Drugs gang behind £1million amphetamine lab used Costco car park for handovers

A drugs gang behind a £1m amphetamine lab used a Costco car park for handovers, a court heard. The organised crime group, led by 'kingpin' Terence Earle, trafficked lorry loads of heroin and cocaine between Merseyside and Scotland, while chemicals used in producing the amphetamine were stashed at a holiday park on the outskirts of Blackpool, a judge was told.

But Liverpool Crown Court heard on Tuesday that a National Crime Agency probe, codenamed Operation Joyfully, was set up to investigate the 49-year-old's racket, which was run over encrypted communications platform EncroChat. Earle, of Freckleton Road in St Helens, 'enlisted the help of subordinates' such as Stanley Feerick and Stephen King, the court heard.

Martin Reid, prosecuting, described how the ring was involved in the importation of drugs 'from Europe and beyond' and had a 'secret laboratory' in Scotland. But it was halted when Lancashire Police seized 560kg of alpha-phenylacetoacetamide - also known as APAA, a chemical used to make amphetamine - from the OCG in December 2020, reports the Liverpool Echo.

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The three pallets, comprising of 28 boxes in total, were found in the rear of a lorry which had been loaded up at a warehouse at Reams Hill Holiday Park - a caravan park in Weeton, near Blackpool - on 68-year-old Feerick's orders before being stopped by police using a stinger. This quantity would have allowed for the production of around 1,000kg of the drug, worth £1.1million, at the "industrial scale" lab.

Earle and his associates had previously arranged for seven boxes of APAA to be transported in a Ford Transit van from the same site to a garage in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, in