Bournemouth and Liverpool county lines drugs gang jailed
Nine members of a drug-dealing gang who used a phone number dubbed the "Scouse Porky Line" to sell cocaine and heroin on a commercial scale have been jailed.
The men, who couriered Class A drugs between Merseyside and Dorset, were thwarted by a major police surveillance operation in 2018. Police intercepted drugs worth £150,000 in a car on a low loader lorry, Bournemouth Crown Court heard. The men were jailed for between 32 months and 10 years. All of the men had been convicted at previous hearings of conspiracy to supply cocaine and heroin. The court was told the Scouse Porky Line was a well-known source of Class A drugs among users in Poole and Bournemouth. Thomas Garcia, 26, and James "Porky" Brown, 31, were the gang's leaders, with the drugs hotline they used taking its title from Liverpudlian Brown's nickname. Customers would call the phone number, which was manned hundreds of miles away in Liverpool, and place their order. Garcia and Brown then gave instructions to their "local managers" based in the Kinson area of Bournemouth, where they received "bulk quantities" of drugs, prepared them for sale and sent the cash made back to Liverpool. Prosecutor David Jenkins said officers from the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit spent months gathering evidence before they "swooped" in November 2018 as members of the county lines gang headed towards Bournemouth with a delivery. Passing sentence, Judge Jonathan Fuller QC said evidence of the phone line's existence dated back to December 2017 but it was likely to have been operating for longer. "This was a highly organised criminal enterprise and its duration was significant," he said. The following men were convicted at Bournemouth Crown Court of conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine: