to that scene. It was a great buzz. The atmosphere was brilliant. And obviously the money was, you know, something which also drew us in. And the concept was to put on big events. It didn't start off originally to, you know, to turn into what it became. That just naturally, you know, as things kind of started to, you know, step up and get bigger and bigger and bigger, it grew organically. And the parties started off and where we found was a place called Leeside Road, which was quite a journey. It's in Hackney, Old Springbox Factory, and we'd went by there one afternoon. One of our partners, he'd found it and said, look, this warehouse, you know, it's like a guy's got it in there. He stores tires and we can get it. It's completely legal for our 100 quid. We saw the warehouse, which is a great spot. We put on our first event now. And it was a small party, but it went well. Interestingly enough, the second day we were in the warehouse, a guy walked through the door. The guy walked through the door. And as I was involved in that scene, as I said, you know, doing other parties, supplying equipment, I thought it was called Tony Colston Hater. Anyway, Tony basically is a very well-spoken English kid, you know, a public school background. He marched into the warehouse and said, this is a great sort of warehouse you've got here and want to do events with you. So, it was a question of, well, you know, we were doing our own thing. He said, yeah, but, you know, I've got sunrise, and sunrise is like, we can get like, it was getting like 700, 800 people at the time, not big events, but they were growing. And it had a good crowd. It was like, okay, well, we can do this. Let's put it on together. So, we scheduled an event. We put it on, I think it was Boxing Day of 1988. Anyway, we staged the event. I think we had about 5, 600 people there. It wasn't a bad event. But the beauty we had was the venue, the warehouse. It was huge. We had to layer after layer after layer. Anyway, we went again the following week. We hit a party there. Suddenly the crowds were coming up. We got, I think it's about 3,500. We then landed on New Year's Eve. So, New Year's Eve now, we anticipated what this is going to look like, you know. The world was going around. Suddenly now, people were starting to hear about Genesis. A lot of people in the West then now were starting to come down. And it was like, we could sense it was going to be huge. Anyway, I never forget we were setting up New Year's Eve. We had everything all in place. It was fucking, all of a sudden, fucking, police turns up. They said, like, you know, what are you doing in this warehouse? It's completely legal. We've got this warehouse. We've got a makeshift lease as well, which of course was not worth the paper it was written on. But he basically went back and said, right, I'm coming for this. I'm going to bring the fire inspector down for fuck. We were at the party the night before. We had all these black bags full of, you know, all kinds of crap. So we got the doorman to quickly get them, throw them out of the back door, literally blocking the, you know, any sort of alleyway there was. All of a sudden, the Cosby comes back with the fire inspector. Eden turns up. He literally looks at the exit. He puts his head around the door. Doesn't look properly. He seems pissed off like the Cosby has dragged him from his party. And he's gone, no, it's fine. Let them have their party. Well, that was it. We got about five and a half thousand people in New Year's Eve. And then we went again the following week thinking it was going to get less instead of it got more. We topped out about 8,000 people first week of January. And of course, that was insane because we were in a stage, we were closing down the West End because people were no longer interested in going to clubs in the West End, buying overpriced drinks and getting kicked out, you know, one, two in the morning. They were now deterring and coming straight to us. I remember that night we had Mini Vannelli who was the biggest actor at that time, you know, pet shop boys, boy George. Boy George, I forget we had to literally scrape him up from the floor. He was in a bad state, I tell you, you know. And, you know, it was a crazy thing. Being so young, as I said, and seeing what was going on was pretty insane, you know. It was all around us. We were the centre point of everything. Like many people were working as a team at that point. Staff and crew. In our team at that point, we were relatively still, not completely organised as we should have been. So maybe we had ten casual doormen, we had a little team and a circle team that would come and clean up the warehouses, you know, who were mainly friends. So I suppose about 20 people consisted of our little unit. Tony was doing a party with us. He had about ten people as well. So we had a little round group that was all cash in hand. There was no cameras back then. Well, that was the big thing and a fucking hilarious story, actually, about that. And it came out years and years later. We used to have a count room and so what we'd do is look at the warehouse, we'd find the most suitable place and what we'd do is, when the money was coming through the doors, you wouldn't be catnip thrown into black bags. The black bags had been tucked through the crowd, put into the cat room. It was an amazing night there. Places packed with people. Wayne was sitting in there. Mobile phones are brand new at that time so that was a trickery we used. We used to have a meeting point originally before we could send them straight to the warehouse and then we'd have the big old brick mobile phone and then we'd have someone on the mobile waiting at the meeting spot where all the cars would be. He'd have a pager, we'd phone him, send him a thing, say, he'd jump on a moped and all the cars would follow in a convoy because we knew if we'd got them to follow in a convoy, if the police did turn up, what would happen is they'd be back at a convoy. So by the time the people spilled into the event, they wouldn't know how to control it so they'd have to wait until the following morning until everyone emptied out and then by then we'd skip so we wouldn't get nicks in the aftermath. But the story with who to trust and not to trust, they'll never forget. Years later, I heard a story. One on a Tony was the tourist, he used to be a professional gambler basically so he was banned from wood casinos because he could count cards. So he was a guy that was very, very clever, very on point but couldn't trust as far as he could throw in. I'll say that to him now, he knows. But apparently what he'd done one night and I couldn't believe this, he told Wayne afterwards that he was actually left in the count room with Keith. Keith wasn't interested, so he looked around the warehouse and thought, where can I nicked money? And he's in a little hole in the roof so apparently he was getting money and stuffing it up through the hole. And the next morning now, he mentions he opened the warehouse, he said he's gone back, gone upstairs and all he saw was a mountain of money above on the second floor, the warehouse. So who you can trust is one of those things but at the time as I said, it's your young people and you're doing it and your mind is more concentrated on the event and you're suckered into that. So that was how the party started to grow and then things started to change. As we started to make money, we had to be more vigilant and there's a lot of money coming through the door. We were taking that Leeside Road at that time with the bars, we were taking the drinks and the gate so we were probably taking at least 70,000 pounds. Now that was a good little snatch, going through the gate. And considering five as tenants it was a two quid for a tin of coke so the profit margin of that was, we were probably laying out maybe insecurity and sand not even seven grand so the profit margin was insane. But as we now started to become more sophisticated we increased the price of admission and obviously there were a lot of people going on doing stuff at that time while Robbers, particularly around the Cadencean area who were looking at parties as a really, really easy target. So we had to look differently so Wayne, his stepdad used to work at a club called The Stairs and he had a little group of guys who worked on the door with him and he said look we'd better step up the security and we really need to put a firm door in place. So he brought on some guys one of them you've interviewed Colton Lynch Colton started down so Colton was part of the firm and we got 12 guys basically but these 12 guys were very ICF Dominately ICF, yeah, you know they were very handy, you know what I mean they were up for it as well and they became our door and of course they tagged themselves as a G-force which came back to bite us in the arse but we'll get to that anyway so basically they were our door they became known as the strongest door generally speaking out there and we started to do party after party after party Lee's side road came on top because you found out that the property wasn't owned by the feathery we got it from he actually was squirting in now so when they turfed us out we were on this rollercoaster ride of one in a new warehouse every week but luckily enough he used to travel up and down in the week he'd be looking for empty derelict warehouses it's spot one, he'd go back with a crowbar Jimmy the door, stick a different paddler on it and he would wait until the Saturday afternoon to go in there kid it out and set it up you know so how did people know back then because there was no social media that there was going to be a rave then flyers, we used to have simple as that hand-built flyers, James we'd have about 4,000 hand-built flyers we'd have a little team of people some really good looking little girls and stuff they'd go outside the clubs, there was Spectrum there was Future, there were a few clubs which were dominantly known for that scene and they'd wait until people would even give them flyers and got to the stage everyone knew Genesis was the party to go to so people would be waiting for the Genesis flyer whereas the Genesis flyer was the flyer two meetings points were brought on the flyer rave's been busted how the hell would that go? that's weird that's weird alright we'll catch back on that so it was all down to flyers we used to print the flyers had a little group of girls who would go out giving out the flyers after when the events ended in the west end and that would be it we'd have two meeting spots put on the flyer and people would turn up at the meeting spots and then we'd bring the convoy from the meeting spot to the venue it was no social media and it was advanced it's weird because now the officer that was in charge a guy called Kent Appendon of closing the party is Dan he public is taking a documentary that what we'd done back then the army couldn't even move people around like that and the police certainly couldn't do it at a time so it was quite ingenious but it must have been for the police and the authorities they were pulling their hair out you know because they had no control of what we were doing we grew and we grew and we grew and then it never all stuff happened our door grew also and in a nice way our security wanted part of of the business which was fair enough because we gave them 25% between 12 men to me that was fair they were putting their life on the line and also they were there and they were strong firm you know they were the kind of guys that if you had a problem and you said it's a problem they would do whatever had to be done to get rid of the problems you know what I mean so that was a powerful move you know and they become very well known as a strong door firm I'll never forget one Pacific incident and it was a classic I was reminded about it not so long ago we'd done an event at a place called the gallery up in Bow and I'm not going to say all the people's names because I haven't spoken to them probably won't mind but you know one of our doorman at this point he was a very very fertile guy he exploded and dropped a pin it was a question of some of the parties you'd be wondering fuck how is he going to beat a braver to death and throw him somewhere in the warehouse to be found you know what I mean little thing could kick him off alright so we went to the event I forget we've got this guy's got this got this warehouse so we're talking to them upstairs and stuff one of them's getting a bit sort of trumps up a little bit with him all of a sudden he's pulled a fucking gun on him I thought myself this is a bad fucking idea you know what I mean so he's looked at him called as a cucumber alright okay he's walked downstairs gone he's gone missing for 10 minutes everyone's flaring upstairs he's come back him and another member of doorman he took two guns put one in his head there one in the other guy's chest the other doorman's got a gun in his head and he's got this yard he with a gun there so he's got four guns now all pointing at each other alright and you've got us in the middle of this and thinking what the fuck one false movie huh it is a blood bath do you know what I mean guns go up to the front and centre but that was what was to be expected the scenes started to get more and more and more explosive and as the word got rand do you know they're up for confrontations the police got word for that as well and then also it became a go at for drugs because the parties were massive they were growing and growing and people realised pretty soon that if you could get into a Genesis party you know you could sell abundances of ecstasy abundances of drugs and make hundreds of thousands of pans every given night so that was inevitable that Genesis was going to be one of those events was going to be airmarked for people to sell drugs but it wasn't just anyone was coming to sell drugs we were obviously very connected our door were to the football firm ICF and they were East London guys all local so if anyone was going to be having stuff selling in there there were going to be people who were local to us did people try to muscle in though the door that we put in place our security firm were strong enough to face anyone so what threats we would have had because we would have had loads of threats coming to us no one really wanted to come over and fuck around with them you know and what they were starting to do now was they were starting to go and other events and take over their doors in a nice way so we had our doorman now fucking doing all the security for all the whereas parties but of course the word was now going around it was a protection racket and this stuff and that stuff and they then would take themselves as a g-force and the police's eyes the g-force is Genesis so it input myself, Wayne and Keith as their targets not the doorman but suddenly we were the ones Genesis were going around taking over the whole of the scene so that was a necessary problem which was created but we had it and we had to live with it but then of course Genesis started to come into it and it became a series of raids so it was a question of every fucking week we were getting raided before we started the event so there was information coming out internally from some one connected to our organisation that was giving us up basically and we had a series of raids series of raids and that just continued to happen and happen and happen until it basically brought Genesis to its knees and Tony at that time we severed partnership with Tony and went on to do some huge events and stuff and he had got a lot of publicity from the Sky News and of course the banger was the one he'd done in the aircraft hangar where the Sun newspaper and the Sun newspaper at that time I mean fuck knows how many people read it four or five million people probably and that part was on the front page of the Sun newspaper and never forget it the title spaced out and when I saw that newspaper that moment I thought this is fucking it man this is the end of it Margaret Thatcher then kicked into gear she put out literally a price of everyone's head Shop of Motor was the campaign and it just started to it became what was the scene which was pretty much fun How long did it last for? The warehouse scene actually went from 1988, something like that to 1991 it was a great run, we'd added like we had out of it a year as I said in people like Tony he got a little bit longer of a run then the music changed slightly and you had other organisations coming in and then the license had started to come into play a minister of sound opened and then the scene sort of fuzzled out and moved away from what it really was the street kind of thing into more of a commercial business identity ahead of that by that time or ahead of that time I had a network every fucker that supplied or sold drugs in that scene and there was a matter of time basically before it became logical that if I now moved into that arena I would be able to have the biggest distribution network of ecstasy if I needed it so some people I know would come to me they were manufacturing importing lots of ecstasy you've got unbelievable contacts within that network we haven't but we've got the products can we come and do business and it was like okay so we opened the doors to that and people I knew as I said would buy a huge amount in wholesale and we were probably doing like 250,000 pills a full night which was a huge amount and it was a relatively small scene how much were you getting on fire back in there at that time pills used to sell for 8 pounds wholesale they used to sell before those doves and basically used to have like in the parties I think it was about 15 quid so there was a big markup for the person who was selling them on but obviously you used to work on a profit pound a pill so if you made 250,000 pills and you were moving those a full night you were making 125,000 a week that's serious money do you know what I mean you can't turn your back at that so that was a great gateway as I said it supplied a lot of drugs up and down the country to a lot of parties a lot of events a lot of raves and like everything flew very close to the wind on that one and then one morning I got a phone call I said don't go home there's police everywhere I was like okay right it's time for a holiday so I kept my disappeared under the scene I called someone and said look I've got to get in the fucking country man it's all over me so they said well look what you could do as a passport I said fucking I've got the passport so I said okay do me a favour back then you used to use one day passports you could get so it was like you could go in the post office with a picture and I'd give you a passport as my power counter I'll get you a one day passport you could use my name and use your picture I said okay right so that was it I went now I got across to France I just kept low stayed in France I think I was out there for about a month four weeks well I was getting a passport prepared sent out to me so had a passport had a next girlfriend fly out she went with a passport took the passport I'll never forget it went to the French embassy an American visa because I had people in the states and they gave me a bloody visa to go to the states so week later flew down to Miami I was in Fort Lauderdale for the best part of three months and then it was time to go to my next leg of my journey and that was Jamaica because my mum obviously was born in Jamaica she had a lot of influence a lot of respect a lot of people really she talked to my parents you know because it helped a lot of people so when I got to Jamaica I was in a very good fortunate position and I was able to be around people who were the elite you know of that situation and I was there but I was a frigging mild man you know I was just coming from this craziness in London and she was trying to they would have liked me to be very civilised because I was put around you know family members and people with you know extended family and they were all in political power basically on the island so they were like okay just keep a low profile you know just duck down and you'll be alright you know it won't come here for you so I had calls being me couldn't keep a low profile every fucking night I was in a fight a sudden drama and considering everyone carries a gun at that it's not a particularly good idea to start you know going to have straightens of people but I was still very very wild at heart you know and I met through family member a young lady and we started seeing each other and her father was deputy prime minister so he was heavily positioned in politics and she felt pregnant and I had my first son it was Giovanni and again I couldn't keep myself quiet and I just continued to be the rebellious man I was and one night I remember going out I saw this girl and she was like so fucking stunning and I was like wow so I said to my friend who was with me again his father was a minister in government who the fuck is she she's like Miss Jamaica she's fucking you know just Caribbean Queen and stuff at Miss World I was like I need to I've got to see this girl so I was like on my mind it was like I was at the window all bets were off now and I remember I hadn't seen her and then I saw her again at a club we used to go to called godfathers it was like saying have a good fellas film so it was like when we went in there like grab the table they brought the fucking table over to where the dance floor is that whole kind of bravado managed to get her to sit down and as fate would have it her and her friend were there and we went up to go to the bathroom and as we were sitting there because we had bottles of champagne and stuff on the table two other girls would come and jump straight in their seats so she's come back out of the bathroom two girls were sitting in their seats fucking almighty flights kicked off and that was the beginning of it she kicked one of the girls I think and broke her one of the bones in her feet and that was not saying obviously Miss Jamaica was supposed to be seen doing but of course the root of the problem was me and myself and Erica you know we got together and as I said that was something we had a really strong bond and I thought moving from Kingston now because I was in the heart of Kingston I'd moved to Utterius which is by the coast so we bought a place and ironically as mad as you can see because this time I'm still don't know if I'm going to bother for it it's in England so I'm supposed to technically still be in a low profile I'm not exactly low profile now because I'm in the newspapers of being with Miss Jamaica and all that stuff's going on and then I've moved to a place and then to find Vivian Blake we're also living now and Vivian Blake was the guy that had created a shower posse which is one of the most notorious gangs in Jamaica him and a guy called Jim Brown so Vivian he was wanting to be extradited to America Jim Brown had well supposedly burnt to death in his prison cell while waiting to be extradited in 1992 and Vivian was keeping a low profile in Utterius as were several other notorious people they seemed to ball by places in the same complex that I bought a place you know so I was more or less in the belly of the beast and then what did I do next I wanted to make money so I started to import cars and of course I realised I could circumvent the customs duties down now and that was basically used to pay 240% to import a car that was a duty to have to pay on it so I'd realised after speaking to someone who worked at the wolf I could do bits and pieces like bring the clock up put some old tyres on it do some little tricks and stuff and what they would do is they would be able to undervalued the cars for me so I was in the position to get my friends to send me up cars I would then do what I had to do to make 10, 15,000 pound of car which was a lot of money back then and that was a good business so it was legal and not so legal so I was it wasn't extremely bad but it was bad enough but it was making good money and then I went from there and as I said I got a good network of people I sold cars to of course I was selling nice cars, BMWs, Mercedes and the people who buy those cars are politicians and drug dealers so I had a circle around me now and I then went to get involved in opening up a moped business for tourists, stuff like that so I trusted a friend he was sending some mopeds up one occasion he decided to increase the profit so he put a couple of moped in with a parcel and of course that went badly wrong, customs down here discovered it and then it brought the heat to where I was so that was now another unsettling situation so I had inadvertently brought it to myself when I should have just been doing legal business Erica wasn't a part of any of that she didn't want to be a part of any of that what I had done I always do and I don't tell my women about because I believe that's how you do this thing and the pressure everything was getting too much for our relationship and we split and then how was that for you? it was very hard, it was weird because at the end of the day you chose the money over and that was the sad thing about it it was a question of greed and in my mind it was a question of doesn't matter what I'm making money I'm going to keep taking money this is where my mind is at this is what I'm going to be doing and the consequence was my wife and my child and it was like you think about it and it's insane that your mind is so wrapped up you're stuck into this scenario of it's all about greed it's all about money, it's all about gain and that was it and I guess at that point was really when I started to step into a different a different level and then it wasn't long before I'd realised the context I know how at the Wolf clearing cars and motorbikes were incredibly good context to have to ship our other products so I came back down to England by this time the heat had cooled off and I started now to link up back up with someone my older circle matured and developed in their own elements of business you know and a lot of those guys now had stepped up to crime ladder and they'd chosen obviously to get involved in La Croix business which was a sort of no brainer and it made complete sense at that time to be able to source products in Jamaica which wasn't hard for me to do so I don't want to forget actually I went down there to arrange something once and obviously we needed to try and throw the money from obviously British studying to US dollars that's how the trade works and again I had incredible support of extended family it was a real combination of completely straight people to real heavyweight criminals and one person in particular I went to see him and he left he lived there in the 70s in Jamaica and became incredibly powerful he was a smuggler he had great roots he used to smuggle a lot of cannabis at the time from Columbia Columbia and gold into the States and also he used to smuggle stuff back here but as I said he was a very well respected smuggler he had a great network and also ran a legal bank so what it was probably currency was a very hard thing to obtain in Jamaica because obviously there's a tight hold on it Jamaica doesn't produce cars or things like that so people want motor vehicles luxury fridges or whatever they want or goods for their business they have to pay in US dollars having a network of the main smugglers he meant he could buy currency from them convert them into Jamaican dollars and he could then do business between that world and this world you know what I mean and he kind of said but what are you doing Andrew and I was like I'm doing this and he was like you're going to get yourself killed this is Jamaica you know and you're talking about running around doing this if you're going to do this he said not that I want it for you but he said I'm going to school you're going to take you under my wing that was a huge thing because this guy was one of the most powerful smugglers in the whole of the Caribbean and he had retired effectively smuggled heavily in the 70s as I said out of Columbia he had a series of boats when the trade went from cannabis to cocaine that's when he left it and he as I said just gave it up basically you know but he's under studies they were guys who basically were happy to take the contacts in Columbia and they obviously started to get heavily involved with the cartels I think in 1990s I think 20% of all the cocaine in Columbia had actually was transferred from Jamaica so if you get an idea of what you're talking you're talking about not just Medellin cartel or the Cali cartel you're talking about every drop of cocaine 20% you're talking about hundreds of tons of product passing through Jamaica I remember people buying fishing vessels because they would go out because they'd have these little man built submarines they'd build in Columbia load them in coke and try to get them through or go fast boats from off at the tip of Honduras into St. Elizabeth but of course when the DEA put up a helicopter or whatever they'd throw all the stuff off or if the submarine would take two to the water they'd float up to hundreds of thousands of keys of coke just literally floating in that part of sea so you know people had boats would go out literally just looking for cocaine floating do you know what I mean people were watching us know for cocaine boats how much was it for Akiha Cork and Jamaica back then back then okay so back then in Columbia cocaine was $600 a kilo okay by the time it crossed in Jamaica you could buy cocaine in Jamaica for about $3,000 a kilo and you know so it was a strong profit mark on that you know not as much obviously as places like Ghana where there are low land boards and stuff like that and because of Jamaica's proximity to the Miami it was obviously slightly dera but as I said it was in abundance you know so it was the home really of cocaine which was the home of marijuana prior to that you know and I had contacts as I said I had people at the Wolf that I do easily you know send products if we need to send products it was a question of having people here who could then receive it and distribute it yeah so there were lots of people here who'd worked in the markets you know and perishable goods every single day were traveling you know they can't get stopped really you know otherwise they'll go rotten that's the idea of perishable goods so we've got companies bringing in bananas and mangoes and yams and everything you can possibly imagine there's a whole cycle a whole potential of products just coming through day in day out day in day out so it was really good for me because I could sit in Jamaica you know a nice safe distance you know people could be here and it was a question just keeping things flowing you know and that was something which was really really natural to do and it was fun because it was like fucking fun it was a question of life and you were actually separated by one and you were dealing with people in Jamaica you could trust real people of serious power what happened here was a different story you know you got what you had to get down here you just got to take care of that side of the business and it's in their lap you know and yeah that was the journey how much would you get in Shaptorva each week I guess alright so before putting myself back in prison I'd say alleged I'd say alleged in the region say 2,000 kilos a month of cocaine allegedly and in terms of cannabis perhaps maybe 14,000 pounds that's seven and a half seven and a half tonne sort of proper shipments yeah proper shipments yeah of course how much were you making see before you went done the wait the cork how much were you worth then that's a really hard question to ask are you comfortable or I think it's a I think it's a question that's hard to ask because again looking at PII documents and things like that when I was finally arrested because public interest immunity documents are what the police the DEA and the different agencies you know say they've got you know and mad figures were put in there insane figures in 2006 a ridiculous figure was put in a newspaper in these Sunday people Rich List they had a hundred million pounds which was insane figure insane figure you know but you know big figures are brands are brands but I was making a lot of money you know just to put it in any term you know but anyone standard yeah and that was it what was it when shipments get stole or shipments get busted because you're seeing the films you're reading the books like say there's ten shipments a month people give up maybe two take those two maybe a ton of coke and let us away with five or the ten does that happen see the game the real game is played bigger than that James okay so the real game is played that people when people put huge amounts of drugs on boats okay or in containers they're not it's not a guessing game okay customs officers police are paid at both ends to make sure that it gets through okay so that's a sealed guarantee if it falls it's full and by a complete accident it's full because something has happened and something a mishap on a computer or whatever or another team of officers have been looking at someone basically and they've led a different intelligence led operation and they've come across it or fell across it but huge shipments like that are closed what they call door to door okay so that's how that works so the idea of having to give away a shipment here to trick a shipment and all that if it's playing the game on a big level you know you're almost guaranteed at both ends what you're going to send is going to leave and what you're going to you know send is going to be received so after the shipment it's gone out that's how the big game is played you know it's not a question of chance you do have chance don't get me wrong you can have a door where you can bring stuff through and you know it's a company it's been running for a long time and you know you can throw 10 boxes on 12 boxes fill them with boxes of product you know what I mean and you can load them up you've got 100 key there 200 key there whatever and you know someone might discover it customs might scare it might get dropped here it might drop there and those are looked at as you know just you can if you get you can 40 lose 8 8 out of 10 do you know what I mean and still make profit on 2 you know but when people are doing huge amounts of product you know those are secured those aren't just thrown on willy-nilly they're not it's not it's not a question of chance you know too much to stake for that 20, 30, 40 mollying puns well too much to stake for that you know and that's that's practical odds you know so yeah so that's how that game is played you know 1999 it was a game that I didn't want to sort of really play much more so I wanted to get back in the industry and as a child as a young person so I say I used to love the idea of Urban Music Festival there's only one which is worth doing and that was Reggae Sun Splash you know and again I had a member of extended family that was actually connected to that event so in 90 I think it was 1998 we tried to do a festival here which didn't happen and it was a that was a dance festival and I thought I want to go and I'll do Sun Splash I want to do this I want to bring this back to London you know so we went down to Jamaica and I had a meeting and I spoke to him and said look we really want to put this event together and bring it back to England because they'd had it here before that was in I think it was 1987 they had an event at Crystal Palace Football Grand they had it the following year and then year after that it was Clapham Common it was huge over 100,000 people turned up to Clapham Common you know it was the biggest event festival in Britain that year and it got closed down because it was just too much for the police to handle you know as dominantly Afro-Caribbean people the police had a big problem with that and every excuse in the book was used to close it down for it to happen again so bringing it back was a really big thing it was a massive thing to do so I thought there we go so they agreed they formulated the original team that was used at Sun Splash and I had to then bring all the old guard out of the woodwork so started off with a weird thing in the world a guy called John Burroughs OBE this guy was director of Capitol Radio and I think his brother was head of the original crime squad in the Midlands and I was like there I was you know what I mean ducking and diving and running around now I was going to be springing into the table some of the most respectable people in the country to put this festival on so that was the journey we went on you know what I mean and stuff and along that road it was it was colourful let's put it like that you know it means well it was a question of meetings with the police because you're sitting down with a police and a fire brigade through necessary authorities because you're going to put a licence on James it's not an underground rave where it's just a free-for-all this is more planned, illegal you're going into the Queen's Park it's a Queen's Park and bringing 50,000 people in now and as bad luck would have it we had two bad fates of luck and the first bad fate of luck was a war had been started it was a spate of shootings you know and they were classified as black on black yardy gangland shootings so it's 13 shootings told in a short spate of time so the police was like there's no way this thing's going to be a blood bath and it was like look it won't be a blood bath for the simple reason this is a family event there's three generations coming out there's going to be grandparents there's going to be children and there's one thing in our culture we don't do you don't cross in front of your grandparents right and they were like that's nonsense these guys are ruthless they don't care it's not going to work I said no it's going to work and there won't be incidents like you've seen incidents so anyway we've had loads of meetings community meetings mum was very influential and we met a lot of senior people who were in the community you know Holston, Brixton all from different sides said look it can't happen not there it can't because if it happens it's the end of something which is a great legacy I mean but Marley played on this event Stevie Wonder played on this event you know it meant a lot to our culture and to our people you know we'd convinced the police the event would go along we got a license of 50,000 people then we had a guy called an old bomber that was going around putting now bombs everywhere aiming at ethnic communities so now not only have we gone through the whole spate of black on black shootings now we had a lunatic which is walking around planting bombs so they thought this is a private target anyway it was back to paddock stations anyone who wanted to be involved was getting very very shaky about the event thank God he got arrested prior to the event they caught him so the event went ahead that was it the event pushed forward went amazing Victoria Park with that incident and the ground was laid you know it was laid this would have now been there to compete with Glastonbury we were stepping it in and that would have been the end of it you know and that would have been me hanging my boots up and saying right I'm on this road but as I say the road to hell is paved with tensions because you're not just retired in Jamaica? yeah many times many times so what happened then after what happened there after that incident basically the festival we know was off the ground we were in position and we were in place and someone came to me said look they've got some ink right basically and you know would I mind sort of you know making sure that it's alright I said it's not a problem and stuff anyway they were involved in cars we were involved in cars at the time it's quite funny really and what they were doing was getting cars in from Europe and the cars were kind of ringers and what they'd do is they'd basically break them down and ship them elsewhere so how it actually came about was the most funniest thing in the world and then to me would I forget what it was it was the top of the range of Mercedes and he said to me look you know you know what do you think it is they're beautiful cars in fact what we'd done was we had Wyclef Jean come over for the festival to play at the festival he was actually driving him around in one of them so we had Wyclef driving around in a ringer if he'd been stopped by the police I'd love to see any headlines on that one right anyway one of the cars I got up in the morning I got a look at the door serious crime squad come through the door investigating stolen motor vehicles and that was it they'd be watching the office they'd be watching the commons and the go-ins they'd bid on to that little network of people who were ringing cars and it then came straight to me that was it so arrested untermously taken to the police station and now anyway the police had come down but I think I was from Southampton because that's where the cars were shipped from anyway during this window now they had been on bail so when I sat on bail it was a question of waiting for the next court appearance waiting anyway during that gap I was really got released from bail and it was like I'm released from bail I've got a passport it's fucking cold here Jamaica here I come again so there was a block on a flight back home in Jamaica and of course it didn't take long the sun splashing obviously now was out the window that couldn't happen especially not given the circumstances there's no fucking way to please give me a licence so I just went back to what I know and that was a journey a question of same old same old people coming down on a regular basis talking to me facilitating things and just constantly having the door open back and forth back and forth that journey happened until in 2000 I think it was 2000 2002 I came back so I came back which was our unwise thing to do really thinking about it was there any heat on you from the British the corpus over in Jamaica if you were everything was being blocked because the position I was sat in was a very very fortunate one so I had a great political circle around me so anything in terms of intelligence it was coming up from Britain and that was coming in multiple intelligence there was Metro, there was DEA customs and exiles and there was regular Met Police which was I think regional crime at the time so anything they were coming up with intelligence I'd get the heads up immediately it was like okay right they've got this PIOs coming how PIO works I'll actually show you what it looks like how it works is intelligences form different agencies then they've got certain agencies they have to share it with so when they then share it with Jamaican intelligence straight away hey presto I've got access to it so I think fuck right okay so they're on me I can't go I can't go down and you just play that game moving moving the penny around the board which I've done incredibly well so that was how I managed to keep myself basically always one step ahead anyway I came back down here and the skies I had more fucking passports than the passport office why did you keep coming back because it's just it's the constant boys what greed just change you miss it as mad as it is you know you miss it and your parents are great figures when your parents are alive you've got a family coming from a family you want to do it and the stories with the fucking passports I don't ever forget one day it was absolutely a madness I've got a passport to come back from down there to go back up there and I've arrived to the hotel down in Jamaica and fucking I've given the woman the passport the desk I'm sitting down now talking and she's calling out his name Mr Dominic I completely ignore what Mr Dominic is she's getting lared on the tunnel fuck that's the passport so I ran up to the thing I said I'm really really sorry I said I didn't hear you and all that I said no Mr Dominic she said I had a passport checked me in and all that right I should not have come in but then a friend of mine down there the picture was coming out a little bit so a friend of mine down there said to me look I can get so I can fix that for your hand I take out the page and they'll replace it so anyway paid in got the thing fixed right so I've gone down a bit but I looked at the back page it was slightly off colour it was like a more lighter purple and the other two I'm thinking fuck that's close to the mark anyway so down in Jamaica that was the first call which should have been a warning sign for me anyway when I'm leaving the island now I've got to the passport desk and a girl's got Mr Dominic said I've got a problem with your passport so I've said oh what's the problem she's got um did you get it anywhere issued like a different passport I said no I got it from Petrie France I've got to say go to Petrie France she's got an issue which said it's not passing our check I said well do a difference which actually said it's failed every one of them I'm thinking fuck so my pal's got what Mr Scoot said no fuck it let me persevere so she's now on the phone to British and all that so she's gone okay I said listen I'm going back today I said I don't know what you're doing passport's good so I'm blanking it so she's gone okay then I've just spoken to British customs and they said they'll deal with it at that end I'm thinking fuck I'm first now right so I'm thinking do I live at the airport or do I go alright fuck it I'm going to go for this so get put on the plane we've seated and get okay now I'm thinking fuck there's a seven and a half hour flight I've got seven and a half hours to think of a story right and it's got to be a brilliant one because when I get outside of that airport there's going to be an issue so if I wait enough for the police to come on the plane as we land and if I see two police come and play straight past there's some guy some poor geezer he's been obviously deported or wherever they've brought him back so he's handcuffed he's walked down the gangway I'm thinking my life can't be that great so I'm walking down there James when I've now got to the passport control I've seen two people an old lady and a young guy now this guy's staring at every single passport he's looking at them really but she's really lackadaisical something where I've got to jump in her queue and land that way in so anyway as I'm trying to move from one to the other to the other to the other the guy starts calling me so I drop the passport to give myself more time hoping something else would walk around me but he's insistent to call me to the thing anyway I think fuck so I walk up there as soon as he sees the passport he fix it back he goes look see it like that he goes you want to sit over there straight away and the game's up because I'm sitting down give me 10 minutes then he says oh would you mind coming out so walk me to this room this is the most maddest place you've ever seen in your life right it's in the airport and it's a holding bay basically forever now you've got those Chinese guys you've got the passport they throw their passport away when they board a plane so they've got their identity where they are you've got a lot of Africans, Jamaicans you've got every race and earth all in this holding room but there I am now with this deep cockney accent so they're trying to figure out what the fuck is he doing now he doesn't seem right you know but it can't quite put their finger on me so anyway when I'm sitting there now I've already got my brief and what I'm going to say so this fella comes back in he's got this big fucking folder in front of him anyway he drops the folder on the desk so as soon as he drops the folder on the desk I think to myself right so I take the ball by the horn so I get up at him and let him go listen right you know Mr Dominic he's like that it's just a toy taken back because that's going to be his big words to take my hat. Mr Dominic looks fucking nothing like me I said let me tell you why I've got that passport and the guy's just like gotta hear this one I said listen really good friend of mine so he's going out now getting married wanted me to be the best man so the reality was I thought it's horrible, it's cold over here do I really want to be sitting in England and my best pal's getting married so I thought you know what let's see if I can get my hands on a passport I went into the pub I was talking literally someone came to me and said listen I love you talking son I can get you a book if you want a book it's because you're under the quid right no questions asked I said listen I thought the guy was bullshitting I give him 50 quid you two want to meet me he came back two days later there was the book it's like what's this person's name I fucking ask people's names he said so you're telling me you flew on a false passport in a time of height for terror to go at your friend's wedding as soon as he said that I thought this fucking idiot has fell for this story so I said yeah what would you do if the bull is on the foot he's gone in a half and a half he's left now I've got two police about an hour later they've come into the polling area so everyone there sees his police cub everyone's frightened they think they've come for them I don't know if they've come for me anyway they take me out of there into the police van on the way to the local police station so on my way to the station now get there so now they're trying to pry me in advance what they're saying to me so hold on so why would you do something as mad as that why don't you just fly on your own passport now I'm thinking I've had all these previous warrants out for me a lot of times transpired now I said well it's burnished my passport would have expired which had expired anyway by this time they told me to pay you France it would take me at least 8 weeks to get one back my pal was getting married and I just went for it so I was like what's your name she took my name now and now I'm expecting it's gonna flash up it's gonna be fucking all kinds of things going on anyway nothing no handcuffs no additional questions all staying down the line so I'm like ok I said are we in serious trouble then right you could have been in serious trouble you could go to prison for this next thing he's come out with do you know what a caution is and I'm thinking there's no fucking way to give you a caution for this you're getting two years for a passport so anyway I said no what is a caution he said if you get a caution he said and you get in trouble and give it a police he said you'll be in prison and I said no you're joking right he's got it's serious I got it completely serious anyway they've build me at the station so I now know I'm in a clear because I've got no flags up on me second thing now is they're giving me a caution and released me so I'm thinking fuck they've made a mistake here they ain't dug far enough do you know what I mean so call this cab get into this fucking cab the guy starts off as he pulls off the frigging car straight stand like two of them meets from the police station his fan belt's gone so he's on the phone to the AA they're getting on the big long thing with him and all that and I'm panicking I'm looking back when they're thinking any fucking minute they're gonna go old on but you just let that guy go we went in to question for this and whatever anyway so I'm sitting there panicking and then all of a sudden the AA's come fixed this guy's fan belt and I managed to get back to the manor you know and I thought to myself fucking hell you know there's a god out there looking at me so what I do it just seems that I cannot get myself nicked whatever happens I always find my way out of it right and this is where the false sense of security comes now so when things like that happens in my life it just excels James and all it became was a worse and worse and worse feeling felt untouchable and of course no one is untouchable okay and the breaking point came finally in 2002 and that was a big breaking point because here we had something which no everyone wants to have where the whole team customs officers at the docks and how that looks is basically a team of how it works is a whole team of unit they basically control the docks they call fast team threatening smuggling so any content that comes with a wolf they have to examine it technically speaking that they've got complete control over it now for a million quid they'll clear whatever you want which in the big scheme of things isn't a lot of money really because you can load it with whatever you want right so the scheme is this container leaves the point country you give them the serial number that means it can't be touched by Coast Guard while it's on the water when it gets here it arrives at the dock where the time of night is they then lift it basically so what they'll do is they'll put it in for x-ray x-ray is the most primitive thing in the world so an x-ray in this day and age is a lorry comes by it pulls up beside the container something called a boom arm which is an x-ray goes through the front of the back of it to see if anything's in it one guy sits in the back of it with a screen he only takes a photograph if they discover something but hey presto it's loaded but he just says nothing there's no photograph taken and he clears it and once you've got that piece of paper that containers cleared lorry comes, picks it up takes it off the wolf and you're gone that's as simple as that what happens if the police stopped after he's left, does that piece of paper still give them the old clear? because once you're on a wolf the wolf is the wolf it's a secure area if that lorry driver then gets stopped it's a route to where he's going you're fucked because at the end of the day they're going to have to unload a whole bloody container for the goods it's not an easy task to do and these containers are still sealed anyway so the probability of the police stopping it is more than highly unlikely because as far as they're concerned it's still travelling in bond effectively so this was a system we had best system in the world until one of my co-defendants he decided to make himself very busy and I'll say busy what he was doing basically, he was targeting for work other places so another team of officers now a completely different unit they are on to him and his activity so when the container is coming now a container arrives at the wolf it's then marked up that it's been cleared so then I get a phone call so it's been cleared I get a phone it's cleared now they've picked up something that's been cleared on the wolf but they're still waiting for something else which is what they think is on the border what they're following him about anyway pay presto they go down to the wolf and they start looking in containers but they're looking for all the containers what are connected specifically to him anyway one of the officers this is quite a capable little team so what they then do is let's now check containers that have actually been cleared so of course they then go to the wolf they start to look for containers that have been cleared they break the seal and half a tonne of coke falls out on them so now what do they do because you've got a whole team of customs officers that say it's been cleared you've got another team of customs officers now they've discovered it so that's a catch 22 they suddenly turn around and say actually you're involved in it so we're nicking you it's a case of corruption and they've they're in charge of clearing product which is potentially evidence so that's never going to stand up and call there's a billion whites out of that so they decide they're going to clue together so they collectively now fucking join ranks and they declare right we've discovered we came at that time in the country to get the glory and of course now we get the signal it's been cleared and arrive at a market arrive at a market and customs then suddenly jumping from everywhere and that's it unsacrificed modestly nicked anyway that's the journey bang taking to onesworth six handed on the fucking news so by the time I call my solicitor actually price that takes the customs ass call my solicitor poor sod he comes down he's gone um I've gone bin nicked he's gone yeah I've fucking seen what I have in the news I'm like ok right he said alright he said look he can't talk in here he said this place is bugged to fuck he said just don't say words right you know give me a reminder he said I'll come and see you on a visit schedule called down remind bang anyway so everyone's worth now I'm thinking fuck this is a tricky situation but how could it happen do you know what I mean this wasn't supposed to have happened anyway when I get down I'm like comes for the first legal visit like look this thing is as dark as it gets right holding the customs revolved in this right he's like looking there's like zombie like what the fuck right anyway he's gone because now disclosures coming and his customs that have been paid off and now actually saying that they've discovered it it's a great victory for them right so these are people we're paying off who are basically nicking us I'm thinking well fuck what on earth is there to do and like is like you're finished this is like you're going to get the most severe sentence you can imagine you can never imagine right anyway so I'm thinking this is a dark hole right but never give up there's always got to be a fucking lie anyway never underestimate another man's greed and this is what we're thinking about these documents PI documents basically they're intelligence which are created and the intelligence that are created what they do is they come from agencies and they're supposed to be in what these organized crime groups or individuals are up to so they read a particular bit of intelligence about one of my code defendants on it it says first one says they've got nine million pounds in the boot of his car which I think they said it was nine hundred thousand and another document but they say it's basically it's broken down into euros and dollar bills US dollar bills so now you've got a team of officers which were at the time customs and exercise what they call a special special investigation they became soccer then they became NCA so that's a different unit and they look at these fucking documents and they're saying these guys they've got all this fucking money and these guys are on 30 grand a year or 27 grand a year and when you're putting temptation in the way of people who are trained to catch guys like me because they have to fly really close to the wind if you want to get me you've got to think like me and you've got to be out there okay now that ain't very nice when you're sitting outside in your car in a freezing fucking cold eating sandwiches cold coffee look at a nice big house lovely cars going out for beautiful dinners if you miss is depressing right so this is the mindset by the grace of God that's sunk into the officers who were trained to target us right anyway two twos we're now getting disclosure no sign of disclosure of in terms of what's really you know behind the scenes so they've done a complete cover up with a corruption nothing like that anyway through my channels I've got a message to listen leading the investigation officer on the case right he's up for it what's the situation got contact with him what's quarter of a billion quid how are we going to trust this through how are we going to send it out that it's a real and I just don't have a fucking drama right we can test it so okay let's fucking try to test I mean we're in prison at this time you know so we're operating for mobile phone so I'm thinking right okay tell you we want we want something you'll get the money but we want to test if it's real or not anyway send the message you've got to send someone to a certain place and they're going to give them something to prove that they're who they are anyway send someone person comes back that evening on the phone what was it what was it it's a fucking it's a key it's a fucking key a street door key and what's this supposed to do I'm like what the fuck anyway right so I'm thinking what if anyway so I'm waiting now cool I've got a call what's this about he said to me that's a street door key for your code of finance ass that's come straight to evidence pool right so send someone to take that key and try a street door thinking okay right send someone fucking key up to the street door he's pulled the key out of the evidence bag that means he is in the case because only an officer in certain power can get those kind of access to evidence right so I said okay it's game one anyway agreed to make a payment which are done and the next fucking thing what we're going to do what we're going to do is still and this is going to get rid of all the cocaine we've still got a big fucking problem alright so something's arranged right and he takes every single file of intelligence that is on me and all my code defendants and all the cases that piled off of us out of customs ass hotel photocopies the whole fucking lot through the night and then puts them back in the safe paid and then arrangements are made so I can start to get these papers delivered to me in prison fucking hell so I'm getting stuff come through and I'm looking at these paperwork man it's just madness because it's just everything you do you're watching how these people are following you you're watching how they've got bugs on people's cars you're looking at informants they've physically got on the case who they're paying and this is just I opened up like you could not imagine but still it's more dangerous having this stuff because it's just saying you're up to every fucking thing that's bad everything that's fucking bad right so how do you turn this one from there into an ace did you know any of them several of them that's the most astonishing thing I mean we would go and get in meets with people who were involved in smuggling who were involved in working at the docks and they were leaving us to the fucking time and they were going straight to their handlers getting paid and giving information literally he was reporting from arriving to taking your fucking phone your chips out of your phone every fucking detail and I'm going to show you some of them papers after as well to read and understand that this game's played right so say when you were in Jamaica you had to pass if they wanted intelligence you'd have had the heads up why the fuck come back why come back to put yourself through that surveillance that intelligence to gather information to then build a case against you because that's what this thing does it's addiction James just sometimes bitter off taking drugs and smuggling drugs the addiction's less it does to you this is where the criminal lifestyle comes into people you get so obsessed by it and you get so drawn into it you think you're invincible you think you're untouchable but you're not and you're driven by greed you're driven by ego all of those things drive you and you're not looking at what you're doing you're not looking at the fans of life you're destroying you're not looking at the misery you're causing people you're not looking at the shame you bring down of your people who are good hardworking decent people you're living a life which is a lie it's all a lie we live this life we think it's so great it's so bravado and it accounts to nothing that's what it amounts to at the end no matter how great you come out of it you're a failure if I walk into a prison today and deliver a course first thing I say every single one of you in here including me is a failure because you're in prison and that's the beginning of it and that's the end of it and that's how we'll end up or dead so you're making when you were in Jamaica were you making less instead of being here were you making more income was it just the same? no it balances itself you do make less actually if you're on that side of the water because the simple reason is if you're here of course you are and also you're at the helm so when you're at the helm of it and stuff you can't be anything you can come back short or nothing like that you're in a position where you know the value of everything so it's not a question of whatever you send and you're taking you always know values of things anyway but you know the worth, you know straight away that can be cleared up straight away in a month not the four months that you said it's going to be cleared and then you've got to send another one to him and he's always paying you money which he's always got a deficit of one or two or three million quid because he's never ever coming up flush and that's the game people work off a debt so people who tend to sit down here who it's not their product they're spending their profit before they've got their profit so when they have someone knock them or something it goes wrong, the person who's going to take the loss is you at the other end, you know what I mean big scheme of things is not hard loss because the profit margins you work on but it's still wanting to be the be all in the end or you still want to take every penny so you're not happy sitting down there you think, fuck it, I want to get down there because I want to know everything that's going on you know what I mean, that's a control thing so see when you were doing like in Jamaica, did the intelligence ever come over to Jamaica to do surveillance or were they not allowed no they can't because the problem is they can't travel over there they've got the keys that they put over there called the drug liaison officer now with people like that basically they're sent out to different islands you have one just sent to every single island so when they basically come what they've got to realise is that you are in that you've got everyone that you need so straight away when you're fucking because they give them a house to stay they give them all these bits and pieces but listen, the first thing you're on you know where they're coming, you know where they're about you've got someone who's because they have a helper, looks after their house they have a gardener you've got someone on now, so straight away they're in that house every spare minute they've got and they're looking so not only you've got eyes on them through the official source you've got eyes on them when they're at home when they're relaxing any fucker that comes to see them it's a friend or foe, you know because you're audit, this is the person not just me, not just a couple of people but everyone that British intelligence have got an interest in that fuck is responsible so he's a person, you have eyes on all the time and to be honest here there are people I know that have approached you lay as an officer, on a few occasions and they've done business with them in order to deliberately send back bad intelligence bad information but if you've really got what you need down now the best thing to do is just have eyes on them because they think they're doing their fucking job anybody can be bought, that's the scary thing in life so see when you started looking through your files then and you started thinking so many informants so much intelligence did you ever think beforehand that they never had fuck all on you never had a fucking clue because you think and you walk around and you walk around oblivious and you turn and you think to yourself they can't be on me they would have nicked me by now no they haven't nicked you because they haven't got enough stuff on you they want to get you red handed but there's a saying it's a long time coming a long time coming is when you're going to get finally nicked and you're going to get sentenced the judge gets all those PI documents so when you get a massive sentence you think I've done fuck all, what's he giving that for he's looked in an MPIs and saying all what you've done and got away with so he's sentencing you then for stuff that you've got away with 20 years ago and that's how deep this thing really goes but criminals don't know that so when you're looking through all the files then did you think I'm fucked I look through the files can they not have fucking burnt the files can they not have got rid of them instead of the photocopies all these things are generated on computers they're printed off, they're file copies and you're not going to get because they're shared so they're shared with the DEA they're shared, okay so it's like what are you going to do with all these fucking paperwork that says you're guilty right so the only thing you could do with it is what I sat down and I thought really fucking hard and I thought if I'm not allowed to see this my barrister can't see it, my bluer can't see it only a person sees these fucking things as a judge the people that's fucking made it leaves the jury so I thought this is what I'd do so anyway I fucking tainted myself really carefully first day I'm going to give evidence this is the big finale now so I'm in the dock the fucking prosecutor opens up his case on me now so he's coming up at me I give him a pause, right because I've got my whole script here I'm going at down the corruption route I pull out a lot of papers out my fucking jacket pocket so now I start to read out things not necessarily saying what I was reading out was one of them fucking documents but as far as the jury is concerned what I was reading out and looking at those documents must be what's on those documents okay so I'm reading these things out the prosecutor's like what's he was what's he was so I walk from the thing I start giving papers to the jury go up to the judge I toss a thing at him they say I threw it but I didn't actually drop it on his bench it just got out of my hands he picks up the water ball he runs through his chambers the prison guards oh grab me to the floor take me out of the court anyway court break my barrister's like what a fuck what on earth cause I can't tell him if I tell him he can't take the case what on earth was that what was all that was that was that I go listen there are documents that's what they are where do you get I don't even want to know where you got them from he said what are we going to do now because this has never ever happened in the British court of law ever in history do you know what I mean the judge comes back in he's ruffled prosecutor's ruffled they say right these documents we just found have also been faxed to the court right and these documents have been faxed faxed to the chambers right so documents going everywhere now so he doesn't know what to do he's never had this before but I know what's going to happen jury comes back in so the jury's back in so the jury's like first question what's what are those documents about Mr Pritchard says he's innocent can we see the documents so the judge now he's like I'm afraid you can't see those documents so why can't we see these documents the judge is those documents are not for you to see right he's got no right talking about his documents or bringing those documents into the court so the jury but he said he's innocent and he says those documents prove he's innocent so the judge comes out with if you mention them documents again you'll be in a hold with him that's the jury right give it that to us so now I've got them where I want them so now when a prosecutor comes back at me he throws back Mr Pritchard I said listen you know the truth I know the truth truth for those documents he's like the judge get the jury out again you mention them documents I think you listen what the fuck have I got to lose do you know what I mean so every time he's coming back in I'm bringing up the documents so now jury there frustrated the prosecutor can't go any further because every time I ask him a question I say to him you know the truth it's on the documents right anyway I frustrate them so now upstairs right they can't give me no more questions or answer no more evidence they're finished they're stuck in a corner so in my grasp it goes to me right you know it's your friend guilty this is 35 years I said if I get 35 years as a result I thought I'd get faulty with him right he's like well if you want me to take this final leg now because it now means he's gonna full on go and making a tack in his closing speech that all the customs are corrupt and all he's taking now like really gonna take it to the bone anyway I said just go for it so pretty ahead of this judge calls me up right because I've been taking the customs constantly madest thing in the world jury's not in there asked me to stand up in the door with six code defendants says to my barrister is it Mr. Pritchard that is making you ask these questions right attack because remember as barristers they're supposed to attack you know witnesses it doesn't happen it's it's it's not applicable you know so he's like yes Mr. Pritchard justice looks at me doesn't say enough it just looks at me so okay sit down because I know if it goes wrong I know what I'm getting right he's just like anyway jury's out jury's gone hour later comes back in thinking whoa they've got me guilty anyway he's gone no boom boom boom three not guilty the drivers all got home straight away right think fuck anyway next thing now we're out for a day day two comes in jury comes back another decision bang another not guilty when my code defense has gone there's living two of us now right anyway I'm thinking we've got to be home anyway so it's still sitting on the fence all of a sudden jury can't make a decision they're they're hung they can't come to a verdict so it's like right well you know you've had you here for over a week you're all dismissed to go so I've got home never forget it got back to prison right in the prison it was Christmas right the break for Christmas I was watching the television and that night I saw the news at 10 and news at 10 I had whole thing about cocaine right this whole little program and you can see that program was for us it was set a time space in there and it was all going to be today the biggest drug addiction thing in British history boom boom boom that would have been it so instead of that they had to rush around get some little street dealer guy with a fucking microphone and a bit of stick to pretend like you know this was a segment of how bad cocaine is you know how heavily involved it is in our society today right so I thought okay I've missed the bullet on that now I'm going to sit down write this out got a second trial coming so anyway head of the second trial now thinking this has got to be easier because I couldn't of course you know slide my way through this anyway so now I'm toying with the whole idea of it so now when the trial starts I'm thinking I'm going to do the same trick but now the judge is when Mr. Pritchard gives evidence he's going to be handcuffed to the dock right so there's no fucking hope of getting any documents out of my pocket again he's not going to let that happen so I think okay it's good for the gander so what we're going to do is magically a website appears and it's got all the intelligence documents on it anyway so now the code defense is giving his evidence so he's giving his evidence he gives his evidence in chief as the prosecutor comes to him he starts to say justiceandcrime.dk justiceandcrime.dk judges what's he talking about that's a website you're on with all the corrupt customs officers names are on right the judge he's like what's he doing anyway so there's a jury now this is a new jury anyway so the judge is like if you look up that website you're all in contempt of court stay off your laptops anyway that night miraculously a pirate radio station also reads out the website right anyway so now the things properly in the public domain there's getting hundreds of hits people are downloading documents got a whole scenario going on so now the judge is like right okay the jury want to know what the documents are about we can't show the jury these documents because it is highly prejudiced and they're public interest immunity which is put on by the Quran right so now the next shuffle is going to be what do you do how do you stop the leakage so he's now rewriting law as he goes along he says okay we'll share the disclosure with the co-defendants so as no one's got an unfair balance but of course we already know us on them anyway so that's achieved absolutely nothing but in the midst of this now by the way right and back when I'm thinking I'm fucked I'm going to get sent down now but if I can somehow get it public that there's corruption going on I've got an appeal possibility anyway I'll get a phone call from my missus he says I've got a phone call today it's this production company McIntyre's Underworld and Donald McIntyre makes some of the worst programs of criminals he's your nightmare this guy jumps at on you with a camera and the door stops you the whole lot so I think he wants to make a program because he thinks I'm going down alright so I said alright I said find out from him yeah definitely interested so he can't come and visit me because he's banned from onesworth because he's done a documentary now about prison officers like a month before so they won't let him in the prison so anyway camera man comes along and it produced so I might have sent him so they sit there I said look I said it's in twilight loads of corruption I said and you know go ahead and make the the documentary so I've got a mobile phone so I can be in contact with you but you know generally follow about day to day life my friends my people do you know what I mean they'll happily help you along and we'll make this fucking documentary right so three months they're filming while all the preparation for the courts come in right just come ahead of it anyway so but in the back of their heads I'm still going to get this massive lump of bird bad guy I can never win that's the out of these stories that they wind up anyway as we're tailing it along now I'm talking to my mobile phone but I'm playing it so when Amber Pore Amber comes and visits me in prison it's a bad day it's a good day all of a sudden envelopes have come under the cell doors this is what I'm telling her so she's telling back to the camera so they say man it's happened these envelopes have been appearing under the cell doors with my evidence on customs so all this is being captured down on camera and all this is being recorded and filmed now when we then get to the final finale James and then suddenly as I said the case gets to its pinnacle point we're back to square one because we've got the radio station putting out the PII's we've got my co-defendant spilling out the name of the website you've got people going on now and you've got the jury most importantly who are desperate to get their hands on the documents to see what's on now and you've got the judge again telling them they'll be in prison if they even think about going there so it's the most maddest thing you could ever imagine anyway we're sitting there jury's out so they've gone there final verdict and waiting day one comes day two comes day three comes no verdict it's Friday thinking fuck they're gonna come in today everyone's sitting there cameras outside waiting day three the jury are there's some altercation in the jury room so he's sending them home cause they're getting frustrated so someone or two people are in now who probably don't like customs anyway who are digging and saying listen he's turned the truth and the judge right so in my night's going on so in Monday morning comes now well Friday I knew it was right because he's put his life and soul into this case Friday night he goes unfortunately I can't be here on Monday your honour because I've got another case in Croydon and I'm thinking this is the career this is the case of your life there's no way you're not going to want to be here for the victory moment because Christmas you were out there with a BBC camera ready to give it to me do you know what I mean anyway right Monday morning come I'll see the fucking jury come in there was all were in their coats all had their hats on straight away I knew these fuckers can't there's a problem in there they're not going to go for it anyway when they sat down as soon as he sat down the judge like have you got a verdict sorry your honour we're completely locked we can't come in it's cause it's drug trial so it's not murder it's a drug trial with two young juries you're free so he quit at us anyway that was then in that journey and of course poor Donald MacIntyre has made this documentary now that you've lost this massive ending so they had to actually turn it into all the love story right which was quite classical do you know what I mean if this story is poor woman his wife is stressed he's struggling you know what I mean going through this journey with him you know and that was another episode in my life so at that point at that point James I thought enough is enough actually a free pass to make a change enough is enough I've just walked out of 40 years there and I've been the luckiest man on earth I've done through all the whereas parties I've smuggled prolific amounts of contraband all over the world do you know what I mean and I've just dipped and dived and dipped and dived and now I'm playing with my life do you know what I mean and along this journey I've had business partners that I've seen in Jamaica get murdered you know I've seen everything you could imagine happen and I've not been I've not been stabbed I've not got a scratch on me okay I've walked this walk and I've gone this road right and I haven't had anything happen to me right so I thought that's it turn over a new leaf so what do I fucking do think why don't I write a book anyway so of course never in my life never in my life so I think okay right what do I do I'm going to put into paper this story but I can't be bothered so I go to publishing cuts listen I've got a great story you know but I can't be bothered to write anything about it but I can tell you a little bit about it so we've been two minutes speaking and leaving a message on the guy's phone it's like he's Bill Campbell he's got them for the mainstream publishing so it's like fricking afternoon Friday afternoon anyway the phone rings in the night and the fucking evening it's like I said yeah he said I'm Bill Campbell he said I'm mainstream publishing and I said okay he said he's got a phone message he said I said yeah he said I'm an Edinburgh I said well I'm not going to Edinburgh he said okay I'll fly down anyway I met him Monday morning at the Groucho Club straight away we signed a book deal was it a game so then the question was having a book written and I thought okay right decent advance and had to find a ghostwriter so the only person I could think of was my old pal Norman Parker he'd done 28 years behind the door with some best-selling crime books he put the book together in 21 days which was a world record for doing a book a lot of it was just fluff because obviously I took a whole journey of cigars and all kinds of bollocks so the book was out there and it was there and I thought that was it I had it sitting now had talk of a potential film coming from the back of it and at this stage in my life I thought you know what I've got enough money I've got everything I need and I've said something I've won, I've beat him, I've succeeded so I decided it was time now to call it a day so I moved through in a manner bought a beautiful house in Essex and tried to start a fresh life my son Hayden was born and everything was looking great James smuggling the whole addiction to the criminal lifestyle couldn't give it up and I went to Essex with the greatest interest in the world I wanted to set up a studio where I could actually talk the talk and get young people not involved in this lifestyle so I built a film studio which had a restaurant in it it had a green screen studio and it had aspirations to be something great unfortunately one of the people who was around me who I trusted because you've got to trust someone he had someone close to you he had him as my driver for quite a while he fell into some trouble with some people and I didn't want to get too deep in it but I agreed to give him some money I gave him 50 grand to get him out of that issue he had anyway tried as long as you do I remember forget it was 2013 he came along and said look if it was bad about the money he wants to stop chipping off money blah blah blah but he wants to get some graft to get the thing going to pay me back so I'm thinking do what I don't want to get involved in this because I've got money I don't really need to do this now do you know what I mean anyway I'm on a journey I fix myself ok right fuck it I'm going to do it so I do it I call it on ha little did I know he'd earlier that year he had a tenant in his ass fucking police kicked off the door found 60,000 pills in now 5 kilos of weed in a sofa which is hidden in compartment and in which case the tenant got arrested said he rented the house furnished the tenant was in prison on remand then a series of events had happened he'd picked up some gear from someone and dropped police were watching him he gave over the gear to an old guy called Mr Middleton John Middleton I think his name was as he drove off this poor soul got arrested without a key of gear then some other people he dropped some gear to them they got arrested straight after so he was effectively a police magnet right and my connection to him now was the prize do you know what I mean he'd been called in obviously at some point and at some point I would have been the grand finale anyway I went to organised a gear for him said to him look it's on you now do you know what I'm saying to you do what you've got to do and we go from now anyway the fucker said to me in the morning he needs someone to go up there with him now considering the last case I've been on was being behind I was a cocaine in my car the last thing I needed to be doing was driving behind gear so anyway in the end I thought I can't let the situation down so I'll go with him so he drove down there it's an incredible story I said listen this is the protocol if police come I'm going to take him off the road I've got my range of over the worst case I'm going to do I'll get three months of dangerous driving I'm a criminal I'm practical I look at the ups and the downs to these things and you just fucking take off anyway so we turn up we've got to turn up gets the thing driving back pay press though police coming out of everywhere so I see the police car and I think that's it fuck it so I come in behind them I take them off the road the geese are pulls up in the fucking lay boy with six keys of gear in the back of the car I'm like fuck so I'm ready to go now but of course dad of police has come everywhere for me so this is what you call payback now James this is where every dog gets their day and this is what comes back on you so this time around now as I've tried to pull off they come on me, arrested me took this battle and police station and then obviously boom there we go you're charged so bang on a bus one's worth a rather one's worth prison as I get there my computer he pauses all of a sudden looks up at a camera which he's got a bug there two minutes officer comes down to security goes oh I'm pretty hard so I remember yeah he said listen he said just got a call he said you're a category prisoner he said we can't keep you out right so I'm really sorry about this right but you're going to the block that's what they do with your case anyway so they've taken me to the block now I'm sitting down now thinking okay I expected anyway wasn't going to fucking have that happen to you and then become a category prisoner again so I'm sitting obviously in there two days then security come they come and they take you to Bell Marsh so special van it brings you there we have two of their offices one of theirs anyway so I'm back at them to Bell Marsh now in on the freeze that's where they introduce you and I'm sitting in Bell Marsh waiting for the first call with parents so I'm thinking okay so now I get called to one of the places where they do the first link first time I see me co-defendant so I'm seeing him and they're reading out the charges but they're reading out loads more charges like all these other people that has been nicked with him right so I'm thinking okay so he's up there and then the judge go like so what's the situation and he goes yes you wanna he said he's amidst being you know responsible for 100 drugs but he's under duress so I'm thinking okay well this is a good friend there so he's obviously gonna use one of these other people that he's got these other charges with and throw the duress so when the screen goes off and Barrister goes what's going on what's going on he said he's not telling you're under duress from you I'm saying this impossible why would he do it do you know what I mean it makes no sense it must be one of these other things it will be very carefully said anyway he's arranged a visit for me but no more sight of the fella anyway the next round of affairs happens now right lo and behold he turns up at Belmarsh right so I'm thinking great this is now when we can talk and work out what's gonna go on anyway he lads at Belmarsh colour story short he's like oh yeah okay yeah of course you know but what I'll do is I'll be responsible sort of like for you know for driving but then I'll say that you maybe get it I'm like what the fuck are you talking about you've got half a dozen cases here right fucking put your hands up if that's what you're gonna do and you cut me loose you'll be alright of course you've made it alright anyway I don't know this little cunt what is he doing anyway he goes back to the wing he gets on the fucking wing he's like hold he grabs him puts him in the cell tries to cut his throat anyway he pulls the bell so they take him off for the thing anyway now I'm cat a grab prison I'm ass but one at Belmarsh right they've called me up you've called for some sort of murdering you're responsible for it right you've obviously be like so what are you talking about I said listen I don't know who would try to do that to him I said however you know sometimes things do happen or maybe he's making it up anyway so I thought alright that's not a good look because now all scrutiny is on me even worse now do you know what I mean so they've took him now they've put him on another wing he has but four he's got two hours but four now other things happen to him people have bungies his turn up at the door cleaner piss through the side of the door in his cell then he won't come out and sell for food so they're saying look there's a scrooge of bringing the food to the door and we're not a fucking hotel you're going to come down here and eat anyway eventually they move him to Chelmsford and they've still been at Belmarsh the trial happens when we go to trial then we have all singing all dancing do you know what I mean anyway my barrister basically well first thing he does is he does a blinder this is where the book came in he comes and says he's a notorious smuggler he's written a book on their plate do you know what I mean so I'm thinking I'm fucked up because there is things like this and it's prejudiced what you used to be able to get away with and say you can't bring it in because it's too prejudicial but it's like well you published a book do you know what I mean so it's your own doing right anyway that trial happens when that trial happens then suddenly there's another person involved in the case as well who they said was a person who handed the drugs over and had things when you know it kind of balanced on me I said listen you've got the wrong person do you know what I mean and stuff because that is not the person who handed the drugs over and basically what it turned out was they said he was in my jeep they said he was in my passenger in my vehicle and driven out now I knew this guy wasn't in my vehicle so I was waiting then for the DNA to come back because I knew there would be no DNA in there or fingerprints I knew that would probably be enough but what I'd realised was I had thrown my vehicle kept on to my vehicle and had let back the other guy's car because they had bugs in it and they wanted to get the car back in circulation to see what else was being said to make more of a case on me right anyway colour story short when the grand finale came the guy who they said was in my vehicle I bounced it on the police basically and showed but basically what they were up to was they had made a mistake and if she had made a mistake so she was looking she couldn't see Danny Alley so she made an error thought the fella was in my car so when it bounced back on me I said no that is not a fella that wasn't a fella I've even seen he was near the place I said how do you know I said the fella was 6 foot 2 and this little Russian guy gets up there and the dog is about 5 foot 8 so the jury is in dismay so the police hated me for that anyway when the jury has come back mate he's been fanguilty and me and the other fella who he put the gear on in I think it was in May got hung juries so I thought yes one more hung jury I've done it again James I'm going home anyway so I'm thinking great sitting back in Belmarsh waiting for the next date to come for call phone my solicitor he said sorry I can't talk to you Andrew I said what do you mean he said I've been arrested I said what he said they've arrested me I said what are you talking about they've arrested me then then thing happened back in 2004 they've arrested me so I can't represent you first case I thought what the fuck right anyway now I'm hot property so now I'm looking to find a solicitor now when you're going to get a solicitor's getting arrested and locked up there ain't many law firms that want to handle you because how that thing works is there's a rule of conduct usually with police and solicitors so they don't usually cross that line James but on this occasion the gloves was off anyone connected to me they were going for it the same way they had my sister they held her on on bail they had my PA so they just went for everything and everyone could around me because they wanted to make an example of me I get it now do you know what I mean and stuff you can get over so many things for so long sooner or later you're going to pay the price anyway gloves was off so they bounced me into that square and I thought ok I'm fucked got a solicitor done a really good job best he could do but of course good and better do you know what I mean anyway I've got faith guilty give me 15 years I thought ok the sentencing guide I was 7 and a half years he's took me through the roof which I'd expected because he's now a red MPII paper there's one paper you said the one that's in my drawer so I know where it's coming from so I said ok it's the pill but I'm going to be in prison for a good few years for that pill to come anyway that ain't just enough for them so in their reds they're thinking we want to give him what he should have got in the first place so they're calculating how they're going to get this sentence up so they come with a nice hefty confiscation order which would have good been another 8 years on top of that if I didn't pay it but luckily I had money I paid it over 1 billion pounds I won't say the exact figure anyway so I thought you know what that's deliverable anyway now we come with a final finale so we've got two serious crime not serious crime, anti-corruption please come and see me so now they rock up I'm like what the fuck now so they've gone right, when he was arrested there were these foals found in your in your house and they're from so and so papers and all that my solicitor stresses everything oh my god not more things now anyway they've got and it's like so and so so so I'm looking and I'm thinking myself are you fucking real well anyway then they started to go on this one's fingerprints that one's I'm thinking this is fucking bad because people with fingerprints on this there's a whole other conspiracy case going on then I get the next bit they show me a picture of my mate and I'm like what the fuck from a video thing they go this man faxed these documents to the court on such and such and they blah blah blah this was on cry-watch because I remember it coming on cry-watch because when I got not good I went off to Mexico I was there in Mexico for like about three or four weeks and someone when I called back said listen fucking your pals all over the telly he's been on cry-watch they said he's perverted of course he's just his hundred billion pound drug case right so I was thinking anyway when's it gonna come anyway so a couple long story short right the weirdest thing happened at the end of it they goes after doing all that routine they goes he said you had nothing to do with it he's admitted to doing it and I'm thinking what the fuck would you come down here get me out of my cell question me about this and then say that he's admitted it and said I don't have to do with it it defeats the whole object of an investigation so I'm scratching my head thinking there must be fucking more to this than that anyway so I'm thinking I've got this hanging over my head because they can cover any time and go and land me again with another charge which they tend to do towards any ascension coming home other than those are people they just spring something new on you and it plays right anyway thinking alright fuck this so I'm sitting in my thing and this time I'm putting my head in different spaces and I'm watching what's going on in the system I'm watching lots of kids battering each other because of this whole postcode gang thing and I'm seeing and things are absorbing slowly but surely with me James alright this is where changes actually come and believe it or not right and I'm seeing young kids that I know their parents their grandparents you know what I mean good people and these kids are wrapped up in this postcode gang thing and they're killing each other and they're all there doing 36 year wrecks and they all do all these mad things so I thought to myself someone's got something about it could a prison assistant not do anything about it anyway another friend of mine he was inside as well I don't think you must say it's Clifford Hobbs mumbo's we call him you know he was a double A cat he came down to double A but to a delay then he's a mature man and it was like you're right you know at the end of the day we're both A cats let's think about something we can do positive to bring ourselves off of the book but also let's see if we can make a change so we've got an area governor basically constantly to say for custody governor because I was a listener all the time I said look there's a solution to this problem you know there's good kids out there who are doing big sentences that really now are tired of this right let's give them some mentoring skills let's get them working in the capacity when the kids come through the reception first thing they said oh they're part of a gang they turn around and say no they're not part of a gang because they're going to get more bird if they do so let's airmark and let's say look we know you're part of a gang we know you're part of this thing we'll sit you on a different wing right we'll get mediation going between you know two of the main guys from those areas and we'll park it up right anyway eventually she agreed to do it she's got eight good mentors, eight guys there's nothing inside out we brought them, we trained them and then basically it was introduced into the prison it's called one postcode and what happened was massive reductions in the assaults and of course it means officers ain't got to be walking around free-handed from A to B every single wing with the inmate you know visits ain't going to get turfed at because there's a fight and the bell goes you're not going to be constantly banged up and then it was a cycle and I realised actually I'm doing some good stuff here now and it's starting to happen anyway so I started with that but then of course the corruption thing now is still balancing on me so I think okay let me see now what the next part of my journey is going to be so I'm thinking right I've got to find out why they've said that, why have they said that to him, why have they said he's took the blame for me so anyway I then he's in prison at the time as well with a different charge so anyway so I send message now to see what's going on anyway what has happened is a whole till of worms has been opened it turned out that the officer the main officer who was involved in the corruption he has basically been arrested right and when he's now been arrested he's obviously opened a till of worms on all his colleagues but what's happened is you've got a brand new unit form called NCA because they only formed in 2013 and the officers who now they've been working because when people do things you can never do one thing on your own it always takes more than one person, a little team of you to make things happen so what's happened is over the years he's had a whole little network that he's grafted with so when he's now going to face 25 years or 15 years for tippling my case up he's now bubbled up all his colleagues but the damage that now would have caused on the system because every single person has been nicked by that squad every single opinion they've taken of people in terms of conversation orders take the system down everyone's going to appeal their conviction everyone's going to have to get their compensation when they pay back to them with interest it's a fucking till of worms like you couldn't believe so I thought ok we're going to play the game let's play the game and I'm going to bring the conviction down on myself anyway my sister goes like I said no, I want to get rid of it I said I know the game, I know what's happened they can't do it, they cannot prosecute me for this because it's got to be kept a lid on anyway so lo and behold I bring it down I'm prepared to admit a whole fucking lot I've paid off corrupt officers and they help me destroy my case and I'll take it to the bank we'll go all the way with it anyway anti-corruption police are like this is a big case but they're all gassing it because they can't go nowhere anyway so I'm sitting there balancing it now they're dragging me now for a year and a half this grand finale was going to come when it comes to the death of it now he's got court dates been set which of course I knew was never going to happen when it arrived then I got the feeling I should have it's hilarious so he's gone to me you're going to be sentenced but no one else is going to be charged he said what? they're not going to charge anyone else I said most of the conspiracy so how can I be a one man who can spy on myself unless I can spy on them in the mirror he said Andrew is what it is he said the reality is you're the only person who can be charged for it you just go away quietly and basically that will be the end of it anyway I went up there thinking it's lovely but it's a suburb of Crane Court so right there and he's talking obviously Mr Pritchard brought this down himself blah blah blah so I thought okay right now where's he going to go with this so it's looking good so when I go back around as the warden says to me just prevent of course justice is sentenced do you know what I mean I'm thinking like is it fuck do you know what I mean so when I've gone back up there now I've got Judge Griffiths he's come back up there he's gone never in my life have I seen such a terrible case he's had a pervert in the course of justice he's gone you know he said you were half a metric ton of cocaine was imported had you been fanguilted at this would happen anyway he's got a fucking speech and I'm thinking fuck this guy's giving this to me I'm doing a 15 and I'm going to get hit with another fucking sentence now right anyway I thought Jesus anyway so when he's rolled up on me now then finally he's banged me down and he's given me another three so I'm thinking I'm fucked I've got 18 years right okay but still I'm hanging in the balance got my pill coming in anyway so I go back to that cell that night I'm freezing there James right anyway I'll set it out went back to the court of appeal and stuff anyway I was optimistic I caught the pill anyway they came down eventually and I got down to ten and a half years so then I thought alright so I'm now in a position that I'm going to do five and a half six years and I'll get my freedom back providing I don't fuck up anything else and then the greatest day of my life came and I thought because I was sitting it through I was an A cat a B cat and I said eventually you know you've got your D cat and my parents are very old at the time and I always put them back on my head they're going to die right and I'm going to be in prison when they die I knew if they were in prison when if I was in jail when they died James there would be no such thing as rehabilitation for me and there would be pure anger right and I'll never forget I got my first home leave and I saw my mum she had dementia she was a shell of a person my dad you know dementia was getting to him early stages you know Amber you know she'd been through all this shit my son had grown do you know what I mean and I just looked at her and thought to myself this is what prison is about do you know what I mean this is what my fucking life is about all the people I loved I've effectively destroyed playing this fucking game do you know what I mean anyway when I did get released I thought to myself I've got to do something positive now in my life James and I set about creating a foundation and I thought to myself all the problems I made as a young man in the states I made all these drugs smuggling that I thought was great and prolific it's an illness, it's addiction, it's a sickness right I wanted to create courses that people could you know learn from these mistakes do you know what I mean understand you haven't got to sell drugs to be successful you know had I stayed in the middle of a motor I would have been far more successful made far much much more money right and been able to make people proud of me what I've done so the foundation for me was all about setting it up giving kids opportunities into music, film, you know all the artistic stuff that kids do like but then I added you in there give them support, teach them the signals and the signs that we've got do you know what I mean we look at it and think it's so glamorous to go down that road it's so great you know all the money, all the drugs all the women at the end of it the price you're going to pay right isn't the price to anyone I wish it on my worst enemy we spoke a little bit about the films Scarface everybody knows the famous lines this and that but everybody forgets that it was actually blasted at the end everyone forgets it you look at the films Blow, you look at El Chapo you look at who's the the Columbian the guy Eskibar Eskibar the El Chapo kept escaping kept getting caught even yourself you're like an evil genius it's like you've always got an avenue how to try and beat the system but it always beats you done it especially the misery and the pain not just the people who took drugs and died there's also the misery and pain your mum and dad seeing you in prison at courts broken down relationships probably don't get special bonds we are kids what do you think looking back at all looking back at all there's two things that I look back at number one you're never going to beat the system and yeah there's corruption in the system not saying it's completely corrupt but there are people elements in now that people like me have managed to get to so that's a small part of the system but the system is always going to win because that is the system it's there to win now the minute we think it's bigger than the system and I thought it was bigger than the system then do you have the biggest mistake you could ever make because it will come and bite you in the arse it might not be that case but it will come it will come down the line and to be quite honest you I'm still the luckiest man in the world here because I'm here I could easily be still sitting in whitemore prison where I was sitting with friends and people with great examples Curtis as a guy who spent so many years in prison and it's a question of the system hates him when the system hates you this is what they do they push you they push you they push you and the minute they get you in that corner the cases will keep coming they won't stop and that's just one example there's at least a dozen examples I can give you of people who I know over the years who have had amazing runs and geniuses I've worked the system and I've been very smart in certain elements I've looked for the holes, I've looked for the gaps I've punched them, I've pulled the triggers but people far smarter than me and they're still getting 26 years they're still getting 18 years they're still getting big sentences they're not happening when they are 20 years old or 25 years old they're not happening when they're 50 years old so what does it break it all down what do you break it all down because the many times you try to come home try to change your life and get sucked straight back I mean you can retire 100 times over so what does it all come down to and you break it all down these people are doing life and they're worth 100 million 200 million what does it all come down to it's combination of stupidity greed and selfishness okay we're greedy because we're happy with what we got we always want more and we're stupid because we're getting away with it you know and now there's just three things and how's Cutlass is he getting out, do you speak to him of course he's due out 2023 and an example of someone because his case is just weave with corruption I think he gave me his papers there you know I mean they had bugs in a car and the car travelled from France to England there was no authorization for that in any court of law there are legal bugs and that's what the case was built on the reality is and I'm sitting with my own eyes and it states in there crystal clear the end justifies the means this is the attorney general of Jersey that's what they've said end justifies the means police have physically said yeah we broke the law to get him when you've got a situation like that the cards are weighed against you it just lets you know, doesn't it and Curtis what example you know there's at least at least six more people I know in prison right now and the reason why they are isn't necessarily because of what they've been caught for here do you know what the police have done it's because of the hatred that they've built up with the police over the years and the system over the years that goes to show for anybody watching that if the coppers want you they'll get you know like you said there's not people they've been caught with but it's the years and years of the backlash of the shit that they've done you've got to pay, you've got to pay that price you know you'll pay that price and the misery that it brings as I've said how hard does it get really out how is it now to talk about that life would you think to go from this or you know what, no I'm sick of it because you know what and to be honest you're right an example when the Bourbon Smuggler book is in circulation because that's a real situation that ego project basically the vanity project in that book was my downfall and in 2017 I bought the rights back from the publisher and I decided in fact two weeks ago I was going to release it but I'm going to release it and every single royalty every single penny goes to the charity you know it's going to go in the Pacific series of courses for young people to stop getting involved in selling drugs, do you know what I mean where can people buy this book? you'll be able to buy it on Amazon it will be available for Amazon so your plan is to give back help people boldly instead of destroy? the destruction I've caused over the years okay I'm going to be paying that back for the rest of my life okay because the story you heard about my parents they were community leaders and they've done everything to help their community I've done everything that virtually destroyed it you know what I mean what I plowed in was all negative when I thought it was great the parties and all that the parties were fun how many people have got still ongoing drug issues because of those events you know all the things I've done I've looked at them and what are I meant to I will be classified as an incredibly successful criminal that is how stupid this world is you know and anyone that can do that anyone that could put their mind and think yeah I want to do that I want to reach that goal you know just look at some NPII papers you want to see people that are your friends or informants do you want to see police surveillance stuff they leave and create about it it isn't even true but in order to get more funding to continue more surveillance you know it's like well what do you want to live that life for it's constant and then you've got a situation with people that you've got more than them and if people want to set you up to get you robbed people will just get killed this is something that at the end of the day is not a life that's fit for anyone it's just a non-stop car crash and it will never stop but your plan is now going forward for the future is to help the youth create positivity all I can do is use the AP Foundation as a vehicle that can you know be a positive vehicle to help people help kids who need help help anyone that needs help really because you know there are 40 year old men that need help there are 40 year old women that need help you know not just like 16 or 17 year old kids more so than because they're being groomed and because they're being sold a dream which is a nightmare see the bat I'm jumping back in the team here the bat with Calton leeching he takes the ecstasy is that one of your raves it was that Calton and that was Calton's first ever took ease you know first D that was a proper not a tough bastard Calton is proper and that was an amazing door we had because we had 12 of the strongest doorman in East London and you see Calton now an example of Calton Calton's got a good heart and people see how Calton's got a side to him obviously like all the other guys did but you know you're talking about people looking back you know all the way you know all the way you know and the thing is that's the thing sometimes and Calton he's had his journey you know as I said and Calton's a very lucky man to be alive he does what he said he's got his messes now and doing his thing and yeah I've got a lot of things for Calton Calton could have been in that range over that night believe me you know what do you think now looking back in your life looking back in my life for the first time in my life now I think all that journey and all that stuff I can actually use it now in a positive way you know because I can have something to say if someone says to me turns and says to me I want to get involved in this life I want to get involved in this I would just say to them straight you're probably not even going to get close anywhere near close to where you think you want to go without getting either dead shot stabbed in prison these are the most obvious options because I had a great form of working for me the pieces fell into place really easily but do you know how many people I know who are business associates and partners that were shot down dead you know all because people were trying to get in front of them in a ladder do you know what I mean or there was one dispute but usually more than not people don't want progress if you're progressing someone sees that's a spot they want to hold because it should be them progressing that's the mind of a smuggler that's the mind of a criminal you know criminals have this someone told me years ago the worst thing you could do is be a successful criminal everyone's going to want to call you a grass everyone's going to call you no good everyone's going to call everything bad about you everyone's going to steal what you got everyone's going to want what you got but the rally is what would you want to be in a business like that it's not going to go in an office or you're going to go into a business you're going to get amended for what you do and you're going to get credit for that it's heat from the police jealousy from your friends and you know chaos from your family because how can they operate when you're doing all that it's funny man you speak to people when they think they're big balls but then you actually hear your story you realise fuck me man people are well off the pace James this saddens me because people are living on names and living on ego and they haven't even touched a surface but when you go there and you've been there and you've sat with the tires you can go and been that person you realise it's still nothing it amounts to nothing do you see what I mean it amounts to nothing all it amounts to is death, destruction and misery that's all we're creating for anybody watching that's maybe an a leaf a cream or thinking about getting into it what advice would you give for them advice I can say is this depends how old you are if you're the wrong person you can do and that's the old cliche study, study education you know you can make more as a computer programmer or doing something in a creative arts industry or having a business setting up a business okay and having success far more than you can ever have with this and sustain money you know you'll leave something for your kids you'll have a legacy you'll build things legitimately all you build here is something which is going to be a heist of cards because when it goes wrong the police come and take it anyway yeah looking back at all final question would you change anything would I change anything that's a real funny question because would I change the life I've lived all the stuff I've put into it and all the stuff I've experienced no because it's my life it's my story would I change the misery that I've caused my family friends and death and destruction to all the people I had a result of doing what I'd done of course I would change all that but one has to go with the other so what can I do balance it try to put back some good for some of the negative that I've created and that's it James exactly Andrew absolutely phenomenal story can't wait to see the rest of your journey and what you do for the future and the kids and it's going to be powerful and I can't wait to see you've got my backing and if you want to travel to the website it's www.apfoundation.co.uk all the courses we do we do online courses people can come on board they can apply for those we supply those free and if you want help if you want a way out we have a five step pathway intervention to get into the communities rehabilitation to get into the prisons employment, house and training we offer all those things James and it's not just lip service one thing about me is I'm real if I say I do it that's what we do you can leave the links in the description with some powerful stuff thanks for coming on today check out more of my podcasts on the right and be sure to like share and comment your thoughts on this week's podcast thank you