THEY lived the high life in European holiday hotspots while trading in misery back home in Britain.
Drug kingpin Stephen Earle enjoyed life in sun-drenched Portugal while his accomplice Colin Wright played rounds of golf, dressed in designer gear and owned a white-washed villa in southern Spain.
The pair were part of an organised crime gang that ran an underground amphetamine factory and trafficked heroin and cocaine across the UK.
Their sun-soaked lives were brought to an abrupt end after they were extradited back to the UK in a National Crime Agency operation that took down a family crime business.
Earl, of Huyton, Liverpool, and Wright, originally of Motherwell, Scotland, were caught after cops infiltrated messages between the drugs gang on Encrochat.
Earl, 52, used the handle Octo-hand while Wright, 38, called himself Jack Nicklaus, after the American golfer who won 18 major championships.
NCA Branch Commander Cat McHugh told The Sun: “We have disrupted a major organised crime group who had absolutely no ethics, distributing drugs which doubtlessly caused violence, misery and ultimately death.
“By the time they came on to our radar they were very well established and had been operating for around a decade.
“The ampethamine lab they operated had the potential to create £1.1million worth of drugs.
“While encrypted messages revealed a lot about their criminality, there was also a lot of old school police work involved to catch them.”
The mob was headed up by Stephen Earle and his cousin Terence, 50, who was filmed as he was arrested at his house in St Helen’s in March 2021.
By then Stephen was already living in Portugal, having flown there eight months before, while Wright, who ran the Scottish arm of the operation, was living in Spain.
Stephen was arrested in Faro in January this year and sent back to the UK in March. In August, he was given 11 years and four months after pleading guilty to four charges of supplying class A drugs.
Dad-of-one Wright, who went to Spain in August 2020, was last month jailed 13 years on five drugs charges.
He ran a paddle board shop in Spain and his wife is still believed to be living in the tiny village they made their home in Torre Pacheco, Murcia.
Cops recovered designer bags, trainers and watches during a raid on his home.
Stephen’s cousin Terence, 50, originally also from Huyton, was jailed for 16-and-a-half years in April 2023 for conspiracy to supply cocaine and producing amphetamines.
He used the Encrochat handle ThickBoar.
The gang were caught as part of Operation Venetic, the National Crime Agency’s response to the dismantling of the EncroChat service in July 2020.
The encrypted phone network was widely used by criminals until it was infiltrated by Europol in July 2020.
The gangster’s network first came to light in March 2020, as Britain entered its first lockdown, and Lancashire police found 560 kilos of a chemical known as APAA in a lorry.
Three pallets of the liquid were on its way to a secret amphetamine lab in Motherwell where it could potentially create 1,000kg of the drug.
Over the next few days the gang began preparing the lab, but despite messages between them saying the “farm” was ready, they struggled to obtain the necessary solvents for the production process.
Terence Earle and Wright also exchanged photos of the liquid being treated, to check what colour it should be.
Wright helped ship at least 20kg of cocaine and 10kg of heroin, with the former moved from Merseyside to Motherwell and the latter in the opposite direction.
Messages about drug smuggling included references to “butterfly ones” and cocaine blocks stamped with the Ducati motorbike logo.
Liverpool Court heard how Earle and his associates – Stephen Singleton, Lee Baxter, Stephen King and Stanley Feerick – imported drugs into England from Europe and beyond.
Feerick was arrested as he drove a lorry southbound on the M6 containing 2.9kilo of heroin worth £300,000 and £20,000 in cash.
Singleton, 36, from Birkdale, Baxter, 48, from Liverpool’s Norris Green and Feerick, 68, from Dovecot in Liverpool, admitted their roles in the conspiracies, while King, 49 and from Dumbarton, was found guilty following a trial.
Singleton was jailed for three years five months, Baxter was given a sentence of one year 10 months, suspended for 18 months and King was given an 18-month sentence, suspended for 18 months.
Feerick admitted conspiracy to supply heroin and participating in the activities of an organised crime group in July last year.
The granddad puffed out his cheeks and said ‘wow’ as he was jailed for eight-and-a-half years.
