Criminal cousins stashed hundreds of kilos of drugs in holiday park before setting up £1m 'secret lab'

Two criminal cousins fronted a gang who ran a £1m secret amphetamine lab and shipped huge quantities of heroin and cocaine to Scotland.

The organised crime group (OCG) was led by "kingpin" Terence Earle and his cousin Stephen, who used the EncroChat handles ThickBoar and Octo-hand respectively to import drugs from "Europe and beyond" before trafficking them between Merseyside and Motherwell. The gang also stashed hundreds of kgs of a drug in a Blackpool holiday park which they used to create amphetamines in a £1m secret laboratory, the ECHO reports.

However, the gang's racket was finally unravelled by a National Crime Agency (NCA) probe, codenamed Operation Joyfully, which was set up to investigate the Earles' racket. The investigation formed part of Operation Venetic, the UK NCA-led law enforcement response to the infiltration of the encrypted communication platform EncroChat.

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This week Stephen Earle, who fled abroad in July 2020 as the NCA's net began to close in, was the final member of the gang to appear before the courts. After being extradited back to the UK following his arrest by the Polícia Judiciária Fugitive Team in Faro, he pleaded guilty to drug supply charges and will be sentenced on June 14.

The Earles enlisted the help of subordinates such as Stanley Feerick and Stephen King to carry out illicit activities. The operation saw the group utilise European contacts to ship in drugs into the UK before setting up supply routes between Merseyside and Scotland. They also had a "secret laboratory" that helped them pump out even more drugs into vulnerable