Mar 28 2011 By Flintshire Chronicle
Andrew Ross
ONE of the leaders of a gang which flooded North Wales with cocaine made a staggering £1.4m out of the enterprise, a court heard.
Andrew Ross, 35, formerly of Llys y Faenol in Hawarden, is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence after he admitted conspiring to supply the Class A drug.
He was back at Mold Crown Court today (Monday) for a financial hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
The figures were not in dispute and an agreed order was made by Judge Philip Hughes which declared Ross’s illegal benefit from drugs supply to be £1,400,465.
But having investigated the available assets, a confiscation order to the value of £20,325 was made, based on items seized by police during the investigation into his activities.
Ross was formally given six months to pay – or he could serve an additional 14 months behind bars.
A second man – Kieran Foulkes, 27, of Arfryn in Halkyn – was said to have made £620,000 out of the illegal supply, but his confiscation order was just £1,689.
However, the orders remain in place and should they come into money in the future then the prosecution can go after them for the rest of the money.
In September 2009, a total of nine members of the gang were jailed for a total of 44-and-a-half years.
Mold Crown Court was told that Ross, assisted by others, organised the distributed of cocaine throughout North Wales.
The cocaine – with a 57% purity – was ‘imported’ from Liverpool.
Drugs went from Rhyl to Anglesey and also into Flintshire, where they were further diluted at a Foulkes’s home. Foulkes was jailed for 18 months in September 2009.