Neighbors Jailed for £4M Cocaine and Cannabis Ring – Antony Peers, 67, and his son, also named Antony Peers, 37, were jailed for their involvement in a £4 million cocaine and cannabis supply ring from their neighbouring homes in Astley and Tyldesley, Greater Manchester. The operation was uncovered as part of Operation Venetic, an initiative by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to mine data from EncroChat’s servers in northern France. The Peers were arrested on March 16, 2023, during a raid on five properties, where they seized drugs, designer clothes, a Range Rover Evoque, mountain bikes, a Rolex watch, jewellery, a 30-tonne hydraulic press, and cannabis growing equipment.
The younger Peers, using the Encrochat handle ‘Tubbyfern’, was responsible for organising the sourcing and supplying of cocaine and operating cannabis farms. The elder Peers played a crucial role in the operation, using a hydraulic press in his garage to mix and re-press blocks of cocaine. The pair had been operating the enterprise for years, living just doors apart on North Lane in Astley.
In addition to the Peers, three other men, Ricky Lee, 31, Christopher Gresty, 56, and his son Louis Gresty, 25, all from Salford, were jailed for their roles in the drugs ring. The conspiracy was estimated to be worth £4 million and continued to deal drugs in Manchester, Liverpool, and Coventry during the first coronavirus lockdown. The court heard that Lee used his money gains for IVF treatment and held a ‘gender reveal’ party during lockdown.
The sentencing hearing for the Peers took place at Bolton Crown Court on March 28, 2024. Anthony Peers Snr was sentenced to four years and six months, while Anthony Peers Jr was jailed for eight years and three months. A proceeds of crime act hearing will take place later in the year. Detective Constable Steven Walker of GMP Challenger Team expressed satisfaction that the operation had been brought to an end, highlighting the severity of the crimes and the impact of illegal drugs on communities.
How Was Operation Venetic Able To Uncover The Drug Ring?
Operation Venetic was able to uncover the drug ring through a combination of international cooperation, technological innovation, and the infiltration of EncroChat, a bespoke encrypted global communication service used exclusively by criminals. EncroChat was one of the largest providers of encrypted communications, offering a secure mobile phone instant messaging service that was the sole use for coordinating and planning the distribution of illicit commodities, money laundering, and plotting to kill rival criminals. It had around 60,000 users worldwide and about 10,000 users in the UK.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) and international law enforcement agencies, including those from France and the Netherlands, worked together to target EncroChat and other encrypted criminal communication platforms. This collaboration led to the infiltration of the platform, with data harvested being shared via Europol. The NCA and police forces have been monitoring the users’ activities under Operation Venetic since this infiltration, which has resulted in significant dismantling of organized crime groups.
The dismantling of EncroChat led to the analysis of over 115 million conversations from over 60,000 users worldwide, with Europol providing 700 “actionable intelligence packages” compiled from this information to investigators globally. This analysis has been instrumental in identifying and locating offenders, leading to the arrest of thousands of suspects and the seizure of significant amounts of criminal cash, firearms, drugs, and other assets 2.
The NCA created the technology and specialist data exploitation capabilities required to process the EncroChat data, helping to identify and locate offenders by analyzing millions of messages and hundreds of thousands of images. This operation has been described as the UK’s biggest and most significant operation of its kind, significantly impacting the UK’s organized crime network 1.
In summary, Operation Venetic’s success in uncovering the drug ring was due to international cooperation, the infiltration of EncroChat, and the analysis of a vast amount of encrypted data, leading to the dismantling of organized crime groups and the seizure of significant assets.
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