A good few million had been passed between us. Demand would shift it really quickly. Drop off 40 kilos to Haase one day and a couple of days later go up and collect £200,000, maybe £150,000. Come straight back to London. Count it, stack it, elastic band them and that. Get The Colonel down from Turkey. The Colonel would come – he’d box it up his way. He gets back on a diplomatic passport. Money was returned to Turkey that way.
The economics of heroin dealing are mind-blowing. It cost about two and a half, three grand a kilo in Turkey when we was doing it. We were selling it for twenty. Transport fees would increase the cost to about six or seven a kilo. Most expensive part is getting it across the water from France/Holland/Belgium to here. Most expensive bit – four thousand pound a kilo that. Driver would take the risks. Usually a thousand pound a kilo from Istanbul to France/Holland/Belgium then two thousand pound a kilo from there to here. We were making about fourteen–fifteen grand profit.
Depends on expenses how much of that would go back to Turkey. If we need a couple of cars, we get a couple of cars. We need extra money, we take extra money. I took what I wanted. Out of a £100,000, I could take maybe ten/fifteen from it. We’d tell them back home: ‘This much is coming over. We’ve collected this much and we’ve kept this much.’ Break it down for them. There was never any friction because we were sensible. One collection out the blue was when Haase and Bennett gave us twelve grand. We were expecting about sixty that day. Eddie had it collected because Haase and Bennett were away. That’s why it was so shy. But it was sorted.
The money kept on rolling in. A lot of it was burnt money, because the heroin users would roll it up in a tube when they were chasing the dragon. It burns, singes. We had to spend it in shops over here. To go back to Turkey, it had to be a proper note, no holes or rips. In each load, we had three/four grand of them. I’d walk into Armani and buy suits with them.
Kaya was away for a few weeks then. He had gone to Turkey, then to Italy. He phoned me to tell me a shipment was to arrive in England. I was to arrange it so it all went to John and Ben. Kaya told me it was 90 kilos. When it arrived, it all went to Liverpool. Then a few days later, I met Kaya at Heathrow. We drove straight to Liverpool. When we got there, we told John that we wanted 30 kilos of it back. We had promised to give it to two other contacts we had in Manchester. Because we never let anyone down, as a matter of honour, we decided to take some of it from John’s parcel. He [Haase] wasn’t happy about it but he had no choice. We waited for a few hours, then Paul Lally arrived with the gear. We took it and drove to Manchester and gave it to two friends of ours called Rab and Barney in Manchester. Rab was a very big player in Scotland.
We went to Rab’s house. It was very nice. There were guns everywhere. We had a cup of tea with them and gave them the heroin. But when we opened the bags, the heroin was not in its own bags. It had brown tape around each kilo. This is not the way we had supplied it to them. Haase had obviously cut it. But Rab and Barney were happy with the quantity so we gave it to them and we let it go.
Kaya then returned to Turkey. I waited a few days then called John’s sister and left a message. John got back to me and I told him I would be coming up to collect more money the next day. It had been OK’d. When I got to Liverpool, I made contact and waited in the Black Horse. This was the first time that I met Eddie Croker. He came in with John and Ben. John said that I would be meeting with Eddie on some occasions. Eddie handed me a carrier bag with around £28,000 in it. We shook hands and parted.
A few weeks later, I got a call from John asking when there would be another shipment. I told him I was waiting for a call and that I would let him know as soon as I heard anything. I told him I had two kilos in London and if he wanted them, I’d give them to him. He said yes. It was just to tide him over.
At the time, I had a 357 Magnum. It was chromium plated and it had a laser sight on it. I’d got it off a heroin dealer called Mehmet Sait, who owned a farm with two lakes on it just outside of London in the countryside. Mem always had good guns. Like all of us, he was very good at counter-surveillance. He even had a handheld bug detector which cost £28,000. Before he got in a car, he would sweep it. Before meetings, he would sweep the room. Sometimes I used to go to the canal near where I lived in north London with the 357 he gave me and have target practice. In between fishing.
While Kaya was in Turkey, I got a call from him telling me to give John the gun I had, the 357 Magnum. So I called John and told him about the gun. He was over the moon. I got to Liverpool the next day and met Eddie and gave him the two kilos. John and Ben came around half an hour later to meet me and collect the gun. I gave John the gun with nine bullets. He then asked me to go with them in their car, a silver Ford Granada, to a house to collect some money. They handed me £40,000. They then drove me back to the Black Horse, where I’d left my own car. We shook hands and parted.
I then got a call from Turkey. It was The Vulcan. He told me that Mehmet Ansen, a retired colonel, would be in London to collect the money I’d collected. This would be the first time I’d met him. I packed the money, got it ready and waited for the call. When Ansen called, he asked me to meet him up from the Ebury Court Hotel. I walked into the lobby and saw a man reading a Turkish newspaper. I approached him and asked if he was The Colonel. He said yes. We walked to my car, got in and drove to my mum and dad’s house. He didn’t get out of the car; neither did he say much. I do remember he did have a box of plates and bowls from Wedgwood. I returned to the car with a few bags full of counted money and gave the bags to him. I drove him back to the hotel and left him there. I called The Vulcan and told him he had the money. The next day, Ansen flew back to Turkey with the money. He had a diplomatic passport. He would collect money from England, Italy and sometimes Spain.
John called me and said he wasn’t happy with one kilo of the two kilos of heroin I’d given him. So I told him I would be up the next day to collect it. I drove up the following day and met Eddie, collected the one kilo. I then phoned a contact I had who was known as The Banker. He was Curtis Warren’s partner. I asked him if he wanted it. Even though he was a very big dealer, worth tens of millions of pounds, doing hundreds of kis of coke with Curtis and other things, he said that he did. That’s just the way the drugs business is. Heroin is heroin, no matter how big or small a parcel it is, and dealers will buy whatever they can get their hands on, no matter if it’s one kilo or a hundred. Especially if there’s a drought. I met The Banker in a pub in Anfield and gave him the gear. He was happy. He was a man who didn’t complain. He was easygoing, laid back. Instead of charging £20,000, I asked him for £16,000. That made his day. I said, ‘Don’t give me the money today. I’ll be back with Kaya in a few days to collect it.’ The Banker was a man I trusted more than John and Ben.
When Kaya came back to England, we met The Banker in a pub, at the Old Swan, with a view to doing business on a more permanent basis. We had a chat and told him we would be giving him a few kilos to start off with as we were expecting a shipment. Liverpool had a drought on then; there wasn’t much gear around. We left The Banker and met John and Ben in the Black Horse. We told them that The Vulcan would be coming to England very soon so be ready for a meet and that we would not be talking in a pub. John suggested we meet in a pub and then go to his sister’s house.
When The Vulcan arrived in England, myself and Kaya met him. We then took him to one of our safehouses in London and talked about what had been going on. He was happy with progress and said that we’d go to Liverpool as soon as possible. We got to Liverpool and met John and Ben. It was night when we got to John’s sister’s house. John had made sure that his sister was not in at the time. John made tea and coffee and we all sat down.
We started talking about more heroin. Vulcan and Kaya trusted John but sometimes Ben would behave like a little boy. Most of the talk, because of this, was aimed at John. As we were talking, the doorbell rang and John went to answer it. It was Eddie with a bag in his hand. It was full of money, around £90,000
. We took the bag and Eddie left. We told John that he would be getting all the gear when it was ready. John and Ben were very happy about this and very happy that The Vulcan was there talking to them about all this. Afterwards, John suggested taking us all for a meal but we said no as we had no time and had to get back to London. I later counted the money then booked a flight for The Vulcan back to Turkey.
Business carried on as usual – heroin and money just going up and down the M1 and M6 motorways. But Joey the Turk was becoming a liability and one day, after collecting money in Liverpool, he proved it. That night, I took him to my local pub, called the Jubilee. He started to show off and say things that he shouldn’t have, playing the gangster and so on. Then, when we went to a nightclub afterwards – Oceans on Goswell Road – he walked up to the doorman like an idiot and said, ‘I’ve got a gun on me, don’t pat me down.’ He was just behaving very stupidly. He didn’t even have a gun on him and he didn’t even have the guts to carry one. He was just being a prick. But stuff like that can get you nicked. Then we heard that Bulent Onay had been making threats. He was in prison on remand being interrogated by police, and now was threatening to grass up Joey the Turk and Manuk Ocecki for giving him the heroin. That was the final straw for the pair of them – we decided to get them off the firm. I drove them to Belgium, to the port of Ostend, to get them out of the way. I was glad to get rid of them.
I got back to London the next day and met with Kaya. He told me that one of his mates – whose first name meant ‘bastard’ when translated from Turkish to English – had 50,000 Ecstasy tablets and had asked us whether we could help him sell them for him as a favour. We met him at Queensway. We went for a walk and told him that we didn’t sell tablets. But because we knew him, as a favour we would take them to Liverpool [to John and Ben] and see if our people there could do anything with them. He gave us six tablets. We were going to Liverpool anyway the next day to collect money. So we told him we would get back to him in a few days.
Me and Kaya set off for Liverpool the next day. When we got to the Black Horse pub, I phoned John to let him know that we had arrived. We waited around half an hour when John and Ben walked in with a carrier bag. We told them that we had some tablet samples and that 50,000 were available if they wanted. John took the tablets but said the price was too high and that he would get back to us about it. The meeting didn’t last very long in the pub. John said that he had some Rolex 18 ct watches, covered in diamonds, if we were interested. We said we’d have a look. John then took us to his sister’s house again. She was totally unaware of the crimes that were going on – totally innocent. He opened a big bag containing Rolex and Cartier boxes. We opened the Rolex boxes and started to look at them; they were covered in diamonds. John said they were worth £75,000 each but we could have them for £25,000 each. We took three and told him to deduct the money from the amount owed us. We then opened a Cartier box which contained a necklace, bracelet and earrings. I asked how much John wanted and he said £16,000. Again I asked him to deduct it from the outstanding money.
The money we collected was too bulky at times, so sometimes I would have it changed into dollars. I had a friend in [a West End travel agent’s]. I’d met him in my local boozer. The guy never asked me where or how I got the money and I never told him. I used the alias Billy Moore. One day in April ’93, I changed up $23,000. That was quite common.
One morning, I got a call from Kaya. He wanted to meet me at a mate’s house. When I got there, there was another guy sitting with him called Cracker [not his real name]. This guy had six kilos of heroin and asked if I could help him sell it. I called John and asked him if he wanted it. He said yes. I said I would bring it up that day. I got the gear and drove up to Liverpool. It was night-time when I got there. I rang John and he told me Eddie was on his way to meet me. I met Eddie in a pub on Prescot Road. We then walked into the backstreets and parked our cars boot to boot. I gave him the gear and then I set off back to London. I got a call from John the next day telling me the heroin was no good, that it had too much cut in it. I told him it wasn’t ours and that we were doing someone a favour. He insisted that he didn’t want it as the quality was no good. I told him I would be back up the next day to collect it and then give it back to the guy who gave it to us.
I called Kaya and told him what had happened. I told him I was going to Liverpool to bring it back. I retrieved it, returned to London, informed the fella who we were doing a favour for that I was back and organised a meet. He took me to his house and said sorry for this and sorry for that. He offered me a bag of cocaine, which I declined. He then took me down the street and showed me a Porsche 959 car. He said I could have it for £16,000. I said, ‘No thanks.’ He then asked me if I would work for him. I told him to fuck off, that what he was doing was bad and that it was called ‘back-dooring’ [disloyalty and betrayal to Kaya by working for another dealer]. After that day, I never saw him again.
A few days later, me and Kaya arranged to meet John and Ben at Watford Gap service station to talk about a new shipment coming in. When we got there, they had another guy with them who was sorting out the transport. We talked for a while. Certain things were agreed. Then a plastic bag containing money was handed over and we all parted.
On one occasion when The Vulcan and Kaya were in England, the three of us went to see a guy called Vern [not his real name]. This guy had been sent to do a job in Belgium for us and was given £11,000 in cash. He hadn’t done what needed to be done but had taken the money and gone instead on a skiing holiday. I was told to get a baseball bat and the three of us would pay him a visit. At the time, the guy had a clothes shop selling T-shirts, shirts, leather jackets and coats which he’d imported from Turkey. As soon as he saw us walk into his shop, he told his secretary to leave. All I wanted to do was do him in with the bat, but Kaya stopped me. We sat down and started talking to the man, who was scared shitless. He was told he would never work again and that we were taking the shop from him and his red Mercedes parked out front. He didn’t say a word and just handed over the keys to the shop and the car. Kaya and The Vulcan gave me the keys and said they were mine to do with what I wanted. I didn’t know what I would do with the shop because I didn’t have time to run that sort of business, so I found the person Vern was renting it from. The owner told me Vern owed him over £6,000 in rent, so I just laughed and gave him the keys to his shop. The red Mercedes I used for a while then sold it for £8,000 and kept the money. I never saw Vern again or heard anything about him.
There was so much money that Kaya and me could take as much as we wanted. We just took it out of one of the bin bags from Liverpool – ten, twenty or thirty grand. We didn’t have to ask anyone. The Vulcan didn’t mind. The money wasn’t important – it was about honour, loyalty and respect. That’s why there was no formal system of payment. I’d just take the money and go and buy a car. Or go into the West End and blow £5,000 on clothes or thousands on jewellery and presents for the family.
Meanwhile, on the flip side of the coin in Liverpool, Paul Bennett was busy trying to ‘wash’ or legitimise the masses of cash the gang were raking in. Describing himself as a property developer, he invested in a portfolio of houses and flats, guided by a bent estate agent. But even this couldn’t disguise the millions being generated, forcing Bennett into more bizarre schemes. He started asking an architecture student called Mark at Liverpool Poly, the brother of a pal, to get hard-up foreign students on his course to cash banker’s drafts, pretending the money was for investment in property. In a single transaction, one Jordanian national put £30,000 through his account.
At the same time, Eddie Croker was busy running around processing the heroin supplied by Kaya and Ergun for distribution to middle-ranking dealers on the streets of Liverpool and beyond. On the surface, the former gardener maintained an air of respectability. His wife was a highly paid research scientist at Liverpool University, and he disguised his erratic movements by running a carpet-cleaning company, which he had set up in 199
0, and buying and selling cars from the automart. The frequent changes of car made it more difficult to track heroin movements. After the gear was sold, it was his job to collect money and deliver it to the Turks under instructions from Haase. Croker invested his and the gang’s profits in a string of properties. He bought three for £56,000 each at auction in one month alone. He gave one to his mum and dad in Tilston Road. Though lower down the chain of command than Ergun, his account – detailed in a statement he wrote two years later on 9 February 1995 – gives a fascinating insight into the non-Turkish part of the operation and into the world of drug dealing in modern Britain. The story, which has been edited, begins two weeks before Suleyman Ergun’s induction into the firm in late 1992, shortly after Kaya and Haase had smuggled a massive parcel of heroin from Turkey via France. Part of this consignment was the 40 kilos later found at Bulent Onay’s address, for which he was jailed.
EDDIE CROKER: In early December 1992, I was working with Paul Bennett and John Haase. Around 17 December, I was told by Paul Bennett to go to Scarsbrick Road in Liverpool 11. I was to go there to collect a consignment of heroin and stash it somewhere safe. I told Paul Bennett what vehicle I would be driving and went to the pre-arranged spot. I was met there by a male who recognised me by the car I was driving. He took two black bin liners from the boot of the car he was driving and transferred them to the boot of my car, which was a black Astra.
I then drove to a disused railway embankment, which is nearby. On the embankment, I hid the two bin liners containing heroin in the bushes and the ground. About one week later, I was told by Paul Bennett to take 40 kilos of heroin from the black bin liners and take it to Pirrie Road in Liverpool 9, which is near my home address in Tilston Road. I was told I should meet John Haase and Paul Bennett there. I went to the stash on the embankment and took out 40 kilos of heroin. The heroin within the black bin liners was in quarter-kilo sealed bags and I put them in the boot of my car and drove the short distance to Pirrie Road.
Druglord Page 11
