Gang posing as police officers kidnapped 'major drug dealer' and tortured him while issuing £500k ransom demand

An organised crime gang audaciously kidnapped a ‘major drug dealer’ in the street after posing as police officers, before subjecting him to 12 hours of torture while demanding a £500,000 ransom.

All members of the eight strong gang have now been locked up for their roles in the extraordinary plot, in which their victim was ‘arrested’ as he left a barber shop in Hale after having his hair cut. His movements had been tracked by them for weeks. At first he had no idea that the ‘police officers’, dressed as plain clothes officers, were in fact kidnappers, Manchester Crown Court heard.

But soon after his suspicions were raised and he learned that he had actually been abducted after being driven in a lock up in Gorton. There, during a 12 hour ordeal, he was Tasered to the testicles, had his arm burned by a blowtorch and had a realistic looking imitation gun put to his head.

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His kidnappers believed he was an underworld figure ‘worth millions’. They demanded £100,000 in cash as well as cocaine and heroin worth a further £400,000 in order for him to be released. But his family raised the alarm with police after they were contacted with ransom demands.

Armed police raided the yard and rescued him. Five members of the gang were sentenced in 2020. Now the final three have been locked up, including the outfit’s ‘heavy’, who meted out the punishment to their victim and the man his accomplices referred to as ‘Big Dave’.

The victim, who was kidnapped in April 2019, said he had previously associated with ‘bad people’. His kidnappers believed he would have ‘ready access to substantial amounts of cash and prohibited