National Crime Agency (NCA)

Home News Police get six thousand missing person reports a week Return to News 9 December 2015 New figures released by the National Crime Agency’s UK Missing Persons Bureau (UKMPB) show that police forces in England, Wales and Scotland are dealing with more than six thousand missing person reports a week. Data for the financial year 2014/15 shows that there was an increase in the number of calls reporting people missing made to police forces – up to 315,000 from 307,000 in the year 2013/14. Prior to 2013/14 there had been a steady fall in the numbers. The report also shows that children and young people continue to account for more than half of all missing inci…

Return to News8 December 2015
 The NCA today launches an appeal to identify assets belonging to criminals subject to Confiscation Orders of a million pounds or more. In total, the 15 subjects identified owe more than £46m. Kalid Mahmood MALIK (26/04/1971), convicted of Drug Trafficking in 2005, sentenced to 25 years. From an original order of £10,508,650, Malik now owes £12,313,268 including interest, correct as of 30/11/2015. A Confiscation Order is made by the court after conviction to deprive the defendant of the benefit they have obtained from crime. For serious and organised criminals, the sums can be substantial. It is important to recover assets both to…

Return to News8 December 2015 The National Crime Agency has today launched a campaign to discourage young people from becoming involved in cyber crime, after analysis of investigations involving the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit over the last year found the average age of suspects to be 17. The #CyberChoices campaign is aimed at educating the parents of 12-15 year old boys, whose children may be involved in hacking or other kinds of cyber crime without their parents’ knowledge. In addition to highlighting the type of illegal online activity children can become involved in, the campaign seeks to help parents and carers to spot signs of potential problems, understand wh…

Return to News 7 December 2015 Four members of an organised crime network have been sentenced to 22 years in prison for smuggling an estimated £700,000 worth of Class A and Class B drugs into the UK. David Fox, 65, of Stanley Avenue, Brighton and Stephen Chambers, 45, of Warmdene Road, Brighton attempted to smuggle 4kg of cocaine, which if cut and sold in the UK would have had a potential street value of over £500,000,into Gatwick Airport in September 2012. Fox, a Gatwick baggage handler at the time, was using his access to the transfer shed area of the airport to remove drugs from suitcases and smuggle them out amongst his own belongings. He also removed baggage lab…

Return to News3rd December 2015 The former wife of a convicted drug dealer has lost her appeal to retain two houses as a result of a ruling handed down by the Court of Appeal. The Court gave judgment against Kalsoom Sanam who had appealed the decision of the High Court in October 2014 that properties held with her estranged husband, Amir Azam, represented the proceeds of crime, namely drug trafficking and money laundering. This will bring the total amount seized by the NCA from Amir Azam to more than £3.3 million. Mr Azam is a British national who is currently serving a four year prison sentence after being convicted of drug offences last year. In September 2014 the N…

Return to News3 December 2015 A Palestinian man suspected of heading an organised crime group that smuggled around 100 Syrian migrants a day into western Europe has been arrested by National Crime Agency officers. Jamal Owda, aged 26, who was apprehended on a European Arrest Warrant, will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court today and faces extradition to Greece. Owda, who was detained at an asylum seekers’ shelter in Greenbank Drive, Sefton Park, Liverpool, was one of 23 people arrested across Europe during early morning raids yesterday. The multi-agency operation led by the Greek authorities also involved law enforcement agencies in Austria and Sweden and was sup…

Home News Airport drug trafficker had £1m cocaine hidden in toiletries Return to News 2 December 2015 A woman from Ayr has been jailed for seven years for trying to smuggle cocaine worth around £1 million into the UK hidden in toiletries. Myrtle McCreath, 53, was arrested at Glasgow International Airport on 26 February 2014 after arriving on a flight from Sao Paulo, via Amsterdam. During a search of her baggage Border Force officers found around 50 containers of face cream, talcum powder and other toiletries. Inside there was a total of 7.8 kilos of high purity cocaine. McCreath denied knowledge of the drugs, telling NCA border investigators that she had been …

Return to News2 December 2015 A new National Crime Agency campaign is launched today to highlight the harm caused by the production and distribution of cocaine. The #EveryLineCounts campaign targets recreational users who care about social justice issues but may not realise that their casual behaviour has devastating consequences for children, communities, and the environment in cocaine producing countries. The campaign runs alongside the NCA’s continued targeting of organised criminal networks responsible for trafficking cocaine. Over 70 tonnes of cocaine was seized as a result of NCA activity globally in 2014/15. Tony Saggers, Head of Drugs Threat at the NCA, said: …

Return to News27 November 2015 Three Dutch men have been convicted for their roles in supplying up to £1.6 billion worth of drugs to organised crime groups across the UK using a fleet of fake ambulances. An ‘ambulance company’ was set up in Hoofddorp, Holland, for running the drug smuggling operation, which involved the men posing as paramedics and using bogus patients to make their cover more authentic. The operation was shut down following an investigation by the National Crime Agency in collaboration with the Dutch National Police in North Holland. Leonardus Bijlsma, aged 55, from Haarlemmermeer, was found guilty of conspiracy to import Class A drugs today followin…

Return to News27 November 2015 A man from Berkshire who packed his wife’s suitcase with heroin worth almost half a million pounds before she set off on a flight from Pakistan to the UK has been jailed. The drugs were in packages that had been sewn inside eight dresses found by Border Force officers in Nazreen Anwar’s bag after she stepped off a flight from Islamabad at Heathrow on 28 June 2015. The 28-year-old was arrested and in interviews with National Crime Agency investigators claimed to have been in Pakistan for a two week holiday. She said her husband had given her the dresses to bring back and she did not know the drugs were inside. Her husband, taxi driver Was…

Home News NCA statement on review of warrant procedures Return to News 27 November 2015 As a result of issues identified with warrants in two cases that went before the courts, Operations Heterodon and Enderby, the NCA has instigated a comprehensive review of inherited processes and standards around warrant applications, and of live cases where issues with warrants may not have been previously identified. The review is of all warrants, production orders, account monitoring orders and authorisations for searches under s18 of PACE in all live cases. It is chaired by a member of the NCA legal team, independent from the part of the NCA which obtained the warrant and is …

Return to News 26 November 2015 An IT manager who concocted an elaborate story to purchase a gun from the dark web was today sentenced to five years for his conspiracy to import a firearm and ammunition at Bristol Crown Court. Darren Hillyer, aged 38, of Milton Keynes, posed as a woman aiming to exact revenge on a paedophile ex-lover. Hillyer ordered a Ruger LC9 9mm handgun and 50 rounds of ammunition from an account on a dark web forum under the guise of ‘Emma’. He was unaware that the package he was due to receive was in fact a plastic replica hidden inside a DAB radio which was under the control of officers from the National Crime Agency. Hillyer had contacted 47 y…

Return to News24 November 2015 Sixteen members of a Midlands-based money laundering network have been jailed for over 73 years for their roles in laundering more than £35 million through UK banks and money service businesses. The National Crime Agency is releasing details of the three-year investigation as the final four members of the network were sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court yesterday. Head of the network, Harpal Singh Gill, aged 67, from Smethwick, who was previously a textile trader, initiated and orchestrated the entire operation. Crime groups across the country used the services on offer to launder their drugs money. Gill set up a number of bogus clo…

Return to News24 November 2015 Five members of a Luton-based crime network involved in money laundering, drug dealing and smuggling have been ordered to pay back a total of £2,000,156. If the confiscation orders are not paid back within three months, default prison sentences of between two and six years will be imposed on each member. The men, four of whom are members of the same family, were sentenced to a total of 67 years in prison at Maidstone Crown Court in October 2013. Mohammed Habib, 39, from Luton and his brother, Mohammed Khalil, 49, from Elstow, Bedford were found guilty of money laundering, with Habib also being found guilty of supplying Class A drugs. The…

Home News Cyber crime partnership results in two arrests Return to News 23 November 2015 Two people have been arrested on suspicion of operating a website offering services to help criminals overcome anti-virus software and disguise malicious software (malware), following a joint investigation led by the National Crime Agency and Trend Micro Incorporated, a global leader in security software and solutions. A 22 year-old man and a 22-year-old woman from Colchester, Essex were detained as a result of a partnership between the NCA’s National Cyber Crime Unit (NCCU) and Trend Micro. They have been bailed until February 2016 pending further enquiries. The suspect’s w…