THE KING OF COKE

How promising young Hibernian player dumped football for drug-dealing Richardson at centre of feud that has left him a marked man

- BY NORMAN SILVESTER

HE was a promising footballer who is reputed to have played in the same Hibernian youth team as former Celtic and Scotland star Scott Brown.

However, the Edinburgh teenager gave up the chance of sporting glory to pursue a career in organised crime that currently sees him behind bars and at the centre of a major international gangland war.

So how did a once promising footballer end up on the wrong side of the law?

It would appear he was born into a life of crime - flogging drugs at the age of 12 to other kids in his school playground.

Richardson first came to public attention in 2007 when he and his dad, also called Mark, were caught dealing coke. Mark snr, 44, was jailed for four-and-a-half years and his son, 19, for 32 months.

Two years later, he was arrested as part of an alleged dog-fighting ring in the east of Edinburgh. Charges were later dropped amid claims witnesses were too scared to testify.

In 2010 Richardson was back behind bars, having been sentenced to 10 years for his part in a cocaine and crack cocaine distribution network.

At the time he was said to have a criminal empire worth £5million in property, vehicles and jewellery.

He was also said to control almost three-quarters of the capital's deadly cocaine trade and was one of the major players in Scotland's underworld.

His customers ranged from cocaine-snorting partygoers in the capital's trendiest clubs to desperate addicts hooked on rocks of crack.

Undercover police had been on Richardson's trail for months and had tailed him to meetings with Kevin "the Gerbil" Carroll - the feared enforcer for Glasgow's Daniel crime clan.