The dropped Home Bargains receipt that helped lock up a £130m gang

A receipt from Home Bargains and B&M proved crucial in an investigation into a multi-million pound drug operation. David Jones has been jailed for his role in an organised crime group who based themselves out of a Greater Manchester warehouse.

The group was led by a drug importer known as 'Thor', who had been planning to smuggle some £130 worth of cocaine from Sierra Leone to the UK, hiding the drugs in a shipment of flour. In total, six men have been convicted in relation to the operation.

Altogether, their sentences total more then 75 years. Among the six jailed was a pensioner who was sentenced on his 70th birthday, the Liverpool ECHO reports.

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Sentencings for the group at Liverpool Crown Court came after the National Crime Agency launched Operation Lemonlike. The seizure of 1.3 tonnes of cocaine with an estimated value of £36 million in wholesale and as much as £130 million street value prompted the launch of the operation.

The drugs were seized at the Port of Felixstowe in Suffolk after the 1,306kg of cocaine were discovered hidden inside a shipment of garri flour. This had arrived on June 8 2022 from Freetown in Sierra Leone, and was headed for an industrial unit at Bradley Hall Trading Estate in Standish, Wigan, after a stop in Morocco.

Darren Schofield, of St Philip's Avenue in Litherland, was described by prosecutor Martin Reid KC as "responsible for the overall coordination of the importation" and "a leading member of a Merseyside-based crime group". Schofield, 45, was given the nickname 'Thor' by the other gang members, seemingly due to his long hair.

Jones was found to be in possession of a kilo of a