A pair of drug kingpins and aspirant Kray twins have been jailed for more than 25 years after police found a stash of drugs in a garden shed.
Essex-based drug barons Robert Smith, 37, and Ismet Salih, 33, have had their empire dismantled in a joint operation by the National Crime Agency and Met Police.
The pair of kingpins are believed to have been using encrypted messaging platform EncroChat to run their drug dealing operation, raking in more than £1.25million in profits by selling cocaine and cannabis to areas around Essex.
The intended Kray twins they want to become dominated the East London underworld in the 1960s, killing rivals and socialising with the stars.
The Kray brothers were jailed for life in 1969 for the murder of gangland rival George Cornell.
Labelling themselves the ‘Chadwell Cartel’ – a reference to where they were selling narcotics – the pair aspired to be like East End gangsters, Ronnie and Reggie Kray, whose organised crime gang terrorised London in the late 1950s and 1960s.
But investigators arrested them in September 2021 and three kilos of cannabis, worth £15,760, were found in Salih’s garden shed.
Smith was also discovered with £7,635 in cash in a plastic bag in his shorts at the time of his arrest.
They were subsequently charged with drugs and money laundering offences, which they admitted at Basildon Crown Court in Essex, per DailyMail.
Andrew Tickner, from the Organised Crime Partnership which led the investigation, said: ‘Robert Smith and Ismet Salih were behind a criminal network which saw vast amounts of cocaine sold in Essex and beyond.
‘Their dream of becoming gangsters like the Kray twins was swiftly shattered by our investigation. Instead, their reality is lengthy prison sentences.’
Based on new revelations, investigators further linked the pair to the seizure of 123 kilos of cocaine and laundering profits of more than £1.25million in cash.
They discovered Smith had headed an organised crime group which supplied cocaine and cannabis to the Chadwell St Mary and Grays areas of Essex and was using Salih and another associate, Lee Twigg, as his trusted seconds-in-command.
Smith reportedly used the handle ‘demonfern’ to source the cocaine from a Dubai-based seller on EncroChat, who went by the names ‘blacknarco’ and ‘darkestnarco’.
Salih and Twigg collected the cocaine from Smiths’s suppliers in the UK and then stored and distributed the drugs for him. They also ensured cash from the sale of the drugs made it back to the suppliers.
Smith and Salih exchanged more than 6,000 messages on EncroChat – predominantly about the sale of cocaine.
Some of these contained ledgers relating to the profits made from customers, and money paid to their supplier for future stock. DailyMail reported.
In a hearing at Basildon Crown Court on Wednesday, Smith was jailed for 16 years and six months, and Salih received a nine-year custodial sentence.
