 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. There was a certain day when I first started doing a bit of buying and selling for people. I was turning over a million pound a day sometimes just buying drugs for people. Once they knew that I was there and they could drop money off with me and order things and the stuff would appear, you know sometimes there's a good million a day just going through your hands and then it just gets moved on to people from all over the Europe really. When the chase first started there was a police motorbike coming behind us and we've gone round a big bend because I'm in a big car I was able to stop pretty quick but he wasn't and he hit the back of the car and he flew over the top of the car so the call went out officer down IRA suspects that was the call so then they just went fucking crazy just shooting everything. We reached that level where I thought I could come out. Did you ever have a target in your mind that make a few million then how quick? Yeah I had like a 10 million market level in my mind thinking that's what I'd need to keep because I was on the run to stay out and stay out safely. Once we've been a couple of months of being involved with some of the Colombians a couple of them that I knew pretty well I think nothing had dropped in a thousand kilo off and just coming back a couple of weeks later for the money. So when did you start making waves? When did you start becoming the target, the public enemy number one? When I met Curtis really, it was after that. Boom we're on. Today's guest is Steve and me. How are you Steve? Nice. Pleased to meet you. Pleased to meet you. Thanks for taking the time to come here. Very interesting story. A little bit. Yeah it dubbed one of the biggest drug lords in the UK. You've been all over at Columbia South America. You've done life sentences 22 years, 7 and a half years and was it Amsterdam? Yeah 7 years. You've been about, very well connected, very well respected. First and foremost how are you? Good, good, life's getting better. Day by day after coming out of prison. It's been 10 years now so I'm settled in now. Yeah it's a long time. I think it takes about 10 years to settle in. After doing 16 and a half. Is that you just starting to feel a free man? Yeah sort of, yeah, be coming. After the art exhibition it becomes, it makes it feel like you've got a bit more purpose to life. Yeah. And you've got something to do. I'll just go back to the start of my guest. Where you've gotten, how it all began? Yeah I grew up in a little place called Newton Heath in Manchester. Quite a poor, well a very poor area. Came from a big family. There was nine of us as kids. Two died when we was early and then they said we were a puff pair with mum and dad. But we all struggled. Mum always had health problems with Parkinson's and she used to mix it up with alcohol and stuff like that and it became a bit of a crazy family. But we're still a family. And we still came for it. How did that affect you as a kid? Did that affect you straight away? Did you become angry towards people with age? Yeah it affected me in a criminal way because what my mum used to do was she used to give us a list for a fiver and give us two quid to go and get it. And if we didn't come back without it we got a good ironing. So that started the shoplifting at the very early age of nine. Even a bit less actually but we'll say around nine. Nine's young enough to go shoplifting. So you had to go survival mode for very young age to try and provide for the family? Well yeah in a way a little bit because I had my younger brother and sister with me and three of us used to go and we used to walk out with full trolleys full of food. It was easier than paying the two quid that we had or the fiver that we had but the tenors were for food though. Just ended up doing that. Just became natural. It didn't become anything that we even thought about. We just did it and nobody ever looked at you anyway as a kid so we didn't know the difference but we just did it. It was easier back then. No cameras. No cameras, no nothing. Yeah it is. It's a choice isn't it? You ever get a slap off your mum or you do a bit of that? You get a slap off the police so either way we were going to get a slap as a kid so we just stole. What about dad? Dad was in electrician work for the forances for years and he just works and works and works and then my mum just created abac everywhere with the... he was the number one earful and I only understand now or later life that she was on quite heavy medication and drinking proper prescription medication for the Parkinson's and then drinking on top of it. We could find her anywhere between the Catholic club and our house about half a mile away and she could be anywhere in somebody's garden in the phone box or sleep or anywhere. So we had an hard thing and we used to go shopping and do the shoplifting and come Monday without selling what we stole to the neighbours so my mum could go out drinking again. That was my younger life but we still had a good life though. I won't say I suffered. I didn't feel like I suffered it's only when you look back now that you know it's a suffering but didn't feel like it at the time. You realise it's childhood trauma can have a major effect for when you get home. Later on, yeah, in life, yeah. But it was a bit of a hard thing. So then I went on to stealing cars by the age of 11, 12. I was stealing cars by the age of 12. I'd been caught by the police for stealing 13 cars. So I fell asleep in one of them and they woke us up. How old? 12? When I got caught, 13. They'd give us three months DC at the end of it. I'd been out all day we'd been into Moss side, stole a car from Moss side and drove about up to a place in Oldham up on the moors and got lost. Ran out of petrol in the middle of the moors and then a policeman had to bring us back to a certain place at three o'clock in the morning. I was 13 years old. I think he would have just arrested us and took us back. Dropped us off on top of Old Moss and then we had to climb down, get down for miles and ended up stealing another car to get home which is the one I fell asleep in which was the Lord Mayor of Oldham's car unknown to me at the time and they found us asleep in the car and just woke up to the knock on the window and they didn't even bother bringing a car to take us down they just kicked us all the way down the hill the police and then when my dad got there he kicked us all the way home and then my man kicked us all the way to bed about three months DC which was when the first shot, shot, shot came out Yeah, militia stuff Foster and all it was and then we just got battered every day through that as well they didn't hold back in them places any little thing they just used to beat you up but so that was the early days stealing cars and they came out and went back to school they tried to stop us going back into school so I struggled then after that I couldn't get back into school for nearly a year because of the prison sentence like one of the first ones to get one even though it was only DC it was still a sentence to them and they kept us out of school and by the time I got back in it was too late, I came out of school with nothing no qualifications but I got a job at an advertising agency for graphic design and art and then did about two years of sign writing at Oldham College day release and days got a bit of a trade behind me and then just went back into crime again How was that going into the art kind of stuff did you see yourself having a future with that or was it just to pass the time No, I did early days because I left them and went to work for a few years as a graphic artist but then crime got in the way a little bit again started thinking I was clever again going back to stealing cars when I could have done really well at graphic art it was an up and coming thing at the time and it's that thing when you're a criminal you tend to bounce from one thing to another rather than settle into something and I don't know why that is but I think that's what most of us do we get a little bit of straight business in between and then as soon as that fails we jump back into crime again so it's the easier way out instead of fighting through it but I ended up getting a bike shop and saying again somebody else committed a crime that I got dragged into and getting some prison time and lost the shop that I was going to get and again crime took over but I managed to get it back again I had a bike shop for a few years and that sort of went down and then I went back into crime and it became out of it then easier option now you've seen that's not the easier option especially in your fucking live sentences and hiding from every international police force on the no it's not what were you like in prison Stephen in prison yeah what was I like were you business minded in there or were you just trying to survive no I was I didn't do any business in there at all I just went to education and to the gym but with the thought that while I was doing the education I'd be getting my qualifications and that's what I did I studied out in there and got my degree with honours that took us nine years but from day one like I say when I first got arrested and they put me in the police cells when you get chance to phone somebody the first thing I asked was a pad and paper to start drawing which is one of the drawings we used to build the cell for the art exhibition we just done now was from the first couple of days of being in the police cells in Manchester because it was just after when they after the strange ways riots so they'd let a few people into the prison but somehow they didn't get it right so they moved quite a lot of prisoners back out again to the cells so I did about five months in police cells before the sentence started and then they moved us back to strange ways eventually because I was still on the run from absconding from Kirkham from a previous sentence from 87 absconded very very slowly in the back of the car what was that an open prison Kirkham open prison how long did you have left of that sentence just five months I didn't go out I went out to see a girl and the usual things and then the alarm had gone off while I was out and my reasoning was there was no point going back now because I'm nicked anyway so I might as well have a bit of time and that bit of time led to floating off to Holland coming back at all did you get any time had he done now just the five months just had to finish the five months sorry innit but I pushed you two minutes and then well it did then I would have got some time had he done but when I come back and it was all already dealt with it was pointless really because I'd just done the 16 years and something else see when you were in prison creative then with your art and stuff and more did you feel as if you learnt more in prison yeah well for some reason yeah you you've got to do certain things so you push to do it everyday when you're outside there's a thousand things that you need to do where he's in there you get up in the morning you go to class you can't go anywhere else you can't well you can be sick for a bit but you can't keep that up for a long time you have to go once you committed to the education you have to go everyday so yeah you not forced to do it because you can work but you know you definitely put under a nice strict regime that forces you to do it but I'm quite strict with myself anyway when I'm out I do a lot of work I don't sit about doing things I don't drink I don't go any clubs and pubs and bars I paint pictures that's my main occupation see did you start doing graft in the UK before you went to Amsterdam a little bit yeah my first smuggle was a disaster I can't even call it just a comedy of errors really in the early 80s a couple of us went over to Amsterdam to buy a kilo of cannabis didn't even know much about it but we nearly got shot a few times and threw the coffee shop owners just walking in and asking for a kilo because it's still illegal to do that there even though people think Amsterdam's legal it's only decriminalised a little bit they're only allowed a certain amount so when people come in asking for kilos like they're undercover coppers or something we finally got one and got it back but it was just a disaster we all bought the train ticket I put the money up I had two other people who were supposed to be doing it but I might as well have just done it myself because I was with them all the time bought the tickets together came back on the train and the boat together was not the best but we learnt from it what age were you then? 87 were you working out? I'm 63 now so you're 30 you're 20 you're like 20 what was the idea behind it were you thinking to go and international were you thinking I can get it cheaper there make a couple of grand I just started that I was happy to get a few grand I was going to do my first one and that turned out to be quite easy apart from the trouble we had in Amsterdam but even coming back on the boat we fell asleep on the boat and it was a police who got us off the boat and the bloke had a kilo a big slab of ash on with him and he couldn't even climb over the barrier the police had to help him over that was our first thing and then we seen that well if you stay on the boat a bit later nobody's going to look at you there's nobody there they've all gone home so we started doing that a bit as well we got away with that for a bit until they realised and then they started putting people on sweeping the boats but yeah that was our first one but there was no intention they didn't have any plan or anything it was just that was it and then we sold it within a few days and then we went back and it was two and then it went back it was a briefcase full and then it went back and then it was bits and bits more all the time Foxy I love your sleep Stephen man I'm going to run a robbery with you see when you bought the first kilo how much did you pay a grand £500 £300 it was actually why was it so expensive it was good quality we didn't know that much at the time but it was about an inch thick just one slab and the grade of it was it just sent everybody everybody got stoned off it properly and there was queuing up just wanted more it was just good quality and it was Yale's Angels we ended up getting it off at the time so I was lucky there as well that they didn't set the money off us and kick us out really because it was proper green we didn't know anything no way we was going so we broke our own little market at the beginning and that just led to me moving to Amsterdam really then did you see the profit that you could have made by moving abroad and going for it going yeah but I ended up making more profit selling to people in Holland and thinking because I left I left things about 80 88 or something like that when I went to Holland I don't really care I came back from my mum's funeral really that was it and even that I got grasped up for so I didn't really bother after that thank you this fashion designer who sent a lot of money too to build up a business in Manchester and I sent him quite a lot of money and the next thing he did was actually buying my products with the money that I sent him to build up a plow industry business and he was just snorting it up his nose so that didn't go very far but mum's funeral even on mum's funeral on the day and the morning of the funeral the coffin was there and then the police came and banged on the door and said because I was on the run from Kirkham at the time and they came and my girlfriend had to hang out the window saying now there's nobody here go away there's a funeral downstairs and fair play to them they did go away and just left us just ended up going out of the back of the house and nobody was there they left us to it but that that led then to going back to Holland again being on my toes again and it just led to the big sentences was that because they wanted you for the 5 month that you fucked off for? yeah that's all that was if I would have handed myself in there and then there might have been a message from my mum if I would have handed myself in there none of this could have happened or would have happened that story of turn left or turn right mate and your old world changes that could have happened that could have been the point hindsight's a wonderful fact I'm brilliant mate especially now yeah it's a fucking great thing mate but again it's led you to who you are and the stories that you have which we will touch on later so when you started making waves in Amsterdam were you not just thinking get the 5 month out of the way then I've not hiding all the time as a part of your kind of enjoyed getting chased even no no what it is with me I just couldn't go to a prison and knock on the door you know it's not in me to do that give yourself up like that it should have done it's stupid really now look again that hindsight looking back but I could never see myself walking up to a police station and saying here I am sort of thing it's not my job that is it that's her job so you decided just to go on the toes in Amsterdam bolder than it was but again even that ends up in all sorts of madness because when I was in Holland we started going about not dealing in drugs so much but we used to go out what I was sneaking going into supermarkets and stealing the takings was different for us we went there and thought it's just an open area this everywhere is open the money is lying on the table the supermarkets and the money was just there and the keys was in the safe in the middle of the supermarket you just had to distract people and you got big bags of money for nothing it was a good thing but it led to a terrible chase and a big event in my life because it led to me meeting other people and what we'd done we'd gone out what we call sneaking on Monday and the ladder was with just said a couple of words to another bloke randomly because he was pushing his bike with a puncture and it was an opportunity copper two days before that we didn't know this at the time but the IRA had just been caught at the border in Germany and that copper aired our accent and just thought Irish straight away and he just told them that he just had a couple of Irish blokes joking with him about his thing he put two and two together and come up that we was Irish but it wasn't and was in a stolen Toyota supper at the time and I was a driver I was driving and we got into the car just drove away not knowing anything was coming in the background and a couple of police motorbikes came out literally came out of the bushes through the bushes where we stopped at traffic lights but they sort of got in each other's way and left a gap so I'd gone through the gap and then the chase started and it lasted quite a bit a refueled anyway that's how long it lasted and we drove through in the end there was six bullet holes in the car and we got caught up a tree about four hours later but they thought when the chase first started there was a police motorbike coming behind us and we've gone round a big bend because I'm in a big car I was able to stop pretty quick but he wasn't and he hit the back of the car and he flew over the top of the car so the call went out officer down IRA suspects that was the call so then they just went fucking crazy just shooting at everything and I just started driving even faster got away from them all went through road blocks and everything like they were shooting and sort of dumping the car but the car grounded it in a big field after quite a bit of chasing it just had had enough and we had up a tree and it took them about two hours to find us and when they found us a pistol whips us and took us off to Aston police station and they kept us there ended up getting eight months for it nine months on it that's not too bad but I was still on the run for this for the five months I should have got rid of it because it was just a bar lake so then something in my mind decided that I didn't want to go back because I knew there was going to be a gate arresting me and taking me back and decided to try and escape from Groningham what was called the who is whambo airing which is like a local jail type of thing not a high security and it had windows in so a couple of Turkish who I didn't know at the time but ended up being quite powerful Turkish people from the curd side of it they got some razor wiring and I cut myself out got through all the bars but one on the last one the wire snapped and the following morning they came it was at the end of my sentence I was expecting to get deported straight back to England they took us to Groningham police station they kept us there for about two or three weeks and the coppers were trying to get hold of the British Embassy but they never came up so they just one morning they just come and took me down the sergeant and said go and fuck off literally I had two guilders in my pocket and nothing and I managed to get hold of a couple of lads that came and picked us up and then it all just started again then so see when you've got one to the left and a Dutch jail and I could get another few months on because you didn't want to finish the five and England were you that adamant you didn't want to serve your time in England just going back to England because it takes you out of the system and I thought I'd learn a lot of people there and I didn't want to lose the chance of that because once you're out of people's sight you're out of super people's sight in crime unless you're in the middle of it nobody's ever going to come and speak to you about it you have to find them and that was the thing for the five months not because I was scared of the five month sentence you knew you'd be taken out of the system altogether what kind of money were you making at that period of your time just what we were thinking we were sneaking but we were harsh no we weren't doing any drugs at this moment we were just thieving really but we were getting we could go places and get 80 grand out of a supermarket quite easily what 80 grand yeah a big supermarket massive don't forget no just sneaking they used to have a cabinet like a little glass office in the middle of them all of them Aldi, all the big ones all the Dutch ones they used to have people in them and sometimes they didn't but it was hard you had to make three choices to find the key it was even in the key hole it was on top of the safe or it was on the drawer they never really bothered hiding here it was there, all the safe was open and the bank was ready there to take out but there's people stealing hundreds of thousands at the time the lucky ones 80 was our big one so if you're making good dough then what made you go deeper into the well it's because we made the dough from that that was able to go back into that funded that we funded again another massive disaster well I funded thing two Ibiza sending stuff down there but three months later the kid came back about six down lighter and had about ten pints in his pocket just partied it all all the way down so it was starting from scratch again it's fucking never ending it's a revolving door, a disaster constantly in it what was it then, is it the buzz as well or did you think like fuck it because your mum had passed away I wanted an England, were you just thinking I never got that buzz it was just business all the time for me I didn't get excited about these things all the way through I just knew the downside of it and the downside for me was that you end up in prison all the time but even then I sort of had a plan for what happened when I did get in prison I just turned it into a college thought that even when I was outside of college, out of prison so it didn't have any fear for me the prison side of it because I know people I've interviewed so many people and I've also had friends back in the day that's nowhere near your level but they can't stop it doesn't become the money anymore it becomes the buzz do you know Andrew Pritchard he used to get a shipment for Jamaican shipment making that much money but still he couldn't get out, he couldn't quit until eventually he got a life sentence and then obviously when he comes out what is it? the chase the buzz, the money, the fucking I don't think I ever reached that level where I thought I could come out did you ever have a target in your mind that would make a few million then how quick? I had like a 10 million market levelling my mind thinking that's what I'd need to keep because I was on the run to stay out and stay out safely but there's all bollocks on it you just keep going when you're thinking the next one will stop after the next one and then the next one goes down there's so many ups and downs of it you know, you're planning and planning thinking it's going to come, it's going to come and then but you've lost a year planning it so easy to a year goes by I don't want to complain about it but I spent like 12 months in Venezuela on a desert, a tropical island waiting for some of that never came through you know Is that from Colombia? Yeah, from Venezuela, Colombia Colombia first, then to Venezuela and then we'd meet in the middle of the ocean and it would get passed over So when did you start making waves? When did you start becoming target public enemy number one? When I met Curtis, really it was after that I was quite a high target before that and we'd done, I don't know a few smuggles because this is where I walked through the customs with 24 kilo in on my own and there's nothing else in the case but we know we got caught for that so that one in the radar but then we got wrapped up in our own thing because I met Curtis in prison we'd already smuggled from Curacao which is in the Dutch Antilles and we got caught for that because of the undercover and different things happened there and that's where I met Curtis because after the escape Curtis was still inside at the time and made contact when the case collapsed after that and then the two of us got together and that was it, cracked on So it seemed you'd done the 24 kilos in the case What was that? Cocaine Where did you get that from? Ecuador How much a kilo? It was on a couple of thousand it was getting 20,000 put it back there Yeah, it was all 90% It was just that was in that was always in the case The case must have been fucking heavy Yeah, it was heavy That must be a buzz for you though knowing that I'll get caught you're going to get a fucking 15 or a 20 No, no, the reason why I did it again, you know I didn't just do things because I thought Ecuador was a death sentence if you got caught with it there was a death sentence you'd never come out of prison but we had it put on by the military so when you walk up you walk up to the place where you put your bag on and in my case there was a colonel stood behind the thing you watching the bag there was a military who controlled everything there rather than the police or customs and he followed the bag on to the plane so it was put on to the plane and then I had to take it off at the other end and had I got caught I would have got between three and five years that was it so on that one the gambles worth it one way or another I would have ended up with with a 24 on my share of the 24 I was only like a mule at the time but that was in the again the middle eighties really did you ask me making buttons? a little bit yeah once you're going through it it's alright while you're on the plane nothing's happening to you you're eating the food everything's happy days but that little 50 meter walk whatever it is there's no moment for you to say ok because there's not much customs in that bag then eighties still rife but it wasn't anyway I like it you couldn't get away with that now definitely not don't try this at home they were still heavy with the customs but the sentences was like if you got caught did you cover it with anything because there were sniffer dogs or just pure kamikaze number that's a foam on it it did have it it had all the piccolilly type stuff on it that's the thing that most people cover it with so it's not too bad against the dogs but because you don't want the dogs repelling against it because that's a marker for the police as well so just something nice and mild I don't think it was that heavy people weren't checking that heavy all the time because even though it was Kurosawa where it came back from as an import place for drugs it wasn't that bad in the middle eighties sort of thing so when did you get the jewel for when you met Kurosawa for the Ecuador from Colombia and stuff like that that came through there I was bringing it ourselves but it was into Holland really but it got diverted into England was that just intelligence on you or the jewel it caught with stuff no it was working with a Belgium importer who had quite a bit of transport being the key and he was moving quite a lot of stuff about and he said he could move stuff to England for us so we tested him with a 40 kilo and then in the background he was working out a different one where he was getting it from Kurosawa into Holland that's where that conspiracy should have started and finished in Holland again we were in touch with the Dutch police who somebody heard about it and the Dutch police told the English police about it the Dutch police refused to be involved in it because they don't do that type of thing in Holland where they're setting people up with stuff and then the English decided that they'd run it because it was me or English people I didn't really know me at the time and the English set it up and they flew over to Kurosawa without permission they didn't have any permission from the English from the Kurosawa government or the Dutch government they had the opposite, they had refusals to allow it to go on and they still went and did it and the Dutch got past to them then they flew out to Miami they got arrested in Miami they undercover coppers so again that was another thing that they breached the American laws of importation and then the Americans allowed them to import it to England so it was a it was a bad case by then corruption agent provocateur was not the word really in those days but the judge ended up saying well the end justifies the means with people like you so in other words the police was allowed to go out and smuggle drugs in and out of a country without permission smuggling them even into America without permission to drive it completely what did you get for that? I got 22 years, I was a 22 but you escaped? they moved us then to Rizla waiting for sentence did you know you were getting a 22? well things were changing in those days at the beginning I was expected about a 12 and the system started to change where there was more or less doubling everything robberies, drugs everything got doubled the bad period when I was expecting 11 I got 22 make an example of you? yeah I suppose it was even in those days it was a big stretch but the judge was sending me and I was in Liverpool in a flat and I should have been in front of him I think he was a bit angry as well at the end of a 6 month trial I wasn't there anymore I would have been able to get away but again but it was also in the days before the ass box type transport we went on an old coach so I want as bad as what it sounds or as bad as what the police made it out to be as well yeah because when you escaped they said they had bazookas, machine guns how many days before you were sent in did you escape? the day before and you just think it fucks it's very strange because on the day of the thing April 1st Fils April 1st 1993 normally you get moved in the morning normally gone by 10 o'clock at the latest really and this was 1 o'clock we were still there about 2 o'clock after dinner we got called down and I'd been cuffed to this other lad all the way through all this and then all of a sudden his name gets shouted out and cuffed to another person so I've got in the background that I'm fucking escaping here and he's the man who's going to drag me off the coach sort of thing, the muscle for it and he gets put on to a thing he's all gone from a 6x6 big black man who's going to help me get off the coach to a young lad you know he had no idea what was going to happen until he put his foot on the coach step on the bottom step and I said to him something's going to happen here mate and he went what what what and he was up on the coach by that time but I didn't think he'd still be there the lad waiting outside because it was just one person there was no big gang outside with guns or anything it was each stop the coach and I had to get off the coach that was the deal nobody was coming into the coach so he'd waited all morning he stole the car that morning and he was sat on the the car park of Risley prison all morning in a stolen car so he took some balls to sit there all that time anybody come in here and he was set off and as soon as you come out of Risley there's a roundabout there and as we've done the first junction a police dog van has pulled up onto the other junction coming onto the roundabout and I'm looking at that van and he's just stopped the coach so he's right in front of the coach waiting for me to come off the coach but then he's looked and seen the police van and the police van has just shook his head and drove off so he's still most probably shaking his head now that he didn't carry on because that was his chance then I suppose and gone further up on the dual carriage where he'd repeated the operation and managed to stop the coach and I just shouted nobody move and luckily I was big enough and I think I was a lot bigger than and nobody moved for a few minutes and we managed to get to the front of the coach and get off and jump into the car and whiz off to sunny Liverpool for a few months where I sat in a flat waiting for transport to get out I don't think I moved for five months just sat in a flat waiting being fed how did you get abroad? I got in a private plane private plane? I flew off from a small airport somewhere near Leeds landed in a little private place in Holland hill with some airport and just got off and walked up nobody there have you ever mind when you're getting a 22 shoved up your ass to the becoming free we thinking do you have that mindset just to try and flood everywhere with drugs make as much money as you can and try and live on a deserted island when I was sat in the flat in Liverpool watching the Grenada reports it was a shock to say the least I was expecting 12 14 maybe and then the 22 came up I couldn't move for about two hours just rooted there and it was a good job I was where I was but it was a bad mistake for me that I shouldn't have thinking because it takes away all your appeal chances and stuff like that I'm sure if we had appealed it properly under the time limitations I could have won that case completely I've always looked back and thought that but I don't worry about it anymore what about when you're why did they give you a sentence before you were standing in a dock in your absence you do that all the time when they do that they know that that creates a time clock then you've got 28 days to appeal and after that you've got no appeal it took me 14 years once I've been arrested to actually get an appeal in and get it to the European Court who more or less told me to just fuck off and stop myvering us they just said this appeal is non-appealable don't appeal it anymore and even the European Court used that sentence in this case they unjustified the means they've said it a few times so you met Curtis Warn on demand yeah he was in strange ways and then you get out how long after did he get out 5 months, 6 months and he was willing to take you on board even though you had a lifer hanging over your head did he not find that movie brought heat towards him he was already on it it still is that's the head that he's getting out soon yeah next year so what was the plan then we used to came together didn't have any plans just a perfect match to then we seem to meet together well because I had the contacts in Holland he had his own contacts as well but he had other people there when I got there had a nice big flat and everything but he was being charged ridiculous money for the stuff and I could get it nearly 8 grand a key cheaper than what he was paying for at the time so I ended up supplying everything that he needed for all over Europe really and that's how we just started doing it we just worked together well at the time how were you accepted then Amsterdam because obviously that's Europe you've got Albanians you've got the turkeys they don't fuck about man they're heavy do you like the English the Dutch like English no they try to take you out I'm very diplomatic me when I'm out there it's I started to learn the language as well that helps with the Dutch you just think certain things happen in life don't they I moved into an house we had a beautiful apartment in the centre of Amsterdam but because I was on my toes I didn't want to be in the centre of Amsterdam so I moved out to a place called Vinkavine which is out in the countryside quite high up on the on the Amstel so I was living on the Amstel river and I don't know if you call it synchronous I don't know what you call it but it was just the way when me and Curtis sat down with this old bloke he was called Wout and funny he's bloke he couldn't speak a word of English so me and Curtis I could speak Dutch by this time we were talking away with him he knew what we was doing even though I never said anything at first because I moved into his house but I didn't know this at the time but he just had the pub there for 50 years so he knew everybody in the area and then he took the pub down and built two houses he lived in one and rented the one out and it was on the Amstel river and it came like a riverboat with it and everything it was a beautiful place and he'd seen a few things going on this boat from next door proper old cloggy type geyser and one day we'd we was doing something that we shouldn't have been doing and a wagon had come and he'd seen it for a few minutes and he'd never said anything and some fucking tires that we were doing went away and a few other things happened and he's come the following day and just threw a business card on the table and it was in the middle of a drought of ash you couldn't buy soaps or anything anywhere and it had on the back of it Zapiers which is dutch for soaps 3200 guilders and the other side turned it over to the other side so it must have been a little joke from about saying we know what we're doing here, here's a card so I said what's all this he said it's just people we know they can get this for you so they must have known there was a drought as well and then we found out that it was the people from the bulldog who was his grandkids who owned the bulldog and we rented his fucking house out and the next one we've been a couple of hours had had 100 kilo of ash on the table sorted out by our next door neighbour who was an old dutch bloke so I was thinking this as he just seems to float in and after that point I had about driving me about because I was on my toes and he used to drive all my cars, I used to sit in the back so I had a dutch man I even got him to buy the cars himself in his name so he never got stopped and I never got stopped in the back of his car How is that though to have a leifer hanging over your head you're making money did you enjoy it or were you still just constantly No, you can enjoy it a little bit but you're very cautious, you can't do anything you're not going to clubs and pubs and bars and all that, that's a go away sometimes the people around you don't seem to appreciate that sometimes because one of my good friends went out on a night out and I'm living in this place and this is before Vought knew about it and I've come home and the big double patio doors and he's come home pissed without his keys, there's lots of keys instead of sitting about waiting he's smashed the doors in and gone up to bed and just gone to sleep I've come home to an house with the door kits in, there's stuff all over the place in there and he's drunk so yeah all that drinking and you have to stop after that and you have to just become quite military I suppose in our own little way Do you feel that benefited you being not drinking, not taking drugs to then become one of the biggest in the UK instead of people tend to, I know it's a cheesy line, but get high in their own supply kind of things, they like to party, show off all the girls fancy life style and they seem to sink faster yeah, definitely sink faster you can't be doing things like that under them, I did smoke at the time and as soon as it started getting sick, even that I couldn't take it was just too much I've just smoked a bit of ash I've never liked the weed not paranoid as fuck though straight away especially at that level where things are happening all times of the day, I could do a certain day when I first started doing a bit of buying and selling for people I was turning over a million pound a day sometimes just buying drugs for people once you knew that I was there they could drop money off with me and order things and the stuff would appear sometimes there's a good million a day just going through your hands and it just gets moved on to people from all over all over Europe really not just England, it was all over Switzerland, everywhere I could met a man yeah just because of the contacts and a lot of the contacts came from that old pal because once we met the bulldog people, that was it then was open to everybody in Amsterdam and the Turkish people as well because I knew them from the prison they'd do everything there's people there all the time the Turkish side of it there was big on the ash side of stuff, they'd do a lot of Moroccans and what have you but yeah how do you build trust in knowing that in that game lesson there's no law amongst thieves but how do you build a trust and a bond that people ain't going to fuck you over and then stick you into the corpus where you know you're going to get a leave sentence did that ever cross your mind towards the end yeah I even think that the last the 430 kilo we was the lame duck in it because at the same time there was a big thing going on in Holland called the ERT affair where they were doing containers full of cocaine 22,000 kilo at a time and it was the police customs who knows who else who was doing it and that was running parallel to what we was doing at the same time and I met the boss of that when I was in the triple K.A. in Holland it was called Colbus the King of the Gypsies and he told us at the same time that we was doing that they was doing it from the same place more or less so we could have just been the lame duck and just throw them in and then ours will go through type of thing I always thought that yeah it was just a bait for somebody else I thought 400 but 22,000 kilo but they did I think they did nearly up to 100 containers before they got caught but only certain people got caught and the amount of money was just ridiculous there was hundreds of millions everywhere that they caught but they never caught the big people at the top because the lad I met he had a get out a free card letter from the government the Ministry of Justice saying if you tell us the names you can go on now with your money and that was in the in the millions that he had did they? No he had hundreds of millions he got millions from repatriation because he was like the boss of the gypsies of Europe really and the German repatriation fund I remember he got nearly a million guilders putting his account from that in prison just so he could buy what he wanted and rub it in the guard's face his canteen he just used to buy everybody's canteen well there's only three of us on the wing but he just used to say just buy what you want and I'll pay for it all. How did you end up in contact with the Cali Cartel? it started a couple of different ways really it was again through the people we knew already and then Curtis had his contact from previously and that was a very strange first meeting as well with Lucho he was the head of the cartels and went to Bogota for the first time we went on a meeting first time I met Lucho and all his lieutenants was there it was like walking into a courtroom really I didn't know it at the time but they had not heard anything about what had happened so 1000 plus 1000 Curtis got involved with, had gone missing so they had lost 4000 kilos 3000 involved with Curtis and not with Curtis with the Europeans from Belgium and Holland and everybody was still even in prison I had not come back to tell them what had happened and that was the first questions I had the friend who had gone over with me Michael I was talking laughing about it this morning about how on the meeting he stood there with his chest out and everything because it was his he had never been at that level before an evil and as soon as a question started coming out his head went down he just got lower and lower and in the end his shoulders was up like that that's why we ended up calling him no neck started off proud as punch and then ended up shoulders shrunk because he was saying what happened to our 4000 kilos of cocaine we want to know who was checking it me and I told them who I was and there was people walking in and out checking who I was and looking into whatever they were looking into because I think they had quite a high intelligence network set up and they were checking out who I was and eventually they realised that what I had said that I wasn't involved in that I was doing my own thing and I was in prison I met this bloke there and I don't know about that side of the story but this is what I do know told them and apparently I was lucky to walk out of there and it was more or less a question and answer thing and if you got the answer wrong you weren't going home so that's why I no neck shrunk because he was listening to it in Colombia in Spanish so I missed quite a bit of it so I just got the highlights of what happened to our 4000 kilo did they think you were involved in it? yeah at first yeah looking through your mind then if you say something wrong you're dead do you panic or do you try and stay as calm as possible? no you've got to stay calm if you panic you're dead so you've got no choice I don't know you just carry on because I knew I had nothing to do with it and if you do get wrapped up in it what can you do? I'm looking at all those six main Calicato leaders and who knows what was outside and was in a big penthouse on the top of a big shopping centre that they owned so it was controlled all the way down so you just had to answer the answers a big no neck I could say he was looking six foot six when he walked in I could come midget donkey parm when he walked out he's walking in feeling proud as if he's going to meet top boys and organizing things but you've got it put on 4,000 kilo what's that fucking that's over a hundred millions worth it's nothing to them though he talked in 20,000 kilo Lucho was sending 3,000 kilo a week to America and every week the same plane that took the cocaine brought the money back that was just one of his things he was the leader at the time but he's in America now I think he's 30 floors underneath below ground and he'll never come out again and when they went and got him a few years into my sentence he went out on a night out into Bogota and that was the last he knew he woke up fucking three stories below ground and that's where he'll be forever he'll never come out again fuck's sake man what's these people like when you meet them are intimidating no no just you just you just like you suit on, shirt on wouldn't even know but you see them the entourage that they have with them the bodyguards that they have with them everybody's got it's not overtly aggressive they divide the guns but when you're pulling up to their houses that's when you see what the capabilities of a man and what they've got and what they own just a different world then did you ever move over there yeah well you stayed in the island was that you trying to set up a deal that it took 6 months to 12 months to do the first deal yeah it took us good 12 months where I did nothing just waiting for things, it's coming this way it's coming next week and there's always problems exactly test you though and wait to see if you're it could have been but no they wanted to get it going but it's quite a complicated thing to organise where a plane drops it to bolts the first thing that I was trying to do not the container side of it and getting everything in place and avoiding the Americans as well obviously one a couple of times we didn't avoid them a couple of times the bolts was out there and the Americans were sat waiting for them there's a couple of a boat had gone over the plane had gone over, seen the American flippers and just turned around but the boat was still out there and then when they pulled into I think it was Curacao that they pulled into they pulled into put more supplies on the yacht they was on and the American flippers sort of more or less pulled up at the side of them and they boarded the boat and told them that we've been watching you for three days what was all that about you turning round and going round in circles and things we know what you were doing sort of thing so they was watching them for fucking hundreds of miles away so I was lucky on that one or they was that parcel because if you're getting parcels like that imagine it's not cash up front how does it work do you need to pay half back or do you need to put a full back the system that I always worked on because it was me that was there doing them final details it was always 50-50 the Colombians used to say well once it's back to Europe we want 50% at European prices we don't want these prices we don't want $50 a kilo at the time and I was used to insist that what happens when something goes wrong whose fault is it it was always had to be agreed that it was no one's fault provided it was proper that's what proof of it people in prison etc they just expect the European price but not the top European price reasonable European price I think we were offering $15,000 a kilo for their stuff if we can remember so I'd meant we'd make a few thousand on top as well on selling their stuff as well because we still had to make sure it was safe as well so you were just bringing it to Europe selling it in Europe so there's more money to make in the UK not really now let's make it more money in Switzerland at the time but there wasn't massive market in Switzerland nobody's going to be buying it's in hundreds are they we were buying it and selling it in olympia like 20,000 guilders bit more sometimes you get 60,000 in Switzerland for it and you'd only get 30 or 40,000 guilders from England if you sold it there so it was always better even Germany was better than England did you always know when there was a dry up coming up or did that just imagine there would be no dry up with your contacts but for people I mean they fucked prices but are they planned if you sold it if you go for kills a coat 30 grand then they got to 50 for the dry up yeah but there was never a dry up when there was plenty there because people didn't want to hold on to it for a couple of reasons, the people in Colombia wanted the money back so you can't hold on to it but people used to buy it and sit on it quite a lot but once within a couple of months of being involved with some of the Colombians a couple of them that I knew pretty well would think nothing would drop in a thousand kilo off and just coming back a couple of weeks later for the money it's fucking crazy though one weekend we had gone and there was no name nobody would know the name they said little Jimmy was one of them and it was when I say only 200 kilo it's obviously quite a lot but it was 200 kilo and we bought a special car Citroen XM which you put 300, 400 kilo without it showing but it was just like an estate car and then Citroen with the hydraulics on it and we put the stuff in the boot and the idea was we swap cars we get his car and he gets the car with the drug and we get the car so we're gone and he said oh we'll sort everything out later so the two drives have come and gone away and then the following Monday he's come back and said where's the money so what do you mean where's the money he said it's in the car mate and he'd been driving about in Amsterdam going out partying 2, 3 o'clock in the morning a good few million pound in the boot luckily it was still there so that could have gone bad either way for both of us but you know the different days, different times as well you know the trucks was there then back then I don't think it's there anymore so much happened in between them years when I was doing it so now I think people just get too used to snatching yeah all that and snatching stuff off people as well did you find there was a lot of trust in the 90s and 90s when you were active yeah for us it was we had a good reputation if that's what you can say it is but it was, it was a good reputation I can say people used to drop stuff off and just leave it come back weeks later for it in the millions why do you think that's the change there's so many fucking wrongings and snitches now what would you think that is do you think that's partly the police putting pressure on people with bigger sentences I don't think the police in those days had them options where they come up to you and say well you've just been caught with that let you go, that wasn't available I don't think that's in the day it wasn't available in Holland anyway because they didn't allow them type of thing to happen under their law you can't set people up in Holland it has to be a crime that you're committing I don't know there's some that I missed I still feel that I went into prison and came out into this fucking Bolton at university from the past it's fucked up man social media plays a big part in that as well though it's fucked with people's minds, everybody's competing people are doing it for the wrong reasons but that's life see all the families and that stuff you came across you get the Turks, the Albanians the Colombians the Americans even who was the most organised Turkish they're massive and they don't fuck about either man we had a few how would you call it we had a few midnight express moments in Turkey on the thing, we bought a plane the reason we bought a plane was a twin engine turbo prop Cessna carried 10 people one of the things that was open to do was to bring through the containers into Egypt into Turkey so we had to go and meet the people and we had to have a Colombian with us who was going to be the face that the captain had known the Egyptian captain it was a big boat as well he wanted a face he wanted to see somebody, so we had to take him to Egypt and we had been looking, me and the Turkish had been looking at buying a plane so we bought a plane started messing about in it building little bits and places but the main reason to buy it was so I didn't have to go through normal skip-hold type airports and fucking should have stayed with the main airports it was a lot easier and we flew to Budapest Hungary flew from there to Istanbul nearly died on that fucking journey because he never checked the weather and was going over the Urals in a storm the plane was dropping about 3,000 feet in a second lucky to land and landed in Istanbul got into the airport and as the Colombian put his passport in he gave him his passport back he only walked about 5 steps there was machine guns pointed at him and everything, he didn't have any criminal record it was just the way he came so they wouldn't let him back out they could only go they only allowed him to travel back to Turkey I mean to Colombia on one plane and they put him on a plane and thingy so the attention then came on us but we was dressed well I had the luckily I had the co-pilot's uniform on and he had the turkey slide I had the pilot's license and uniform on so we was in the transit part now for 3 days on and off so the initial everyday police there was nothing wrong but we both had the same passport more or less, English passports so we got a Turkish man, completely Turkish they knew he was Turkish talking to him fluently my passport was only a few numbers away from his bit of a bad mistake shouldn't have been so close but the passports we had was perfect they couldn't have been broke they cost a lot of money at the time but my face was in the pictures in the passport office details was in the name date of birth and everything and they stand up to any screw and they tried to break the passport tried to break him saying this is not your passport we know who you are we know that you're not English but yeah I'm English, I've got an English passport so they had to let him go but we got in the plane and gone to set up and then another load of fucking police had come and stopped us on the runway again and then we had to get off the plane again there was nothing on the plane apart from the fact that I was on the run for this and he was wanted as well in different countries and then we went through the special squad and then the intelligence blokes we got on the plane again and I think they were just laughing at us in the background, I'll let him get on the plane again we'll stop him again, three times he did it on the runway came and blocked the plane from going and eventually we got back in the plane and set off and landed in Egypt but we couldn't get the Colombian into Egypt they just wouldn't allow him to come in they had to have all visas and things for them because that was in the bad days of Egypt and we went from there to Alexandra by road and set up what we could set up but we never did anything, we were just a load of bollocks but we nearly ran out of fuel on the way into Egypt because when we landed at Cairo airport they didn't have fuel for the smaller planes, they only had the big plane fuel and we had to fly to a smaller airport over the pyramids and we literally landed on the plane spluttering we ran out of fuel when we came in when we got there we got the fuel but I think we had to give about a thousand buckshees out to people even to the boss of the airport coming at all the pips on and everything just put their hands out for money it's all they ever wanted there buckshee, buckshee, everywhere you went you're not thinking though why did you never do state of base I was just thinking fuck it I've still got to live my life doing all that travelling and through airports because that takes some balls if you caught you're getting 22 stretch as that part of your mind though where you need to feel something the problem is if I didn't go who'd go Curtis really couldn't go because he was watching him all the time and you can't trust other people at that sort of level of negotiations otherwise you won't speak to you you can't send somebody who just didn't know anything because when people like that ask you questions you've got to know the answers you can't be saying oh I've gone and asked somebody else it's an insult to them isn't it you're talking to the bosses you've got to act like a boss or be a boss you can't be somebody saying well just let me check that you'd never see them again see the people you were getting your graph from that they know you were on there on yeah eventually once I'd had a chat with them that probably yeah well I think that saved my life really more than anything they realised that you know if he's done that he's not a fucking thing he's not this he's not that I can trust him they did set me in properly do you get a story time when you meet these people no I never got a search never no in case you had a wire or anything nothing like that no no once you knew my story they knew where I was coming from what about do you ever come across the mafia the Italian yeah Americans we met some people involved in that never dealt with them well organised I don't know if I'm as big as they were in the 80s and 90s and stuff but I never did anything with America really I always knew we always said it between us you know the country or anywhere then we never moved or imported anything into or out of America the only time I ever got involved in that was when the English Customs tried to import it into themselves you know on the job that they did against us but no we avoided that purposely so you've somebody's done the Colombians for 4000 kilo say these people are in the UK would the Colombians forget about that or would they put a hat out on that person in the UK no if they did stall in it yeah they'd definitely send assassins everywhere in the end days they were fucking right for him they won't mess about but no it was taken legitimately if there is such a thing the police took it so it was quite an easy thing to track if they wanted to or if they knew which police forces and things and it was all over the newspapers my thing was all over the newspapers so they didn't have to look far you and the papers all the time in the news when you were still on there on it died away pretty quickly did you feel that took a bit of heat and pressure of yourself or were they still getting your family and friends grief back home again I just think it was a different way of policing in those days you know like these days if they find out somebody's on the run then they are around at the families and all they didn't really they might have been waiting outside and all that but my family was like it was only me I was the only black sheep in my family every other member of my family was going out to work every day so the police they're not that daftly to see who they are and if you're all driving back in Ferraris then the family's involved but if they go on Manchester rabbits while they're killing cows all day then they're not so did you ever miss back home yeah, yeah you always miss it it's fucking weird that and that and then when you're there you're fucking out it's a fucking weird I've stayed in Spain and I always say I'm fucking glad to get away and I always end up back do you always look for the English food yeah, a little bit of shite shite man, yeah shite it's just pure conditioning but how long did you end up on the run for on that one it was only three years, three and a bit years after the skate well it was three and a half years of my most productive criminal fucking part of my life whatever is that just because you knew you were going to I was just trying to collect money trying to get safe all the time you know I'd seen millions go through my fingers hundreds of millions at some points but it wasn't my money there's a columbians and you don't steal off the columbians so you get to where it's supposed to be going and I took my share out of it but it was never enough I was always waiting for the big one and then when the big one started coming in it was shared by so many people that you don't end up with these fortunes how they come up with the figures that they got with Curtis now it's just ridiculous that amount of money could have gone well it did go through our hands but it never stuck to us it was only on small percentages by the end of it by the time you paid everybody that's the thing as well you think about drug dealers and thinking it's you start off with one or two of you and before you know there's a fucking hundred people involved in it you know a hundred ways to be told that or to be grasped on you know it's a different world when you're going to the biggest scale because you can't move thousands of kilos with a couple of you there's fucking hundreds involved in it and if you involve the amount of people involved in like Venezuela and Colombia there could be a few hundred people involved in a drug smuggle but then like I said I think we wasn't just the only one I think there was always going on at the same time we were just another one I think we was putting because we was the smaller ones yeah because they cut us they made over a billion bollocks absolute bollocks not a chance in the world they make the figures up to confuse everybody and to make everything look worse than they are they know the true figures when you're talking about hundreds of kilos you know straight away if it's 400 kilos 200's ass you've got people where do you put it you've got to pay the stash houses you've got to pay the transport people you've got to pay everybody nobody gets involved in that game just to be your mate they want money and by the time you share out your little bits at the end of it there's little bits compared to what you started with and I think that applies to the Colombians when they send it back they've got hundreds of people in front of them and that's one of the things why they say why don't you ever stop well I've never seen enough money to stop but here you lose this you lose that when you're losing a million pound in one go it takes a lot of money you've got we lost 800 grand exchanging money in a bank one day it takes a long time to get 800 grand together all of a sudden you take it to a bank to exchange it and they just say well we're seizing this now as a day before they didn't seize it so there's always things happening you lose money as well so even if you're on the run for the three years we still have in final we just constant work to make as much as you can at that time it was just work just constant business well I say that but like I said 12 months ago that was spelt on a a nice tropical island in the Caribbean so it wasn't that hard was it what was that like on the island lonely? no no it was a decent size island but in Venezuela is the demagrita but you could jump across on the ferry or a small plane quite easily to the mainland of Venezuela but yeah it was nice living like that I was living on a nice big house on the beach we walked across a little path and it was at the ocean I was waiting for the boats to come and the strange meetings that we used to have on the beach and they'd fly off but then I was flying in between there as well because when I was doing my flying days I did quite a bit of flying in Colombia I shouldn't have done but we did everybody comes into your life the jolls look at them as maybe they could be having younger surveillance was everybody kind of unless you knew them everybody was kind of you were suspicious of yeah no no strangers came into my life at that time it was all people we knew apart from the Colombian side it could have been anybody on that side in my personal never came into my space did you ever think about getting facial reconstruction in Colombia what were you going to get done end up looking like you actually I was thinking that when that goes through your mind just to go for the properly yeah I was going to start with tummy tucks and all that and get rid of the excess weight and go for my nose because that would have been easy to change into a nice pointed one did you know it just again time I think I would have done it it was just things didn't fit into it because you're looking at a few months again do you think that would have done anything though when did DNA that came in 80s, 88, 89 they've had finger they didn't have my DNA then they had fingerprints but I even looked at taking them off as well that was available because at the time in Colombia they had all the mis-world type things so plastic surgery was a very popular thing over there at the time so I did go see a doctor about it all have a look could have been looking in the mirror by now and you did say the fuck I'm not doing it no I was I would have took it further but time and things got in the way of it all that's a big thing going on but then again it's your fucking life hanging over your head it was just a fingerprint side of it I was always thinking that it's irrelevant what you look like once you put them finger prints on they got you so unless it was never decided the only thing they could do was take off layers and layers of skin at the time so you've always got your fingerprints on you so there's no way out of it was it ever on the back of your mind that it ever become tiresome or that you were just working so hard to get over your head no it just became it disappeared in the background I was just so busy doing what I was doing I always knew that I forgot I'm going straight back and then plus whatever I got caught for no you've got to accept it or just crumble it does take some balls though to keep going to be flying through airports that's just it's nerve wracking just walking through it it still cleans you up as if I'm doing something wrong I'm up to no good even when I get into shops I used to do shoplifting back in the day even when I'm in shops now I always walk through their labs and think even when I hear it go off I'm ripping out the receipts straight away panic still sets in but for you having a 22 hanging over your head plus whatever you get caught for you're potentially going away for a 35-40 was there ever any time you thought you could make as much as I can and keep pushing I never got to that position where I felt safe or I had enough money to dissolve into some little island somewhere do you think that would have even made you stop though I don't know, I think so eventually I don't know, you never know do you once that once you settled into knowing what you're doing the day I escaped I regretted it really you know it wasn't some of that I mean to be put in that position you failed really completely in your game that you think you've got to escape to get away from a 20 plus sentence you're starting off from a failed position really so I don't think it ever improved that it was always there that I was coming back eventually you see kids now shifting a kilo or two kilo and they think they're big ballers like you're shifting thousands and yet you felt like a failure at times did you ever question that then when you had your job at 15 and 16 doing your art and you felt I should have maybe stuck into that did that not cross your mind not while I was actually actively on the run but it did come into me man, I always thought what would I do if I got caught I can do my art, I can do this, I can do that you know so the fear of getting caught didn't really occupy my mind that much I just cracked on really I think if you did you'd just give yourself one I'd turn, I'd go knock on the fucking door and say take me in I can't do this anymore but I never got to that stage now I suppose it's so interesting as well won't it travelling all over the world I knew airports from before all this started so I knew how to move about in airports how to travel how to go in with the crowd as well all you need to do is go business class and nobody looks at your ever again once you step up to that private planes man nobody well that's the problem we didn't finish saying it that's what we did we bought a private plane so it's thinking it's a fucking nightmare we got stopped everywhere we went and ragged more than you do on the normal plane so that got put aside for a bit so how did you eventually get caught then again just people on them phones did you know how to use the satellite phones now just normal phones they was all over Curtis about 6 months before we got caught there was we'd gone living in a nice little house in a place called Sassanine and one of my friends had come early in the morning to go and play around the golf and it spotted a couple of strange looking cars with strange people and and come around I've got in the car drove round to the golf course and when you're on the run you need skate routes I always used to pick the house because of the skate routes not the other way around and this place had a like what you call an arse you that comes back on yourself so you know that if somebody's following you they're going to come back on to you so when we drove down this road and then we come back round pretty quick onto this little like a cul-de-sac but it comes back onto the road and you pull out onto the road where they're coming up thinking that you're just parking or driving because there's no way out and you're facing them then you can see them and there was all, there was two cars in a line with eight blokes in them, big blokes and straight away just police and then I just drove to Paris that night never went back to that house, left everything behind stayed in Paris for a few days and then went back to a different part of Holland in the north but they were later on it was that point that then it was English police who it was because we knew they was lost by coming the way they were coming if it was Dutch it would have been a bit harder to spot because they wanted to come down that road but the English and it was English police there illegally again and they were there just watching the house they've been there for quite a bit Is that how they never jumped you then? Yeah, they had no jurisdiction or anything but it was also at that point though that was when the English started lying to the Dutch because if they would have said to the Dutch that's Steve and me that would have been it all over because the Dutch would have just stopped it all there arrested me and put me in prison they wouldn't allow a criminal who's doing 22 years and escaped to be walking about on the streets of Holland they just don't allow that type of thing so the English must have lied to the Dutch there and then and that's when the Dutch took over but they said that they never knew who I was the only knew who I was when they caught us and three months afterwards when they came after they had me fingerprints for three months then they came into a local prison called Graver and took me out by helicopter and that was it triple cut aid for the rest of it How much surveillance did they have on you? They had rooms full buckets and articulated loads full of information I think they had so many thousand phone calls a day recorded and usable as well it's a different law system there so did you get any add-ons for the 22 years you've done for Amsterdam? No I had the 22 from England and on the day I got seven years from Holland and they appealed that and they put that up to eight years and they literally said for being cheeky I did another year on for being cheeky because it was such a long sentence for 420 the judge put another year on So was that ranking current or did you get extended? No that was consic so a fairly stretched they had to do the Dutch sentence first which was five years four months and then they shipped me back to England even that was a pile of helicopter to the airport RAF Jet back to England I left to sell in Holland in Nijmegen down at the bottom and I was in high down prison we've been an hour in England Did you ever think about escaping when you were doing your five? No well again I was in triple cut aid so in Holland there's only a couple of from October 96 to Christmas Eve when they came and got me Christmas Eve and I think that was deliberate as well and they waited till the fucking Salvation Army had just been and they came in and took me didn't even get to eat me ample and they took us out by came in because it's over there when they're moving people like me it's not police it's special military type people who come and it's called the Arrest Artie team and they came into the prison the whole prison was shut down and that's when they said that they found out who it was actually who it was so their brief would have been this man's escaped with rocket launchers and machine guns and an armed gang had stopped an armed police come by with rocket launchers and all that bollocks well that's what the Dutch was working under and they came and picked us up from this Grava prison which was just a normal jail there was an helicopter I came out they came into the prison closed the whole prison down with all the guns and everything face down fucking strip naked carried out face down put this fucking boiler suit on then they put goggles on helmet uh cuffs and bulletproof vest tied me legs put us in an helicopter and took us to Grava took us to a place called in Holland which was an old concentration camp and put us in there and that was it then triple K all the way everywhere we went was helicopters and they took us once to court in police cars armed police cars not thinking with the special team and they said they weren't happy with certain things that had happened and they got reports that there was probably going to be another breakout and then they started moving us every time by helicopter then that was it the bastards are going to kill me here yeah yeah there's good first on the rest could have been anybody couldn't it we thought we'd just got him 400 and a kilo so it could have been part somebody coming taking that because there's nothing said when they came it was just flashbangs and everything going off I didn't hear anything anyway and I was carried out completely naked straight into the car thrown in the well of the car on to the floor they didn't even put you in the seat and then they came in and sat down and put the feet on you that's how they did it professionally do you think somebody stopped you no it's just well they say it was triangulations with phones I was on the phone to Curtis I do believe this point because at that time when I was on the phone where we was it was a farm in the middle of Newarkirk on the Isle so there was nothing there was another farm about a mile away and another farm that way but there was nothing there's no reason for any cars to come up there to go anywhere but to do these two other farms that was there and we knew it I knew everybody who was there and this car had come past and you know when somebody just looks at you for that split second I should have just gone to the field and carried on because they only came the following morning but it's that intuition in it I didn't abide by it and just carried on but I was on the phone to Curtis so that was driving up the road obviously getting the triangulation or getting as close as he can and luckily for them I was stood outside in the garden talking so I think that's how they got us and what you're thinking then once you've been caught was that a relief or you're thinking fuck me how am I going to do this no I was thinking how am I going to do more than 22 that's what I was thinking it's weird you don't you're fucking going a bit numb really you know it's hard to think about what's going to be happening in the next year you've just got to deal with it as you're going along because it's it's not a nice feeling obviously but it happens what's the doctors do like well normally they're fantastic but when you're talking the triple cut it's fucking horrendous like Hannibal Lecter came back he's the way fucking nobody can see you yeah but we're a bit of humanity prone in there as well because the Ducks tried as well as he can but everything that when they moved us into New Voswell the concentration camp it was a actual it was the concentration camp that they used to send the Nazis to the camps there to the camps and the Jewish people and it's a museum now it still is but we was in the old part so it was the original part so when I got there Christmas Eve I've got there and there's another two people in there on my wing and there's another three on the other wing that was it there's six of us in total and there's like 20 that minimum of 22 guards before they open the door for anybody as allowed out of anywhere and everything's triple doored you've got only one door on your own you're always on your own you're never with the guards unless it's four of them or two of them depending on how big they are and you're never with another prisoner in the presence of a guard you just kept separately all the time so you're going one door that door locks you move into that space that door locks off and then the new door opens so you can never go through a door it's always three door system and then you get into the thingy on that Christmas Eve then it was a Franky Peters from Venlo and he was in for mass murder, killed nine people killed a Dutch blog who he assassinated by putting a bullet in every joint in his thingy and then one in his thingy there's only nine team when I first met him and then he killed nine Turkish people as well on top of it but they never found any of that just the one that he got found guilty for and he got, technically he only got three years for that because it was a drug related crime it was he got the 21 years for the other nine but they never found any bodies or any evidence or nothing still fighting it today but they've extended it to a natural life sentence and he made me a pizza that night so you're just hanging around all the, not just drug laws but psychological pasts he was only nine he was a kid and he done nine murders, nine murders? well he didn't, he always told me he was some fucking junkie and it stuck all the way through all his appeals failed, everything all the way through and I've seen a program about him on the Dutch television about New Voselveld and he was called Frankie Peters The Bender from Vendel but Bender in Dutch means gang I always told him what it meant over here but he never really got it so when you come back then to where did you go here, Whitemore? went to Whitemore and you went Tripoli again? Triple Kati there, yeah who were you Triple Kati with? there was three of us in there Kenny and I, Mickey Steele from the Essex Boys and a Turkish bloke called Keina, he was doing 40 years for Erwin that was the four of us some fucking four of that it was a bit of a crew, yeah what was Kenny and I like? we spent practically a power because what happened in there it was we were being treated like dogs at first there was the same in Holland the King of the Gypsies he took the whole system to court and it ended up in the European Court of Human Rights for inhumane treatment to human beings because it was coming around every 30 minutes he was slamming the hatch on you or shining a torch in your face and that was every 30 minutes all the way through the night they'd never leave you alone and until you moved, they wouldn't move the torch off you and they tried repeating that so that the Dutch Triple Kati got shut down Cobus was there and they moved us out on the same day and then I got moved to like a Double Kati prison which was in the top of a big block of light flaps and it was secure as anything unless you wanted to probably toilet through the window and jump out and when we got back to England they was at it again the same and it was Kenny and I who took him to court again and we were like I was there 2 or 3 years but they used to come around all night fucking banging the hatch and keeping you away and shining the torch until you moved they didn't really get any sleep sort of got used to it but it was very aggressive at the beginning but even they sort of edged off a little bit towards the end but Kenny got them shut down they closed the Triple Kati system in England because of Kenny and I and he paid us right for you on the ground to take it all the way to the European courts the English courts said no carry on do what you want but it was the European courts that got it shut down they reopened it again now but under big different conditions but it was a strange thing but in a way it was good in its own way because he was away from the main the main wings and all the trouble apart from them coming round shining torches in your face but we got that stopped pretty soon it was only there about a year before that stopped but it still like I said we got it closed down because of in your main treatment How long were you together for? Me and Kenny spent 9 years nearly 9 years together on and off I cooked for Kenny all the way through and he used to chop the food up I used to cook it because you can cook in them places and I'm on the day that they closed it down they sent me to full-sorten and they put Kenny on the wing and then a couple of months later they moved him up to full-sorten and then we're back again as a GO where he was cooking and thinking we trained together for years He's a fat guy? Yeah, yeah I've not met him since Kenny we're not allowed to be make contact with ex-crime Do you get put back inside if you do? I'm still on licence Well that's a different thing but I'm still on parole I've still got a year of parole to go so February, not this February coming February next year I'm a proper free man then I've also got probation Back over the column I think I'll miss them If you're not travelling they'll fuck all the last 10 years No, I'm not passable Do you need to sign in anywhere every week or every month? There's certain restrictions they have to know where to sleep every night so can only have one car, one bank account one phone, all that sort of stuff Still probation every month still 10 years But you're just happy to have your free That's the first time you've ever been That's the first time you've probably been free since you have Well, 1987 really 1987 it was Was that a few weeks for you? It was, but I feel free now anyway I don't I don't get a pressure up probation and all that but I attend I suppose if you didn't attend you'd be back inside but you don't fuck about with things like that when you've done 60 then I they've had enough of me for a long time man and your life away in it I missed everything in my life my son's growing up all of it you miss everything it's not a nice thing all that time going by but at the time you don't think about it you're just cracking on with what you're doing That's the thing we can sit here and tell the stories and people go fuck me that's unbelievable that people buy into this stuff so much through crime and people do what they've done but it's the the massacre of the fucking ripple effect of everybody destroyed around it to then when do you start thinking into that kind of stuff once you're caught because I imagine the conscience grows when you start changing and making changes the conscience grows and you start realising your bubble pops then you start realising the people that it's affected when did you start realising that method of thinking a few years into the sentence when you start to lose family members you start realising that I've missed something bad that's never going to come back again it's an hard part but you don't I didn't tend to think about it too much when I was on the run I was too busy trying to save my own skin in a way but there was no skin to save it was already devastating it was never going to go away the 22 and it was only going to get worse so early in the sentence when you can sit down and relax because you're safe in prison aren't you if you're not safe in prison you're fucked aren't you but I felt a bit safer once I was in prison after everything I've been through being with Colombian cartels and fucking going through the jungles anything could happen to you flying planes across between Venezuela and Colombia anything can happen to you when you start reflecting on everything you start thinking fuck you but that just shows you your character and how you just went down a 30 stretch you never snitched on anyone you've done your sentence you've travelled the world meeting some of the most fucking ruthless people on this planet but I think that shows you the size of your balls there's not many people can do that if you come out of prison and go do you know what I've done it with fucking I imagine it would have been tough but you've done it with Pride do you know what I mean? there's so many snitches now did you ever get offered a deal? no never just wanted you then that's the problem innit when you're at the top you know who you're going to put in so he's fucking same level as me so no you just put yourself more in more than anything yeah so looking back at that mad period of your life for 30 years because it's still a fucking buzz at the end of the day it's something triggered in your mind where you think well the party you miss it there's party if you're dead you're not doing that mad stuff anymore no it did while you was doing it a little bit but no 16 and 16 and a half years in prison ticks all that fucking fancying us away from it brings you right back down to earth and all that you can do is literally regret what you're fucking done when you sat there day after day in the jail there's fucking no glamour in that mate all that thing that passed before it just disappeared it's dissolved and there isn't sometimes you get excited when you're out in the middle of the ocean on a big fucking yacht and things like that or you're flying the planes like I say across some tropical islands and things like that or across the fucking pyramids that's the buzz side of it but it won't last long it's going back on the ground again and dealing with people who put a bullet in your head at the sign of any fucking weakness and things like that I didn't see it a clamour really there's a lot of I don't know how to say it it's just hard to explain if you've not been in that situation it's hard to explain that you can stay calm and you don't get excited about it it's dangerous it is because it's a different level it's not dealing with a few ounces or a couple of kilo here and there it's dealing with people who just kill you and kill all your family if they find out that you've done them wrong so it becomes very serious that's why I never smoked or drank or anything I was doing that I guess you made a fucking mistake you forgot something there's been a few times when people you know they got that bad with drug testing people you know because of the seriousness of what was happening and then when we didn't the people we sent to places and they fell asleep or they got pissed or they couldn't do something and then the bolts been and gone and fucking left the stuff behind you know we had to recover from that so no it was very serious and very very uh we had to be straight with them even though we're doing a crooked game you have to be really straight with everybody and your answers have to be spot on as well no lies, no bullshit no lies, no fucking mess around like lie detectors or anything big shit the only trouble we ever got into with anybody because we were quite efficient at what we did uh and the only thing was when I had to go and explain what had happened to theirs and then there was never any other occasions some there was where we lost a few 10,000 kilo of ash that went missing at one point but it got caught and the people found that it got caught and nothing happened about it everybody was happy so we never lost anything that wasn't caught by the police sort of thing, locally yeah it was all above board, you could cover for it how did you end up doing your sentence 22 years out, did you just get your head down and stay focused trying to appeal I know you couldn't get it I tried to appeal for 14 years but it never got anywhere uh I never settled to it on two occasions my qc's, different qc's asked me where do you want to get released from it was that close to me walking on it, on two occasions but in the end the judge just said now what the police did was illegal but there you go thems that we can say the end justifies the means and they used it a couple of times on us because I think because we're so prolific I suppose they're always going to get you no matter what they've had something stuck all the stuff you did get away from it tends to seal it above the interview it's not actually when they get their sentence, it's not actually what they've done it's all the shit they have done the intelligence is there that they know they've done somebody told me that the judges have, I think it was Andrew Pritchard actually when he got his sentence the judges got showed what he got away with before I don't know, it was peace that's a paper so they add the sentences for the shit they've got away with I believe that and also I don't think it's stuff that they've actually got away with it I think it's just what people say to them as well you know, couples who don't like you or somebody this he got away with that we've never got a chance but we know he's involved in it I think they've given that sort of information especially at certain levels I don't think they did it for petty type things but I think when they reach out the levels we sort of reach they'll get information from all over the place yeah, major intelligence to make sure that we don't go out on the street see when you get into the wing for the first time what was that like to get put into normal popularization well that was a few years later I didn't get put into normal thinking for nearly eight years how did that feel strange coming out of that because you're in your own little bubble there like I say there's only four of us at the most and 22 guards so you're in a bubble you get education and you get your own gym on there but you never come off there and if you do come off there it's like moving the queen the helicopter like I say I had to go to hospital twice as a rush thing and that turned into just the fucking craziest thing you've ever seen helicopters and things police officers running up the aisles in the hospital with machine guns going up to corners and putting the guns around the corners at York Hospital there was fucking ill with me there they had two blood clots at York Hospital from Paul Sutton and you had to be rushed under triple double catty actually and the helicopter had to float above the hospital all day long they had to change it three times and then you've got all the coppers downstairs it was fucking crazy hundreds I think it must have cost maybe a million maybe even more for one hospital visit because when I went everything fucking stopped crazy times when did you start doing your artwork from day one really like I say when I first got arrested in 1991 couple of days after I'd been in the police house I'd asked for a pen and paper to start drawing so it started more or less from the beginning was that your escape for what you've done and what you've been doing therapy drawing will take you away from the misery around you you're not looking at the walls anymore you're looking at the painting or the drawing you're creating there's also different ways people use writing and write stories and books or songs or whatever but you need something to take you out of there because the misery of looking at 30 year sentence and you're going to have to do at the time I was looking at that I needed to do 20 years because it was 2 thirds at the time and it changed half way system got a little note under my door telling me I just got back 3 years at the time because it changed the systems but yeah it took over really took over everything in there you could study and paint in the end I was the only person in full sort and they've had a set of proper oil paints in there because they didn't allow it after that so everybody was begging me for paints and they're not giving some to certain people but I had to keep it on myself yeah so you've been out 10 years see when you go out was it 2009 2011? 12 2012 so see when you go out what you thinking you thinking I'm going to get the fuck obviously you couldn't but obviously everything you've ever done anything the police have had something on you you've done the toes so what was your mindset like I'm getting a bit old on those what did you see here then? well I was lucky because I did what I did in prison I painted a lot I think I walked out of Loudon Grange with 20 odd paintings in a trolley it must have looked fucking crazy coming out of there like Pickford's coming out of there and so I instantly had money I had money from the paintings I sold the paintings and I sold quite a few I sold when I was in prison in 2011 I won the platinum and the bronze prize in the same year and that painting was sold to the managing director of Timson's he bought that painting so I had a I think I got 500 quid or something so as soon as I got out I had 500 quid where normally you had allowance that was it and then I sold paintings and carried on so I was never put back in that position of desperation because I had so much to do a purpose and somewhere where I could make money from straight away so I wasn't on the street begging or pestering your family I could support myself more or less as I walked out I did paintings that I'd sent out I think I had about 50 paintings that my sisters and my brothers sent them out from the prison so if you can learn a trade or something like that it takes that pressure away of having no money and thinking that because of who you was that you've got the right to have money or something like that whatever ego things people have none of that came into my mind and plus I had my family around me and then again like what you said there just too old man can't be going into prison at my age it's a death sentence isn't it there's got to be a time when everybody stops and I thought that was enough for me I always used to think about police pestering me and migrating me and all that and when I came out they put me in an hostel for six weeks so I wasn't allowed home and I think it was the second day in the hostel we only visited that I've had from the police and it was two coppers and they were coming and they said nice to meet you and all that shut my hands and everything and they said I don't think we have to bother about you do I and he went I went what would you mean he said well you're getting on a bit now aren't you and that was it then I thought you're fucking right you know getting on a bit to be going in and out of these jails first time you agree with the coppers but it's a young man's game I didn't go in and out of jail I couldn't do that anymore the life you've led you've been the cream of the crop you've been topped here where you've worked for the biggest and the best in their trade how do you when you're doing that and becoming the biggest I've interviewed so many different people at so many different levels like you are the number one at your craft especially from the UK but every single person no matter what they were shifting it's all ended in fucking disaster there's never any happy ending to a certain degree where do you feel that as well because you were so high and doing what you're doing flying private planes making millions doing the biggest deals about trying get through your sentence alive and then coming out and doing your painting do you ever feel like ok you're a free man now you're doing your paintings as part of your fuel but everything's alright or do you still battle to then think you still miss that old life no I don't miss that old life at all anymore I don't think he ever did I never enjoyed it while I was doing it anyway so to go back to it this new life of painting is fucking fantastic you get to see all sorts like the show we had the other day congratulations by the way the amount of people that was there and shown an interest was phenomenal and now I'm mixing with a rapper called Susbet who's an up and coming top rapper and he's going to be all the way to the top it's fucking unbelievable considering where there was a few years before that and I don't know you just get accepted if you carry on and plod on doing what you're doing society sort of comes in and accepts not all society but they come in and accept you for what you're doing you can see you spent 10 years painting pictures and not committing crime and people think everybody enjoyed the show anyway we'll leave the links in the description to your social media and stuff as well for people to get in contact in case they want to buy any paintings but for you to your caliber it shows that you could adapt in any situation anyway you've clearly got the fucking the minerals to be sitting and talking to the biggest criminals so for you to adapt then to sell paintings and create an audience and create something is it same mentality to be shifting gear to then be shifting paintings it's just the same thing it's a product again isn't it just dealing with a product I think there's loads of people like me who are criminals who should have been CEOs of big companies because we've got the ability to mix and talk to people from all over the world at one point I was speaking with Colombians, fucking Turkish Moroccans everybody on the planet really we're dealing with them in our own little way we're international business people and if we could find a way to convert that from instead of dealing with cocaine dealing with goods or whatever it is that you can get yourself into and at the moment mine's art and everything that's associated with it so it's just switched from cocaine to art that's all we're doing what makes a good businessman diplomacy I think more than anything that you can especially in this day and age now that you can speak to Chinese people you speak to Russians and you speak to whoever it is I mean I've spoke to Russian mafia when we was dealing with it in the fall of Yugoslavia and all them countries that's when we were sort of dealing I know I've dealt with them and I've dealt with all family people I've dealt with all sorts of people dealt with Colombians I don't know we're just diplomats I suppose it's been easiest to what worth Colombians yeah even though it looks crazy and mad they build everything around the family so once you they accept you're into there I was at their family houses I wasn't in some mad apartment somewhere they take you to the ranches where the ball rings are and the stables and the fucking tigers and the chimpanzees they take you to their homes yeah they're very friendly the South Americans not like any of us Turkish are different because they're very strict they're quite a different way of life compared to the Colombians really well yeah the South Americans if I could go somewhere that's where I'll end my days in South America it's all laid back even though they're crazy Colombians so see a little Eskibar, El Chapos and stuff because they all get caught all the heads end up getting cut down is it anybody ever make it out? no well there must be somebody somewhere but if you think about it if we would have sat down and thought from the beginning what's the point of this because the only thing we can do is that there's two of us dealing a few drugs there's four of you, there's six of you, there's eight of you before you know it there's hundreds there's hundreds of Colombians involved in it there's hundreds of thinking it's an inevitable consequence of the bigger you get the more chance you're going to get of being caught because there's more people involved in it there's more chance of grasping and the police knowing about it so for me it's an inevitable consequence the bigger you get the easier it is that you're going to get caught because just the sheer amount of people involved in it but the levels that you went through again it's more risk as you say more people more risk and that's where the self doubt the paranoia would keep in and everybody's a fucking but you clearly bought a network that you did trust you cleared on your sentence with your dignity that so Stephen you're going forward so what do you think then looking back at it all Stephen be telling your story now does it bring back a lot of memories you think fuck me like I lived a proper life I look back at them we regret more than anything that side of it you know because I know that if I would have been born into a richer family or this or gone to university and done all that because that's what I'd recommend to anybody if I call the crime just go to university that's where the money is in this day and age I wouldn't even put myself as a criminal there's hundreds of politicians who are far more criminals than me that's a coincidence we know what each other means but I don't even see myself as a criminal anymore there was someone who was saying the other night when I was in Holland this is how mad the world is at the moment when I was in Holland I was doing 30 years they give me 22 years and it came up in the court with the judge because it's a different system there you can talk to the judge so I can just stand up and speak straight to the judge because it's just the judge there's no jury there and there's three judges and you speak to the judge and we were talking about why he was saying that he had to give it me consecutive to the 22 years and that put me in a position where at that moment in time I received the biggest sentence ever given out in Dutch history including fucking pre thingies where they had all the slaves and everything it was the biggest sentence that they ever give out because it was consecutive to the 22 that I already had so I put it up to 30 years and the last thing I can do about it what do we do? you've escaped from prison you've gone and committed a more serious crime so we can't not give you the sentence and make it consecutive we've got to make it consecutive otherwise there's no punishment for people who escape so you're going to set the brunt of that and you're going to get the 30 years but he said I don't want to do it to you but I've got no choice he was more upset than me he was like he was for you but he still had the fuck with the sentence he had to do it so when do you go now with the paint, Steven? your plans, obviously you've got the entrepreneurial ships to be top boy, do you see yourself? do you see that's going global as well? hopefully, yeah I've got an invitation at the moment to go to different places I've joined up with a company called Nine Protocol who are my promotion team they're all together we're planning things in the future we've got a few collaborations with big artists that we're going to do paintings of and installation type things all over London so you'll be seeing quite a lot things popping up all over the place it's really exciting what we're planning and hopefully where we're going we're now involved in this new technology called NFTs which are non-pungible tokens I don't know if you know anything about them there's an old crypto world out there I was lucky enough to get involved in it when it first started I started doing a bit of mining for the coins in the first place where we had these computers which I learned a lot about in prison, I started learning programs like Photoshop and Illustrator when I was in prison so I had quite a bit of technical knowledge as well as the art stuff that I did I did the computer side of things as well and the music side and you can collect these coins but now since Christmas of this year somebody's come up with a new thing called the NFTs where it's linked on what's called the blockchain so the blockchain is what you buy your coins on and you need certain wallets and things and you can buy coins off there and then this new NFT thing came out and it's really based on for artists so what an NFT is it's a non-pungible token that you can if you've got a piece of art where you can put it and log it onto what's called the blockchain and it registers it there and then on the blockchain so you get a big massive number that can't be messed about with nobody can interfere with it, it can't be changed so whatever you put on is set there for the rest of Eternity if the blockchain exists but you can also sell your stuff on the blockchain itself and these are what call the NFTs which is going through the world like a dose of salt Damien Hirst has just done a big one and I think in 15 minutes it's 25 million dollars so they sell really quickly but they sell big and we've just done our own show where we built a prison cell out of hemp blocks which is a link between the crime which is not an illegal product of the hemp which is a cannabis side of the plant but they make bricks for it now for building houses or flats where it's a highly insulating brick so we've built a full size cell in the barge house in London we have a bed in and everything so people can go in but that then becomes an NFT so then we can put an image on it the image that I painted on the second day that I was in prison from the beginning in 1991 which was a Mongolian warrior with an eagle on but it's all in black and white just a pencil because that's all I was allowed and we plastered that over the hole of the cell so it had a picture of it and then that gets cut down into NFTs and then we've done a 4G 4D digital image of the cell itself which then explodes into it and then we've incorporated it with this rapper called Suspect who does a song which he wrote for the NFTs and for my show and the whole thing then becomes an NFT which is a big package which we'll put up to the public in about a month to finish it all off all the technical side of it because it's all digital based and you actually buy this NFT and you get a digital copy on your phone that's all you do get like shares people buying shares aren't they? in a way, yeah we become I try to explain it to people about you know what is it and really the artist becomes a token he becomes a coin so like this the Suspect is one coin I'll become another coin even though we're not coins we're just so if you blow up the shares go up? the shares go up, yeah it's exactly the same thing people then invest into you through these NFTs that they can buy at whatever price they're able to buy them at but because we're only doing a limited edition it'll still be quite expensive by the time they come to buy it but then we'll do other things that come off from that all different types of NFTs even just stickers and things like that and then copies and prints how's that? get a podcast on it post on it I'm just about to blow up I'm going to take things to new heights I'm just about to level up I feel as if I've leveled up I'm just about to go even higher yeah so you can turn yourself into an NFT we'll talk about that yeah let's do it then separately because it's fantastic the reach you get you're not no longer just an artist in your room you're an artist who could reach nearly 100 million people on the planet because it goes all over the world instantly free of charge as well so there's not all these big fees that you have to pay because joining the blockchain it's out there it's open source it was given to the world so anybody can join it and use it yeah and it's going to eventually eradicate the banking system because people will be on that yeah well that's the start minute they'll start new their money currency will be finished for the next three to five years they've already been in China they're taking away in China where people are getting well one of my sons is well both of my sons are deeply involved in China one speaks fluent Chinese and writes it as well and when he was in China it started off a few years ago where everything was on the phone so he just walked out of the house he didn't need money he didn't need his bank account didn't need anything as long as it was on the phone on an app called WeChat you could walk on a bus and the money would be taken out you could walk in a shop pick something up and the money's taken off you and towards the end you didn't even need the phone once he got the 5G they didn't even need the phone it just came off facial recognition so you could walk in a shop with no phone, no nothing walk out with the goods there'll be chance to see you because of your face and that's coming here pretty soon just as well you never got as facial recognition we couldn't do anything it's unbelievable the technology it's blown my mind how you know about that but clearly you're an intelligent man I know people probably say no but you're still done 20 on years in prison yeah I want that club I wonder yeah but you were still top of the tree to get to that level and still be here talking about it shows you the caliber a guy you are shows you the trust that you had all around the world and the things that you're doing now that you're at stuff the stuff that you've just mentioned there that is mind blowing that you could have put your mind to and be here with the crop you've stayed out you feel proud that you're making these changes because even when you're speaking about your art you can see how happy you were obviously listening crime doesn't pay it fucking doesn't no it doesn't but to be doing what you're doing now and to be staying out and there must have been a lot of temptation either it's that but to be staying clean and sticking to something that you believe in and taking your art to that level do you feel proud? yeah I feel proud but I think also I think you need a purpose when you come out of prison and you just you've been in prison and just cracking on with what just the same then you fucked when you come out you need a purpose inside the prison and that needs to be given the opportunity because when I was in Full Sutton and Long Light and all of them not Long Light and they're white moor in a capacity of 5,000 people there's under people in education so something's wrong there, isn't it? they're not they're not housing people to be educated they're housing people to come back in again and they wanted to change it they just changed the education system in there and educate people I'd even forced young offenders me to they can't come out until they've done certain things you've got a GCSE even you go and get a GCSE and we'll give you a week off or something like that go and get a fucking ale and we'll give you a month off force them to do it because they won't do it by themselves just busy smoking what is it now that fucking shits, spies something like that 75% or 80% of people end up back in prison anyway so the percentage is pretty high but then it becomes a moneymaking scheme because it's 40-50 grand per year so it's a lot of money to be made for prisoners which is slavery as well because they're doing jobs that are getting paid for people just they're menial jobs that they give in prison I would never have done them there I didn't go to work I went to education so you don't get hardly any money when you go to education but that was a way forward for me but you've educated yourself for anybody that's watching that's maybe you think the life of crime is a place to be Steven Wood, advice would you give for them? Well yeah, it's a great place to be if you want to be miserable lonely cast away from your family and the potential of even being shot dead or abused all the way through your fucking criminal career so good luck with that just go to school and get your education and earn money that you can go and spend because if you think about criminal money it's not even it's not worth the amount of money that a normal pound is worth it's worth about 20p by the time you've had to disguise it and hide it and cover it it's just not there and the amount of people that do make it to the top the consequences of any slight failure is massive amounts of fucking jail 16 and a half years for me is a maximum I think that a man can survive before that institutional thing starts to kick in and then 20 odd years, 30 years I think you're institutionalised anyway by that time so the smaller sentences but forced education What about turning your life? Anybody have approached your turning your life into a film? Yeah, we've got a few things at the moment a book first Yeah, a book first name for a film Is that on the paint line? Yeah, we started the book Because that's an art in the craft as well Yeah, I need help I've got help for all that sort of stuff There's people I've got good people behind me looking after my interests as well so not to be used and abused What do you see? Do you see any of the films below? Have you ever seen them below? Film Johnny Depp? Yeah See if you see these films does it remind you of yourself? Yeah, the one we've... I hope I forget the name Born in the U.S. is it? We've... We're just flying backwards and forwards with the CIA and all that to America Oh Was that not below? Was it below? Johnny Depp, we were flying No, he was... What's he called? Tom Cruise Tom Cruise, that was it Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, that one He couldn't fucking take off the runway to move the runway I've been in that position I've had stuff in the planes flying from Columbia into Venezuela with it and we've landed in the fucking bottoms of the trees on the runway, on the gate at the bottom That's how tall she was Oh, what's that film that's all over? Yeah, that one did, yeah Yeah He's always doing something I had something doing I had a sniper on and obviously when he says he watches army films he's like, that's all bullshit it's nothing like that but some of these films are... Some of them I like it, yeah I hope if we get to it mine will be like it because, yeah, there's a few times when it was a bit airy fucking plane drive flying in my abyss But the future's looking bright for you Yeah, looking forward to that and ticking it Well, we're hoping to tick it around the country but also to other countries once I get my passport back I must like say it's only a year it's not far off now Yeah, you fucking smack it out of the park man, it's game time this is you putting everything in place for then when you're completely free How do you think you'll feel sitting on a plane though? Do you think you'll be nervous walking through customs and shit? Yeah, that'll be a strange day going through the customs You're going to get stopped at every fucking every customs, don't you? Yeah, I use it as a joke and say to people you can come with me the first time and all that fuck off, I'm not coming at you That's their passport, start forgive me anywhere they travel they're going to get fucking searched Yeah, I think I'm going to have to travel on my own for the first time I don't think everybody will be 10 feet behind I'll be fucking travel with you anyway But it will be strange Yeah, yeah It'll break back a lot of emotions for you He will do a mark fucking right down and cry customs I don't know what you've done something You're a free man now Stephen you've done over 10 years now in books, films, paintings all the stuff that you're doing in the background listen if I come on a day and tell me your story listen, I've thoroughly enjoyed it I think you're a good man I think you're 100% I believe everything that you say you're going to do clearly very intelligent but if I come on a day and tell me your story I appreciate it Would you like to finish up on anything Stephen? Just the two worlds in the criminal world and the normal world stick with the normal world and fucking educate yourself because that's all the other world does is educate yourself they educate themselves away from us we need to educate ourselves towards them and that way we'll not be going into these fucking places for 16 and a half years and rotting in jail education that's all I can say yeah health and education keep it going we will leave all the links for your Instagram and stuff for your paintings and in the description box shout out to Harry as well for setting up the interview thank you brother and listen Stephen God bless for the future and I hope to see what you do yeah we'll learn that see you next definitely brother thank you see you later