Brutal steps rival gangs from Liverpool and Manchester took to rise through the criminal ranks

A daring machete robbery at a house belonging to a Huyton firm has highlighted the brutal means North West gangsters will use to climb the ranks of the criminal underworld.

The notorious Huyton firm stood at the top of Merseyside’s criminal ladder for more than 30 years thanks to the gang’s reputation, international contacts and violent ruthlessness towards anyone who challenged them. But the gang’s power was threatened on 23 May 2020 when a masked gang stormed one of their houses on Croxdale Road West, slashed the owner and stole £1m of cocaine.

The ensuing investigations – one criminal led by Huyton firm boss Vincent Coggins and another by law enforcement – showed how gangs in Liverpool and Manchester have become increasingly intertwined and are willing to drop previous affiliations if it means to promote their illicit businesses.

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The relationships between the criminal gangs in the two big cities in the North West are generally based on money rather than petty local rivalries. While there is no love lost between the two cities’ organized crime groups (OCGs), football rivalries don’t get in the way of business.

The rise of the county line model – where criminal gangs set up networks to export drugs and other illicit materials to areas in different parts of the country – has connected gangsters from different cities. A British Transport Police inspector tasked with targeting the county line model, which often sees the exploitation of children and vulnerable adults, previously told the ECHO: “We see activity between Liverpool and Manchester every day.

“We know there are OCGs in both cities and we know they communicate and work with each other. There will be illegal goods moving across county lines. There are no limits to this – Britain is like a big buffet table for them. They will make the most of their contacts in the UK to exploit the most vulnerable.”

Another important factor in the connection between criminals in different cities was EncroChat. The encrypted messaging platform, founded in 2016, gave criminals the ability to communicate with each other behind an anonymous handle. After the platform was finally hacked in April 2020, police officers gained access to hundreds of thousands of messages from around 7,000 criminals in the UK.

The messages showed the criminals, many of whom incriminated themselves by sharing personal details about themselves, communicated with their counterparts in other cities, expanding their contact book to increase profits and national and international reputation.

However, relations between the two cities were exposed following the public executions of ‘Salford Mr Big’ Paul Massey and north Liverpool criminal John Kinsella. The two men had a close association and through Mr Massey, Mr Kinsella established a close association with a gang of criminals in Salford.

However, when the gang split into two rival factions, both men found themselves tangled up in the face of a dangerous group of youths. In a row where the A Team and rival gang Anti A Team started a street war, Mr Massey was executed outside his home in Salford in 2015. Three years later, Mr Massey’s executioner, Anti A Team hitman Mark “The Iceman” Fellows, killed Mr Kinsella while walking with his long-term girlfriend in Rainhill.

Fellows was found guilty of both crimes and sentenced to life without parole in January 2019. Following the conclusion of his trial at Liverpool Crown Court, violence erupted again between the two gangs. And the war on Salford Street shed light on criminal gangs in the two cities, with the Anti A team recruiting foot soldiers from Liverpool to carry out assassination attempts.

Last November, Shakur Watson and Steven Curry were jailed for their respective roles in detonating a homemade grenade outside a house in Crowther Road in Ordsall, Salford, on 30 December 2019. This incident was also described in court by Greater Manchester. Police as coming against a backdrop of “fresh violence” between warring factions.

And in May 2018, fellow foot soldiers Tony Kelly, Phillip Manning and Bryan Thomas, all from Merseyside, set off on the same journey on the M62 to Ordsall. The three-man hit squad pulled up outside a property linked to A Team gang boss Stephen Britton and opened fire through a back door. Britton was not home at the time, but a bullet deflected and lodged in the spine of a 26-year-old man, who survived after undergoing emergency surgery. All the men involved received significant prison terms.

The associations between the two towns were brought to light again last week following the climax of the trial of Edward Jarvis – the right-hand man of Vincent Coggins, who ran the Huyton firm with his brother Francis. In the spring and early summer of 2020, the gang, which has been operating since around 1990, continued their illicit business, bringing huge quantities of drugs from South America into the country and distributing them around their elaborate network of associates.

But the raid on the gang’s warehouse would set off a chain of events that led to the downfall of the gang. In the days after the raid, Vincent Coggins deployed his gang to find out who was responsible for the violent robbery. Unable to believe that a gang from another town could be behind the robbery, Vincent Coggins texted Jarvis “no way manks f***er local”.

His suspicions fell on a man called Brian Maxwell – and what followed was a terrifying blackmail plot that saw Vincent Coggins demand a million pounds of land and a house from Maxwell’s father, Brian Maxwell Sr, in exchange for reassurance. Unbeknownst to the Maxwells, Vincent Coggins still intended to kill them and would have if not for the intervention of the police who stepped in after the EncroChat hack was made public and made arrests in June 2020.

However, further investigation by the network revealed that Maxwell had nothing to do with the robbery. The real thieves came from under the M56 but were aided by a Liverpool gangster looking to increase his reputation and power in the underworld. A Salford crime family led by Jason Cox targeted the warehouse in conjunction with Liverpool man Richard Caswell.

The ‘united’ Cox crime gang were involved in large-scale drug dealing, but in a bid to step up in the underworld, Jason Cox decided to join forces with Caswell, a well-known Merseyside underworld figure previously linked of a series of car bombings in the city in 2003 and 2004. After a series of surveillance trips to find out the address, they raided the house, recovering £1m of cocaine that Jason Cox shared with Caswell .

Caswell’s role in the raid was very risky. While Jason Cox boasted on EncroChat that he had robbed “the biggest firm in Liverpool”, Vincent Coggins actually approached Caswell for help in identifying those responsible. Caswell played dumb and said he’d ask around, but relayed what they told him to Jason Cox. As one source told the ECHO, “A lot of people will change their beliefs if there is an opportunity to take the communities of other OCGs.”

The denouement when the identities of the robbers were discovered was seismic in the underworld. Homes belonging to members of the Cox family were firebombed, while Caswell was hacked to death in HMP Manchester. But further analysis of the robbery and the movements of the stolen cocaine further demonstrated how the two cities’ underworld had become even more intertwined. Jason Cox sold his share of the stolen cocaine to notorious drug dealer Leon Atkinson.

Couriers linked to the two men met near Manchester City’s training ground to arrange the handover, with an agreed password of “Man City”. Atkinson was a notorious drug dealer and associate of police killer Dale Cregan. Last year, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his involvement in a huge cocaine ring.

One of Atkinson’s close associates was Buryman Nasar Ahmed. And Ahmed’s closest business partners were Jonathan and Jamie Cassidy – Liverpool criminals who ran an international drugs racket importing cocaine from South America into the UK via Amsterdam in modified vehicles.

Jonathan Cassidy, who has compared his criminal enterprise to that of Mexican drug lord El Chapo, ran the operation while his younger brother Jamie – a former Liverpool FC youth star – handled the drug distribution. It is likely that the brothers would have known that Atkinson’s drugs had been stolen in the Huyton robbery.

Vincent Coggins, Jarvis, Paul Woodford and Michael Earle, as well as a number of associates, have now all been convicted for their roles in the criminal underworld. Francis Coggins remains at large and is believed to be in Europe. Vincent Coggins was sentenced to 28 years for his role in the enterprise, while Woodford and Earle were sentenced to 24 years, six months and 11 years respectively. Jarvis will be sentenced at a later date.

Jason Cox, his brothers and a number of associates, including Caswell, were also jailed, as were the Cassidy brothers, Ahmed and Atkinson. Despite the significant arrests and closure of OCGs, all of which are believed to have played significant roles in North West gangland, it is likely that new groups will seek to take their place, if they have not already done so.

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