Police stop was the beginning of the end for regional crime ring

A LLANELLI man has been jailed for his role in a drugs gang which was supplying large quantities of cocaine, ketamine, ecstasy and cannabis across South Wales.

- JASON EVANS Court and crime reporter

The organised crime group’s operation fell apart when the contents of a mobile phone helped police take them down.

The device gave detectives access to group chats on encrypted platforms where gang members discussed their operation but only referred to each other with user names such as “M£”, “Guls” and “Red chevvy guy”. Police then had to set about discovering who the bosses, dealers and couriers were.

Nine men have been sent down at Swansea Crown Court for their parts in what a judge called a “well-organised crime group involved in supplying multiple-kilo quantities” of drugs across South Wales. She noted many of the defendants were family men, and she said their motivation for joining the operation had been one of “greed”.

Tom Scapens, prosecuting, told the court that on November 27, 2023, officers on patrol in the Uplands area of Swansea as part of Operation Sceptre - an ongoing operation tackling knife and violence crime - saw Abdul Mozid at the wheel of a BMW M3 car.

The court heard that police wanted to speak to Mozid about unrelated matters, and when he stopped his car on Gwydr Crescent he was arrested and his phone was seized. He was subsequently bailed but the contents of the phone were downloaded and yielded 360,000 pages of data.

The court heard that the discovery of the phone lead to South Wales Police to launch Operation Shelduck, a painstaking investigation which revealed the inner workings of an organised crime group or OCG involved in supplying large quantities of cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine and cannabis across South Wales from Carmarthen to Cardiff as well as having dealings in Bristol.