A NOTORIOUS criminal who used to traffic drugs with “Britain’s Pablo Escobar” has revealed the fatal mistake that ended his career.
Stephen Mee was born into a large family in Northern Manchester in 1958 and began his life of crime in 1967 at just nine years old, burgling his own school and shoplifting from the local Tesco.
Mee was one of nine children – although two of his siblings died at young ages – and his family struggled to make ends meet.
His mother suffered from Parkinson’s and his father was an electrician.
He was 11 years old when he started stealing cars, having pinched 13 by the start of his teeenage years.
Mee was caught asleep in a vehicle he had stolen, and at age 13 was in Foston Hall young offenders institution in Derbyshire.
He would go on to run a “legit” bicycle shop for a few years in his early 20s, but then got together with some friends as part of a plan to buy cannabis in bulk from Amsterdam.
While the Dutch coffee shops would turn them away, eventually they secured a kilo of the drug from a Hell’s Angels chapter, and within months they were trafficking hundreds of kilos per trip.
He would smuggle cannabis from Holland into the UK via trains and boats, before expanding to cocaine.
Mee’s first task was carrying a suitcase packed full of 24kg of cocaine to Ecuador, dressing like a businessman to seem inconspicuous and slathering the drugs in mustard and piccalilli to mask the smell.
But in the early 1990s, undercover cops caught him smuggling cannabis and cocaine into Britain.
While he was on remand in Strangeways, he met Curtis Warren, a notorious drug lord from Liverpool.
Speaking on the Second Chance podcast in December, Mee said of Warren: “We had been to the same places – all over Europe, South America – done the same things.
“I used to do food for him, we used to play chess together. I got to know him pretty well.”
Ahead of his sentencing, and facing a lengthy spell behind bars, Mee began plotting his escape.
While being ferried to Manchester Crown Court to face his sentence, he was freed in a daring hijack along the M62, where a blue Vauxhall Astra sped in front of the prison bus carrying him.
He leaped out of the bus and got into the vehicle, dragging with him an unwilling Alan Seddon, 33 – who was handcuffed to Mee and not involved in his drug case.
Seddon later reported to the court, according to a Manchester Evening News article from the time.
Mee was sentenced to 22 years in absentia on charges of smuggling cocaine from Colombia.
Curtis Warren, dubbed the UK’s Pablo Escobar, built an empire that earned him £200million and was once top of Interpol’s most wanted.
By 34, he had properties in Wales, Spain and Gambia. He also had a winery, petrol stations, apartment blocks, a private yacht and mansions across Europe.
And he had more than 200 rented houses in his home city Liverpool. He even once appeared on The Sunday Times rich list.
The so-called “Cocky Watchman” was just 12 when he began burgling homes. He was said to be small for his age, which helped with getting through windows.
When Warren was 20, he was jailed for five years for armed robbery. He had nicked £8,000 in used notes.
He got into the drugs trade when he got out, becoming friendly with the big Cali cartel.
And in 1991, he went to Venezuela himself with fellow drug dealer Brian Charrington to import 500kg cocaine, sealed inside lead ingots.
Customs contacts gave him intel about checks in advance so he could avoid the drugs being detected.
It became one of the biggest drug shipments to enter Britain and made Warren £87million.
Warren was eventually busted in 1992 when a second shipment of 1,000kg of cocaine was seized.
But the prosecution collapsed the following year.
He later became close to Stephen Mee after they played chess together while banged up in a top security jail.
In 1996 they began plotting more drug deals, but by October that year Warren’s safe house an hour from Amsterdam was raided.
Police found weapons, 400kg of cocaine, 1,500kg of cannabis resin, 60kg of heroin, 50kg of ecstasy and a lot of money in a haul worth around £125million.
In 1997, he got 12 years in a maximum security prison.
Warren left the Netherlands when he got out in June 2007 and began visiting a girlfriend in Jersey.
The Serious Organised Crime Agency was closely watching him and he was arrested again on conspiracy to smuggle cannabis into Jersey.
He was found guilty in 2009 and sentenced to 13 years in prison.
He fled to Amsterdam and began a working relationship with Warren.
The pair would mostly sell cocaine in Europe while maintaining contacts abroad in South America.
But Dutch police tapped Mee and Warren‘s phone conversations, and they had a major breakthrough when they realised Mee had been sent to Colombia to meet with the Cali Cartel.
It related to one of the biggest cocaine deals known to the UK.
When half a tonne of cocaine arrived at Warren’s house, Dutch police moved in and arrested the pair and several other associates.
Mee served seven years in a Dutch Triple-A category prison after the fatal mistake, failing to notice that his communications had been bugged and going to Colombia.
In 2004, he returned to the UK to serve the 22 year sentence he was given in 1993.
Mee was released from prison in 2012 after serving 16 and a half years.
He had been a keen artist from an early stage in life, drawing cartoons as a youngster before progressing to sketching rock icons.
He left school without any qualifications, but he took an apprenticeship in graphic design, as well as studying sign writing at Oldham College of Art and Design.
While serving time in prison, Mee studied fine arts at OCA Bucks University and graduated with honours.
During his studies he won the Kostla awards top platinum prize and a bronze prize for his work.
Since being released from prison he has been working as a professional artist.
His paintings depicts his past life in art and crime up to the present.
He has presented his artwork to esteemed patrons such as Vivienne Westwood and other artists from the fashion and music industries.
His art has been featured on the Saatchi Art Gallery website and available for sale.
When asked to describe his life now, he said: “I’m an artist, that’s all I do. I got more pleasure out of painting pictures than counting millions of pounds.
“I knew I had something to come out [of prison] to and that helped. It gave me the position where people could recognise I was trying and they would help me.
“If you are trying, which nobody could say I haven’t, eventually you get into a position where you can help people to do the same – that’s what I’m trying to do at the moment.
“Everybody deserves a second chance and I’ve taken mine.”
