Football coach lived secret life as big time drug dealer handling more than £1 million

A football coach lived a secret life as a drugs boss and handled more than £1 million in dirty money. Connor Roberts was a respected coach for youth teams across Merseyside.

But the 30-year-old was also a 'well-established' dealer who traded in huge quantities of cocaine, heroin, ketamine and cannabis. He believed his use of an EncroChat phone made him 'invincible', but following the law enforcement hacking of the encrypted network he became him the latest criminal to be jailed.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that Roberts was identified as the user known as "GinCleaner". Messages uncovered during the hack showed that Roberts, of New Street in Halsall, had been involved in discussions concerning the supply of 40.5kg of cocaine, 6kg of heroin, 19kg of ketamine and 19kg of cannabis and had handled cash totalling £1.3m, the Liverpool Echo reports.

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Among the 28 other usernames he worked in partnership with were "LousySteak", "YoungOwl", "MalletLand" and "ApeChest". One of the most revealing conversations found in his communications came in the form of a chat with "GassyZebra" and "OctoMoon" on April 2, in which Roberts stated that he had purchased a graft phone - commonly used by county lines drug dealing operations to send out flare messages, texts advertising illicit substances for sale - from his cousin's partner for £300,000 the previous week.

He described the "24-hour" line as "the heaviest phone about", saying that its previous owner "had it for 12 years" but had "had enough, he's legit now" and had "got loads of houses". The vendor was said to have subsequently received an offer for