Four members of an organised crime group that ran an industrial …

A National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation dismantled the organised crime group which was based in Merseyside and run by kingpin Terence Earle, 49, from St Helens.

Earle used the encrypted communications platform EncroChat to organise his criminality and enlisted the help of subordinates Stanley Feerick, 68, and Stephen Singleton, 36, from Liverpool, and Stephen King, 49, from Dumbarton, Scotland.

In December 2020 Lancashire Police, acting on NCA intelligence, seized more than 560 kilos of alpha-phenylacetoacetamide (APAA) – a chemical used in the production of amphetamine – from the group, which Singleton had supplied. This would have been capable of producing around £1.1m worth of amphetamine at the lab in Scotland.

The substance was found in a lorry which had been loaded from a warehouse on an industrial estate near a caravan park in Weeton, Lancashire, on the orders of Feerick.

The previous month, at the request of the NCA, Feerick had been arrested by Lancashire Police as he drove a lorry southbound on the M6 motorway. Officers discovered a holdall containing 2.9 kilos of heroin worth £300,000, and £20,000 in cash.

A search of Feerick’s home led to the recovery of another £9,370 in cash.

NCA inquiries found that Earle had also used EncroChat to oversee the trafficking of heroin and cocaine from Scotland to Merseyside, and in the opposite direction, with the assistance of Lee Baxter, 48, of Huyton, Liverpool.

All of the group members were arrested by the NCA in March 2021.

Earle and Baxter pleaded guilty at Liverpool Crown Court on 3 October last year, with Feerick changing his plea to guilty on the day he was due to stand trial. King was convicted by a jury on 15 December, following an eight-day trial. Singleton pleaded guilty on 9 February this year.

At the same court yesterday (18 April), Earle was sentenced to 16-and-a-half years imprisonment, Singleton to three years and four months, Baxter to 22 months (suspended for 18 months) and King to 18 months (suspended for 18 months). Feerick is due to be sentenced on 3 May.