The Underworld Podcast - Curtis Warren, the English Gangster Who Tried to Take Over an Island:

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

Curtis Warren wasn't known as "Cocky" for nothing. Perhaps it was his rapid rise to the top of Britain's drug trade, becoming Cali's man in Europe and Interpol's "Target One". Perhaps it was a fortune so big it made him the only narco on the UK's rich list. Or perhaps it was the time when, just weeks after emerging from a Dutch prison, he tried to take over an island. Bulgarian wines, county lines and way way more in this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Give me a break. Give me a break. Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat. We off a piece of that Kit Kat bar. Have a break. Have a Kit Kat. June 30. 2007. A twin prop Bombardier Q400 plane touches down on the small Channel Island of Jersey. His steps descend, and with them a stocky, well-built middle-aged man named Curtis Warren, or cocky, to cops and associates. He's been in Dutch prisons for around a decade,

a free man for just two weeks, but he's not about to go straight. Special Branch police stopped Warren at the baggage conveyor, asking what a man once top of Interpol's most wanted is doing in a small tourist-friendly island off the coast of Normandy. Never want to back out of a confrontation, Warren replies, coolly. I could take Britain back. It could take Jersey easily. Welcome to the Underworld podcast.

Welcome back to the Underworld podcast. I am Danny Gold, and I'm here with Sean Williams. This is the podcast where we dive into the world of transnational organized crime and all the fun things that go with it. Sorry for the break we just took. We might actually have a little bit more of a break coming because we're actually working on, some deals and something exciting that I think is going to let us kind of do more of this and do

it better. So stay with us. Things are going to get pretty, I think, solid from here on out. Yeah. And as it's been up for a while, we've got the merch as well. So we've got teas. The mugs. People love the mugs. The mugs look good, man. Yeah, they're cool, right? Yeah, I really like it. I've got a couple myself. Yeah, there's all kinds of stuff online. So, yeah, If you visit our website Underworldpod.com, there's tons of stuff you can choose from. And yeah, like you said, I think we've got some really cool stuff coming up in the pipeline. So, yeah, this could be, there could be a little break off to this one. But I'm excited about this one.

I've been kind of looking into this guy for a while. I kind of wanted to do an episode on Curtis Warren for a couple of reasons, really. Like one is that outside Liverpool, his hometown. He's kind of pretty unknown. despite being Britain's richest gangster and kind of like really interesting history to take in South American cartels a lot. Yeah, I have no idea who he is.

But, you know, so far I've got to say, I like the cut of his jib. Guys got a good jib. Yeah, we pride ourselves on that jib. Yeah. I actually tried to write about him. I think it was last year. I put together some pitch.

And as usual, you know, we work for free a lot as freelance journalist and this one didn't come off. Yeah. But yeah, I was just kind of obsessed with how he tried to take over this entire island. And I thought, well, you know, people in other countries would be interested here what this place is like. And I'm going to get into that at a bit because, yeah, I go into some of the peculiarities, I guess you could say, about my country, of which there are millions. So, yeah, here it goes with Curtis Cochie Warren. The nickname could use a little bit work.

I mean, I understand why, but it just doesn't really flow. I agree. I agree. I mean, is that a word in the States? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, cool. It's one of few words that's going to come across to this one. So I reckon there's going to be a lot of translation. But this is like, I want to kick it off with a pretty gung-ho description of Warren by a Guardian journalist John Sweeney in 2000. If you don't know John Sweeney, look him up online. He's like this kind of well-known for doing these documentaries where he kind of screams in people's faces. it can, you know, rub people up the wrong way. And you might guess it from this quote.

Anyway, it's nigh uncertain that cocky is the richest criminal in British history. Some of it's stashed in tax havens and Swiss banks. Some of it placed in a beautiful flat in Liverpool's fancy whopping dock development. Bang opposite the Customs Museum. A small fraction on motors. Normally a quietly unfussy Lexus, Aircon a standard. Some of it on office blocks. Some on 200 properties in the northwest.

mainly let out to DHS claimants, that's a, that's the dull. Not forgetting, they said, a mansion in the northwest, a villa in the Netherlands, a casino or two in Spain, a disco in Turkey. The interesting question is, where's all that money now? I almost need like an American English translation on that writing. Like what? Nye uncertain. I mean, he's just butchering the beautiful language, you know?

He's old school, man. And anyway, you didn't even know midday earlier. Yeah, that's true. Noon, noon, yeah. And he continues, anyway. Cocky, with his desperate damn pecks, his head shaved as round and smooth as a billiard ball, and his thick black eyebrows marching across his face,

like, Christ, asylum-seeking millipedes, looks like the original children's TV arch villain, the evil hood, the jerky-lim puppet whose eyes backlit in Thunderbirds, trying but failing to throw a spanner in the works of International Rescue. The real hood, however, was much more successful. No disrespect to my guy Sweeney here, but like calm down. I mean, what even, like, asylum-seeking millipedes?

I know. This is terrible. 99% of the time I've got no time for that phrase, but I just want to let stuff like that sing in this episode. This is true crime after all, right? Yeah, Jesus. And Thunderbirds? Does that even ring a bell?

Is that a thing in the States? I don't know, man. All right. Yeah, I just enjoyed it. Anyway, back to the story. Curtis Warren. He's born in the neighborhood of Toxteth in Liverpool in 1963. Toxtiff is one of these old kind of terrace or row house estates that sprouted in the 19th century, when workers at Liverpool's factory make it one of the world's richest cities. An Irish flea in the potato famine, which many people now think of as a form of genocide.

They're joined by Europeans and Chinese fresh off the docks. Liverpool still has a Chinatown now, home to about 10,000. people of Chinese background, by the way. It's one of my favorite places in the UK, Liverpool, like, such a cool place. Yeah, I've never got into the English north. You know, Liverpool, Manchester, all that sort of old factory towns. But I've always been kind of fascinating about it. Like, the history is super interesting.

It reminds me of America's Rust Belt. Yeah. But is Liverpool also, is that Peaky Blinders or is that Manchester? No, I think Picky Blinders actually Birmingham. They've all got like Brumminghamy accents and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this, yeah, Liverpool's great.

I mean, like, I'm from London, obviously, but we used to go up to, like, Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool for, like, raves when we were younger, and they were off the hook. Some pretty wild nights there. But, yeah, like you say, these kind of, like northern cities, the factories are shutting down in, like, the middle of the 20th century. Like, folks have to go on the dole, like, by the 80s when Warren's a teenager. like this place is less this exciting new development

that it was back when it was built and it's more like yeah like you say like a rust belt anyway if you want to learn more about that you can like chuck a stone at any Ken Loach movie collection or like there's a million hackney BBC docos that you can learn about play Oknoff TLDR Toxist where Warren's growing up it's a pretty grim place right the Beatles that's over

and he grows up in relative poverty and what's more Warren is of mixed race heritage in a pretty white and racist city, country, you know, the son of a mostly absent Caribbean father who comes in with the Norwegian Merchant Navy and a Lever-Pudleyan mother, with an older brother called Ramon or Raymond and a sister named Maria. And I want to point out that a lot of this episode actually comes from two major sources. One is Peter Walsh, who's this really great journalist who wrote the brilliant book, Drug War, the Secret History, which I've been piling through of late.

Like it's it's a Bible for the British drug industry, history, law enforcement. And he also co-wrote this 2011 biography of Warren called Cocky. And yeah, I mean, we'll find out we pretty much do know why Warren's got that nickname, right? Yeah, I mean, I think we can tell the whole opening of, I'm here to take over burden, like, you know, kind of spells it out. Yeah, yeah. I think that's pretty comprehensive. And beside those books, which we'll put on the reading list, of course,

I'm using a ton of info the Liverpool Echo has reported down the years It's one of the UK's best local papers The Echo I know a few journalists who've had great times there Big up your local newspapers guys Yeah definitely Yeah for sure

One other thing as well It might become apparent further down the line With this episode But I've avoided writing about Famous Gangsters from Britain Mostly because the majority of stuff About organised crime there Is like really parochial

Or well-trodden or just a bit like hero-worshipy, all these liver-spotted old boxes with sovereign rings going on about how they used to smash fellas up in the East End. Or like Rob Banks with Sorn Off, even though 90% of that never happened. I think Guy Ritchie has a lot to answer for with this stuff too, kind of creating this whole aesthetic about what's basically just a bunch of small-time crooks.

And there's, I mean, I like those films, don't get me wrong, but there's this like whole industry, the cottage industry of low-rent, Cockney Giza movies about guys in leather jackets, F-in-Jepin. Yeah, but rock and roll. Folks in the UK, yeah. Rock and roller rules.

Rock and roll. Yeah. We need a sequel, man. His last couple films were terrible, but rock and roll of that movie owns. He's got this new one coming out. I mean, of course it's got Jason Stapham, but I'm going to save that for a flight.

That's exactly the kind of shit I listen to a read-up, well, watch on flights. But yeah, I would call it like Danny Diacore, I guess. But watch Sexy Beast, that's like the best. That's the best British gangster movie ever. Football Factory, man. That was big when I was in college. That was a good one.

Have you, like when you were in England, did you report on this stuff at all? Did you ever do any like soccer hooligans or gangster stuff? Or was it already just kind of overdone by that point? I was a bit young then. I actually like studied the Football Factory as part of my degree, weirdly, in this like movie section of it. I went to a pretty crap uni. But yeah, I mean, I've done some reporting and I used to work for like a local paper in the East End of London and it was pretty rough. So I did some reporting on that stuff.

But no, I'll go back and like write some 10,000 word masterpiece on it when I'm about 50. But yeah, I was out of there by the time I could have done stuff that decent. Anyway, yeah, Warren. Like, I mean, he's different to all of this, right? And we're going to find out why. I mean, he grows up in his tough, poorhood, and he gets in trouble from an early age. Like, when he's 12, he's Nick for driving a stolen car. I mean, like, 12, can you even see over the steering wheelch at that age?

He's into theft, low-level stuff, violence, attacking the police. And eventually he gets jail for five years for his role in a failed arm robbery. And, like, he actually does another stint for, and I'm quoting the drug war book here, a thieving trip to Switzerland, which, I don't know, that's pretty, bloody vague, but okay, sure, he's just like bumming around Europe, robbing stuff. Why out would someone go to Switzerland? I guess you either take the money or out before you stick it in. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, by the 1980s, yeah, Liverpool's drug scene is changing a lot. Traditionally, it's a place of weed with a strong anti-heroine stance. That's Toxtive, by the way. There's this famous graffiti slogan from the time that says, this is Toxtive, not Croxtive, strictly Gangesh? fucking hell, that is a tongue twister. In reference to another Liverpool suburb

that is, by all accounts, still like a terrible place and known as one of the UK's worst places to live. Well, by the 1980s, that's no longer the case. Heroin is flooding into Liverpool, getting hold of young people with poor education, no support from the Tory government, but not much in the way of work.

This is a really bleak period in the UK's history. Industry is dying. The miners are striking, Maggie Fatchez, mates of Reagan. and strangling the working classes. Even on the telly, like, everything just looks brown, grey, smoky and crap. No wonder heroin gets into Britain's major cities. At the same time, uncoincidentally, the rave scene's taking off, punk's going off too,

and with them the use of ecstasy, which is kind of pump priming the market for cocaine. God, I'm doing a few tongue twisters here. Yeah. This is house music, new order, the hacienda. The northwest of the UK is pretty much the epicenter of this culture for a while. By 1995, the UK government reckons 1.5 million ecstasy pills are being taken every weekend. That's quite a lot for a population under 60 mil. I guess a lot of folks are double dropping.

I always thought the rave scene from the UK in that era looked really fun, man. Like in my mind, it kind of crosses the early days of like the internet and other 90s culture, and I kind of wish I had experienced it a bit there. Oh, yeah, it looks incredible. Like those early videos of the Hacienda look unbelievable. I mean, it was still going when I was young. I used to go to some pretty crazy, like, old warehouse raves and stuff. And it still happens, but especially in London, like, a lot of, I don't know, Nimbies killed it,

don't like any sound in their city. So, yeah, I don't know what's going on in raves. But anyway, as per Walsh's book, quote, there was no intrinsic reason why Liverpool should also feature so heavily in the large-scale cocaine importation of the 90s and beyond. But it did rests on a combination of factors. the expertise already acquired in smuggling, a familiarity with the workings of the transatlantic sea trade, a lack of legitimate work opportunities and high unemployment during the 80s,

creating a pool of idle labour. And connections in the Netherlands with what might be called the Scouse Criminal Diaspora, facilitated by the emergence of budget airlines and extra ferry services across the Nils Sea and the Channel. Basically, Liverpool's big, it's poor. It's got a massive pool, history, mates of, on the continent and tons of young people desperate to earn a pound note what the scouse diaspora i know what scouse means but is it just like loads of liverpool people moving to amsterdam yeah pretty much i mean i think we've mentioned it before and i'm going to get into it here but

everything is coming in on those ports in like rotterdam in antwerp in belgium that is where the money is so yeah loads of these crooks from uh from the north west just heading there making making some money. And yeah, I guess like Scouse, it's worth doing a word about these weird British place names of people or Deminims. Being like a million years old, the UK is full of these weird names for local people,

like Scouse is in Liverpool, which I think comes from this old hot pot like Mill, which is once popular there. Some of these are like few kind of slurs these days, especially when they come out of the mouth of a cockney like me. And yes, I am an actual cockney born in the sound of the bow bells. but you've got others like

Jaldies from Newcastles, Smogies in Middlesbrough, Yamms in Wolverhampton, Tafts in Wales. I'm just saying if you hear these words, you know what they are. And these aren't even the official ones, right?

You've got loyners in Leeds, Solopians in Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury? I don't even know how to say that one. Oxonians in Oxford. The UK's basically this giant dungeons and dragons, right, with the kings and queens and lords and ladies and all that bullshit.

I've had just about enough of all this gibberish. Yeah, there's a little more to come. I'm sorry about that. Anyway, digression. Warren. So Liverpool's changing when he's a young man, and by 1990 he's out of prison and running a firm supplying bouncers or dormant

to Liverpool's club scene. And as you can imagine, this is a pretty good way to make connections in the drug trade. And Warren, who's known for being ruthless, he's meeting people in person. Like, he loves doing that, and he has a photographic memory.

He's the kind of perfect guy to take British drugs to a new level. one of the reasons he's so good at trafficking is he keeps on the download doesn't use phones when he doesn't have to no social media yep you know it don't instagram your crimes we gotta send him a t-shirt yeah he can have a t-shirt mine's similar hat to um so around the 80s two liverpudians reach out to arnaudo lucio butero from columbia who's this major supplier of cocaine and he's allied with the

cali cartel butero is going to be arrested for a later massive shipment into holland sentenced to six years, and I guess he's well hidden these days. He didn't like he turned informant or he went on the run or what? Yeah, I don't know. I couldn't find him anywhere else, so I guess he's maybe informant, maybe went on the run, maybe six feet under, I don't know, could be anywhere. Anyway, these guys then make a deal for two boatloads of cokes across the Atlantic to the UK via the Netherlands, and a Columbia Britain Coke network is established.

But cops are watching, Nab one of the guys, and the other has to leave his shipment in the docks to rock. Now, it seems like Warren's in with these guys, right? And in 1991, he makes deals to take over their top spot. Getting cocaine into England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. He makes sure he's as close to the source as possible to get the best wholesale prices. And he just wants to keep on top of everything. He never gets high or drinks. He's in it for the money, the power and the sex.

And he has a string of girlfriends while getting ready for the biggest score of his career. So, 1991, September. Oran and an associate, the Middlesbrough base, Brian Charrington, another major narco trafficker. They sail to France, then to Venezuela, where they broker a deal to bringing over a huge amount of cocaine, smuggled inside lead ingots. UK cops are tipped off, but they get the tip too late and the shipment gets through customs successfully. A second, £2,000 one is tracked. But here's the twist. Charrington is a police informant.

He's even told a handler that, quote, 500 kilos has gone off under the noses of customs. Nice work there, HMRC. That stands for Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, by the way, Dungeons and Dragons. The second shipment passes neatly through British customers at Felixstow, which is a major port on the East Coast, and ends up in a warehouse in the Midlands. Then it's moved to Cheshire, close to Liverpool. The investigators are onto it, and one night they break into its warehouse, empty all the ingots, and resell them.

in the way they think Warren won't notice. Why, like, why go through all that trouble? Why not just wait until he shows up and arrest him? You know, I just, I don't get it. Yeah, it seems like the police at this time have this kind of near obsession with just, like, getting as high out the ladder as they can, and they, they just do so much shit like this. And I don't really understand. But, like, obviously, Warren, this guy with a photographic memory and all that, like, he knows.

And when he's arrested and charged, it's like, the biggest, conspiracy case for cocaine ever in the UK and then obviously it starts to go south. Warren is said to be so well informed at that time that he knows the max length for the custom officer's drill bits so he can smuggle his coke accordingly. But clarify, what does that, what does that mean? So as I understand it, it means that he gets wind of how far customs officials on the border are willing to like drill down into stuff. Yeah, yeah. So he can like choose to have, choose how fat these packages are, yeah.

This is just one of the reasons Warren gets known as cocky over the years, yeah. But nobody's at the time, nobody's been caught handling any of these lead ingots, and the shipping companies obviously just plead ignorance. Authorities try to convict Charrington for lying to his

handlers, and they find over two million dollars in his attic, and another million Swiss francs in the bedroom. He says he and Warren were just on Venezuela on holiday in 91, and this is post-Soviet back Venezuela, by the way, going for a coup every day. Body's piling up.

So, yeah, legit place to get a suntan. Basically, though, by in 1993, the whole case has fallen to pieces. And Warren gets off, as he leaves the court, he reported he tells the case officer, quote, I'm off to spend my 87 million from the first shipment, and you can't fucking touch me. I reckon that's a bit cocky as well. Yeah, it's a solid movie line. Amazed there's not a film about this. And I'll tell you who wasn't cocky after the trial, Danny.

British cops, that's who. At first, I didn't think it was real. I woke up to this blinding light, and I was transported to another place. Pluto TV! Then I heard a voice. Come with me if you want to live. There were thousands of movies and shows, and they were all free.

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Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. I bet they're rather embarrassed. In fact, I bet they basically let a snitch fob them off and one of Britain's most notorious gangsters slip through their fingers,

even though they've pretty much called him in the act. Sad. Yeah, what the hell? I mean, this is just totally inept. I don't get it. Was the Charrington guy, was he playing them? Or like what? Are they just really bad at their job?

Yeah. He is taking the piss. And like, I can't really, like, he has his own story that's pretty interesting. He ends up getting arrested like in France and then Belgium and Spain, all over the place. And he managed to slip through the authority's fingers. But I think I'm pretty sure he's behind bars now. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure he's locked up. Anyway, some coppers, they're.

through this embarrassment, they set up this big sting operation, right? And you expect it to have a pretty cool name. It's called Operation Crayfish. Yeah, I'm not sure if this is because of the seaside connection between the British and the Dutch or the ferries shipping coke over from the UK. But I don't know, this thing opens to bring Britain's cocaine trade, which is flourishing like a few other places on Earth in the mid-90s, crashing down.

At first, Warren's just one of many crims on the list of folks. bring coke into the country, but soon he's at the top. And he's even known as Target 1 by Interpol or the Teflon gangster due to his ability to swerve cops at all opportunities, which I'd suggest is a pretty way to do business as a professional criminal. It doesn't rhyme as much as the Teflon Don. It's kind of, you know, just the Brits, once again, bastardizing something that works in America, like British rap.

I'm going to let Stormsy know, he said that. Soon they find out he's living in a flat with his 25-year-old girlfriend, quarterbacking all kinds of deals for every drug imaginable. This is a quote from a police officer from the drug war book, quote. He was really the conduit from which all other traffickers and dealers passed. Everything had Warren's hand in it somewhere. He was the top one. It was the top rung and you had to be tasty to deal with him.

A good dealer in your own right. He didn't mix with time wasters. I think that quote would sound way better in my dad's accent, by the way. Maybe I'll get to record him like doing gangster lines with the pod. Watch out Twitter. I mean, these guys who get to the top, like, it's always just an amazing mix of logistics handling and deal making and charm as well. It's, you know, it's a business when it comes down to it. It's not just shooting people.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of this is just, you know, we like to, like sometimes the media like to spin these rosy stories about people doing these crimes out of passion or because of these, this like megalomania. And there's certainly a amount of that. But like, most of it's just crimes of, I don't know, necessity, opportunity. money. Like, it's all about the money. And this guy loves the stuff. And everything Krayfish is going to learn through the docks in the Netherlands and

is just going to show how big Curtis Warren is getting. And at the time, in the mid-90s, there's a gang war in Liverpool and it's claiming the lives of mofsters and business people. And when Warren's right-hand man, Johnny Phillips, is gunned down, he decides to upsticks and move to the Netherlands

permanently. Who's fighting? Who? Is he involved in the fighting? Because I thought he had his hand in everything and was kind of involved in, you know, shaking hands and making deals with everyone. Yeah, he seems like he's kind of like cruising above the whole thing. So this is kind of the mid-level gangsters getting shot up in the northwest at the time. But like, I guess when Johnny Phillips gets shot dead, it's getting a bit too close to home. So he up sticks. Yeah, I imagine the heat, too, that's coming on with something like this, kind of makes you want to leave and go somewhere where you can kind of just relax a little bit more. Yeah, I don't know.

if the cops are waiting for him to like sell nuclear weapons to the Russians or something. But yeah, either way he shacks up at the villa in the small town of Sassenheim, which is kind of equidistant from Amsterdam and the Hague. And he just becomes the latest in the Scouse criminal diaspora of fled for Amsterdam in the era. He brings his drugs in via Rotterdam or Antwerp, which like I said are the two biggest place for drug shippers in Europe. At this whole time, like Dutch and British cops are just seizing or tracking cocaine, heroin, weed shipments of hundreds of tons.

And it just doesn't seem to matter to Warren. He's just getting so big by this point that his friend says he's becoming a drug trade household name. And a friend says in the book actually like Calvin Klein. So he's pretty massive. And just when it seems like this Teflon mob boss can't put a foot wrong, that's when he slipped up. Warren has made a deal for 400 keys of cope with the Cali cartel.

He's their main man in Europe by this point, by the way. to arrive from Venezuela to Rotterdam in Metalingut's again. From Rotterdam it's supposed to be sent to Bulgaria to be dissolved in wine and shipped off for sale. But someone doesn't pay the freight. And this massive shipment, it just sits there in the docks from the Netherlands. Warren makes a mistake when he faxes a message to clear it, which links it to him, and cops pounce. They smash into his villa and they arrest him in his boxer shorts. Further raids reveal 1.5 tonnes of hash, 60 kilos of herrials of heroin.

in, 50 kilos of ecstasy, hand grenades, three guns, gas canisters, and a load of cash. The whole haul is worth an estimate of 1.25 mil, which I think in those days with the exchange rate is probably over 200 million. Quite a lot. Yeah, I think you said 1.25. I think you meant 125 million. But yeah, I mean, he's no... Oh, yeah. Yeah, 200 million. Like, it's not... This isn't small-time shit. Like, this guy's an international narco level. Yeah, he's big. And surely this time, there is no way out for Warren. and yeah, no, there's not.

In 1997, a Dutch court sentences him to 12 years without parole. 12 years? Like, that's nothing for that. Yeah, welcome to Europe. This is what you get. And like, the case also shows that a corrupt cop is feeding info to Warren, which I guess is no surprise. I guess given to how famous he's been for slipping away for justice for so long. So, yeah, by this point, Curtis Warren is locked up in a Dutch jail.

Probably not the worst on earth, but probably not where he's planned to be as a kid growing up in Liverpool. And folks are coming at him. In 1999, he has a fight with a Turkish murderer, convicted murderer, and he kills the guy. This gets him another four years on his sentence for manslaughter. Warren agrees to pay the Dutch government $8 million from the proceeds of his crime. But seen as the stuff they discovered alone was like a thousand percent more, he's definitely managed to stash the vast majority of his cash offshore. And this is probably a good time to mention, by the way,

the interview bonus we did with journalist Oliver Bulo. This week, actually, about his book Moneyland, or last week, I think, when this is coming out. Like, 8% of all money on Earth is off the books. What the fuck? Listen to that interview, by the way. It's a really fun one to do. Fair warning, his audio is not great,

but it's still really interesting stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, the audio quality is bad, but it's a really, really good interview. Anyway, Warren is moved around six different Dutch prisons after that. And in 2005, even appears on a Sunday Times rich list. It's the only drug trafficker to ever have done so. The rich list is something I don't think is aged that well, basically pawned for the landed gentry.

Bro, people still love like the Forbes list. I mean, that's a thing that's aged pretty well. It's a big deal when it happens. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, everyone loves the drug dealer on the Forbes list. Yeah, yeah. Is anyone on there at the moment? I don't know.

I feel like Chapa was, I don't know if he was on. Yeah, he must have been on that. I feel like he was on there somewhere. Saychi Lott must be there. I mean, I guess, I don't know if he's going to make it. I guess he's making no money in the States, right? So, yeah. But yeah, it's pretty crazy that Warren made it on

and like a measure of the drug empire this guy is built by this point. Anyway, in 2007, he's out of prison, so I guess he hasn't even served like two-thirds of his sentence, which is normal in Europe. And he heads back to Liverpool. And by this time the city is Britain's drug capital, definitely, and it's pioneered this form of drug trafficking known as county lines.

Now, people may be well aware of this, but this is a particularly effective and pernicious form of dealing, whereby major nauts get product out of major cities as quickly as possible, and into rural towns and villages, usually with young, vulnerable boys as the mules, some of whom are made to do the running as part of some debt bondage. County lines is the principal form of British drug trafficking today, And the NCAA, the National Crime Agency, which is kind of like a domestic FBI,

reckons there are 3,000 routes across the country. What's the point of it? Like, is it because all the customers are in the rural areas? Because if there's, you know, dividing up a big shipment to smaller amounts. So if someone gets caught, there's less of a penalty. Like, why do they, why is county lines, country lines, lines, whatever it's called? Why is it a thing?

Yeah, it's pretty much the latter. So it's like the more you can divide up a shipment, the more people you can get involved, the less the cops can kind of trace it to one source. You know, if it's kids that you've kind of got on a leash doing it, then even less so. I think it just works to kind of spread out the product across the country and make it kind of accessible to as many places as possible.

I mean, like, the accessibility of drugs in the UK is insane. You could be in a two-hors town, in the middle of nowhere, where in a more somewhere up north. And you could probably get cocaine delivered within half an hour. Like the cocaine industry in the UK is like nuts. I mean, I think it's the second biggest market for cocaine in the world behind the US and a ton of other drugs.

We're going to have like Vice Drugs report Max Dalyon, by the way, when I'm back from my trip to Ethiopia. He's going to be, I'm going there tomorrow to give you some context. He's going to be telling us all about this stuff and how it's evolved in the pandemic. Yeah, I'm temporarily rescinding my vice band, so I think Max

has some really cool stuff to share. Yeah, sorry about that, man. I just couldn't hold back on it. But back to Warren, so here we get to one of the oddest bits of his legacy, right? When Warren gets back to the northwest of Britain, he makes an almost immediate B-line for Jersey, the old

jersey. This is the original, the one-and-only jersey, nothing like this jersey. Oh, no. So this jersey, the first jersey, by the way, it's the biggest of the Channel Islands. This is a group of eight islands just off the coast of Normandy, France. Jersey, Guernsey, Aldini, Sark, Herm, Greshu, Yetou, and Lihu. Jersey and Guernsey, the two most populated of these islands. And they're both technically known as Ballywicks.

And they're not technically considered part of the United Kingdom, which I think is similar to the Isle of Man. I'm learning so much about the UK. It's mostly gibberish, but I feel like I'm learning a lot, you know? I think if I want anyone to learn anything about Britain is that most of it is fucking gibberish. Yeah. I just want to like take a quick digression here because this, I feel like I end up explaining this over drinks a lot. And like, Great Britain is like way, way weird and it gets credit for. First off, Great Britain, that name, that's the big island.

That's not the nation. The nation is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. With Northern Ireland just basically being a colony on the island of Ireland. So within that, there's England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. They're countries. And then there are territories like the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, which are considered crown protectors. So basically, yeah, like more colonies.

Channel Islands, I'm guessing they were stolen from France at one point. And each of these places had its own language, history, of course, culture. Yeah, I own. Like, I tuned out already. But, um, yeah. I imagine most people have. Yeah. But no, keep going.

I think it's good. I think it's good. Our, our listeners want to learn some stuff. Yeah, I mean, like, there's 10 languages considered indigenous to the UK, which English is obviously the main one, but there's Welsh, Gaelic, Irish, Cornish, Manx, shelter and others. If you get the chance to visit the UK, try watching telly in one of these languages. is actually like really cool

or maybe super uncool and nerdy and just saying I do. And on top of this you've got like Celtic, Roman, Viking, Norman, all kinds of history and culture mixed in. There's this brilliant 1701 poem about Britain being historically this proud Mongrual nation.

I don't know how PC that phrase would be but I think it's kind of cool, right? It's like it's always been a multicultural place so fuck off the BMP. Anyway, Jundins and Dragons, right? That is Britain. Anyway, that concludes my British culture list. I don't know. Do you think we have any listeners still listening?

If we do, I mean, if we do, they're probably the ones that play Dungeons and Dragons. Do you not play this game? Like, loads of people do it in Berlin now. It's become like new call. I mean, I never did. It seems like it's popular in the States. I just never, I never did. What I'm saying is, you know, if they said that there were wizards and witches and fucking dragons, I don't know, I would not be surprised in Britain. And Jersey, right, this is this really weird little part of it And it's this little island off the French coast It's also a tax haven

You know, is it making sense that these Liverpoolian drug dealers Are like really into this place? And this island really likes drugs And the prices are sky high, right? I was talking to a local last year And they were telling me prices are like six to ten times higher Than they are on the mainland So weirdly this little place

Home to 100,000 people is basically the Holy Grail for British narcos. And of those narcs, the Liverpoolians have been trying to stake a claim in Jersey for yonks. They're even doing it today. It's like a proper thing. Here's a former gangster speaking to the echo in December 2019. Quote,

all the hurly-burly that happens in big cities does not happen there. Nothing happens there. So that makes it attractive. Anyway, in 2007, Warren wants to supply Jersey with a million pounds of marijuana and take over the entire island's drug market. That seems a bit excessive, right? Like, if it's 100,000 people,

that's like 10 pounds of marijuana per person. I'm talking pounds the money. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah. So that's what, like, 1.2 million bucks. I mean, I guess that's not a huge amount,

but for an island 100,000 people, it's quite a lot. That adds up. It's a lot more reasonable than 10 pounds per person. person, like 10 weight pounds per person. Yeah, he's like, he's like doing an Uber, right? He's going in, he's got all the backing. He's just like wipe out the competition in one go. But in coming up against the island's police, he's kind of made another pretty fatal misstep. And this time it's not because of who he is, but it's because of who the Jersey cops are. Now, like I said, Jersey is this weird place, right? It's not in the EU. I think it's in the Commonwealth, which is like the former British

Empire. It's a big deal by the. the way. We have our own Olympics and it's quite big. And it enjoys a fair bit of independence where its police is concerned. And cases are often heard by these lay court judges who are known as Jurats or Yura. I don't know. It might be French. Pretty weird. Anyway, so authorities are known to violate European conventions on customs, migrations. They're a little bit cowboy, basically. And they set up Operation Kuala, no idea why it's called that, to grab Warren.

they just bug everything. A baby's pram, his car, they even cross international borders with one wiretap on a higher car from France, which is like totally against the law in the EU, by the way, and that comes up in the court case that he's going to get embroiled in. None of this makes any sense,

but I guess, you know, keep going. Is it like, I mean, it kind of reminds me of course it kind of in a way? Is it similar to that sort of situation where it's almost like its own identity? Yeah, totally. And I was like looking into this, because I like the idea of pitching a story about like the Sopranos,

but actually in the old Jersey. And I got a couple of editors that were interested in it, but they were like, ah, it's happened like ages ago, so I couldn't do the story, which pissed me off because I want to go to Jersey. But, yeah, like, basically you've got this giant gangster, biggest one in Britain. He's come onto this strange little island in the middle of nowhere, and there's these cops on the island, they've got their own rules,

and it's a pretty good fight, you know? It's a pretty even fight. And Warren spends four consecutive weekends in Jersey when he comes out of jail until in July cops pounce on him and they arrest him in broad daylight. His trial lasts just three weeks of an expected six and he's flown immediately back to Belmarsh Prison, which is the most notorious jail in the UK in Southeast London, just minutes from my mum and dad, so shout out to them.

A Jersey judge sentences Warren to 13 years in his absence, and it later demands he pays back, 185 million pounds in the biggest proceeds of crime case ever, which is probably like about $300 million in those days. And he won't pay it back to this day and he's still behind bars age 58. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava theater stage on April 30th, the powerful

vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern country rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamava Theater.com. Only at Yamava Resort and Casino celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in must be 21 to enter. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. His barrister, by the way, told the call about the cash, quote, bearing in mind Warren is with the communications restrictions that entails, even if he had this amount of money, how is he possibly be able to settle this amount of money in 28 days?

It just shows a failure to grasp reality. And I'd just like to say that I think, if I recall, I think this case went all the way to like the Supreme Court in the UK. And this judge, I think like even had a massive go at the police and said that in future they cannot do this kind of thing. But, you know, we're going to let this go. international wiretapping. So yeah, he kind of got screwed over there.

And this is almost where this story ends, right? He tried, he failed. He came, he saw he didn't conquer. But Curtis Warren, there's a kind of small footnote. And it came around this time last year. And that's when a female prison officer was sent down herself by having a sexual affair for Warren at his cell in a prison in Durham near Newcastle on the Scottish border.

So this woman, Stephanie Smith White, has a tattoo of Warren Dunn. Seems she was pretty into him. And so I want to give this episode a bit of a comic relief at the end. And I'm going to let the BBC play us out. Feel free to add your own backing music. Quote, Starford had become suspicion of her relationship with him and a surveillance operation got underway the court heard. They were seen passing notes, which were highly sexualized, the court heard.

And Warren tried to eat one from her when, of her. has tried to retrieve it. It was also found they called each other 213 times in three months. When interviewed by detectives, Smith White was said to be devastated but hope there was an outside chance the relationship could continue. Defending Smith White, Andrew Nixon said she made a quote, catastrophic error of judgment and had, quote, fallen in love with the wrong person. He continues, Smith White had denied cutting a hole in her uniform trousers for sexual purposes, but the sentencing judge said it was hard to imagine why else it was there. Isn't that just like a beautiful tale of love and hardship?

Anyway, that's Curtis Warren, probably Britain's biggest gangster ever. And yeah, I hope we've learned something about how weird Britain is, at least through this kind of gangster's life. Definitely. And I kind of feel like you should have led with this story and led about the whole cutting in the trousers because that, I mean, I want to know more right off the bat. But yeah.

Cutting the trousers is brilliant, eh? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that is, that is Curris Warren. Again, we might have another couple of weeks of a break, but don't forget about us. We have some really good stuff in the pipeline. We've got some like negotiations going on where I think we're going to be able to do this probably a lot more and better if that's even possible after we learned about, you know, warranty and whatever else. But also merch, reading list, all that stuff. interviews are going to keep being put on the Patreon.

We've got one going up today, probably next week. We've got some good people in the pipeline. And yeah, thanks again for listening to the Underworld podcast. Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobil. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities.

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