Where does organised crime fit in? (Part Two)

Justice for Nikki

Introduction

So now to address who from Nikki’s background and social circle can be linked to crime syndicates, past or present. Albeit just scratching at the surface from aspects in plain sight from social media, there are a few that stand out from Nikki’s group of friends. All conveniently and intentionally overlooked, this in itself a strong indication of customary grifters recruited to keep audiences tied up in knots elsewhere. However, it’s these individuals who’re in a position to have the greatest insight into why Nikki was targetted and on this basis, a more complete picture isn’t possible without reference to their respective social circle in turn.

All the attention throughout was directed towards friends of Nikki from school who’d known her for no more than five years since her eldest daughter started school, or in the case of one or two friends perhaps up to ten years from NCT antenatal classes. The one thing they all have in common are as mothers to young children and reassuringly there’s no immediate stand out connection with (underworld) OCGs within this clique.

Just to make the distinction to emphasise the focus of this post is on (underworld) OCGs, as opposed to the largest of institutional OCGs that carry on in public view every day with the government’s aid as facilitator for money-laundering on a scale that’s hard to fathom. There’s BAE Systems our very own defence contractor securing an additional four billion pounds of additional government funding via the Ministry of Defence this very month. Their interest is unclear but not forgotten, with Conservative MP for Wyre and Preston North Mr Ben Wallace (the former Secretary of State for Defence until 31^st August 2023) who maintains his constituency office in Great Eccleston not two miles as the crow flies from where the sick charade played out alongside the river on Rawcliffe Road.

Long-time friends

The reason for making the observations that follow are from a standpoint that an actual criminal investigation would involve questioning friends that had known Nikki for at least twenty years, not least since some are pally with known criminals (whether reformed or otherwise).

Yes, we therefore return to Nikki’s previous life with Simon Booth most of which time was when they lived together in Thornton-Cleveleys. A small update in passing since a previous post 22^nd September - fingers crossed for the well-advertised (and not seemingly private this time) sale of Fluke Hall. If you’re in the market and have two million pounds down the back of the sofa, this is a lot of property for the money🤑 If only those walls could talk - here is the estate agent’s official video tour.

The sale may possibly be a change to original plans as at the beginning of September mutual friends of Simon Booth (SB) and Nikki (NB), as well as his accountant (Steven Gough), were first to share within a couple of hours on a Saturday evening the following FB post advertising to rent out the smaller fully-independent property that makes up part of Fluke Hall.

Moving on, officially there’d been no contact between SB and NB for over ten years yet it seems unusual since they retained mutual friends all this time. By the strangest coincidence, unlike the clique from St Michael’s-on-Wyre primary school, these friends are close with organised crime families in the area (past and present) - either currently in prison, or since released having served their respective sentences.

By chance two from the small posse of mutual friends were the only ones to my knowledge that posted on Facebook about Nikki’s funeral service and burial after it had taken place on 8^th March. I’ve never commented on the funeral service itself as it appeared to be shrouded in secrecy with an unusual no-fly zone police notice issued too, both aspects that will have had some bearing on what has taken place. However, nobody other than the select individuals invited to attend know anything about it so further speculation is pointless.

It has never been disclosed that Nikki was active on Facebook the morning of Friday 27^th January itself. Maybe as this wouldn’t be consistent with promotion of the false narratives of her either not existing at all, or else the ongoing charade claiming faked Ring doorbell footage from her home that morning. Indeed, grifters and their small anonymous entourage continue to keep as many as possible in their respective pens🐑😂.

It’s an indisputable fact that Nikki liked one of the same mutual friend’s FB post from shortly before 8am the very morning of her disappearance. While journaling, it’s curious this same friend took the time to wish her Happy Birthday on her still active business-related FB profile (below), but never once made a reference to her from Friday 27^th January onwards despite being a regular FB afficionado.

Just observations and there’s no grounds to name whom I refer, as they weren’t present that morning and have been far from the spotlight. However, their respective group of friends that predate Nikki who hails from Essex is of interest.

Why Nikki?

This is the question some of us have sought answers to from the beginning. She was well-liked and had many groups of friends from her upbringing in Essex, from a previous relationship with Simon Booth, with her existing relationship with Paul Ansell and as the mother to their two daughters at the local primary school. While different social groups, it’s possible from social media alone to form a picture with who Nikki formed the closest friendship bonds with. In my opinion, like-minded individuals that don’t need to fake it, who share similar values of light and goodness. While she wasn’t necessarily an avid user of Facebook she’d like posts of others as you do, but it’s the fewer comments posted by Nikki that speak volumes. For example:

From 2021 and 2022, these indicate heartfelt comments from within her soul, a deeper spiritual friendship and the most genuine of connections. To once again rain upon their parade, these are noted from Paul Ansell’s social circle and background group of friends. Nothing extraordinary about this, other than the observation that while Nikki was close to many of Paul’s background group of friends, there isn’t any indication that suggests the other way around.

People have to make up their own minds as to how Nikki might have perceived those dedicated to a life of organised crime, but in my opinion she’d want to distance herself from anyone directly involved and likely the type of person with a conscience to do something about anything that came to her attention. If this is the case it would therefore mark her out from the small circle of mutual friends acquired while in a relationship with Simon Booth that date back more than twenty years.

Some more Lancastrian crime history with a focus on friends of friends. While the starting point is some considerable time in the past, the majority of individuals are of the same generation all between their mid-40s and mid-50s today. Nor to be forgotten that DSI Rebecca Smith started her career in the force in 1994.

A quote from George Orwell that highlights one of the biggest dangers to society:

“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth”

Organised Crime - Italian mafia

Having never heard of Marisa Merico when I started to write the earlier post: ‘Nicola Bulley also has links to ‘Thornton-Cleveleys’, it turns out she is good friends of said mutual friends. As she has a fascinating backstory it serves as good a place to start as any and enables me to draw attention to the particular reason she explains for her wider family’s downfall.

Marisa Merico

Still but 53 years old, Marisa Merico was arrested in the UK way back in June 1994 when living in Poulton-le-Fylde, jailed for money-laundering for three years before then being subsequently extradited to Italy and sentenced to ten years for organised crime. She was however released on a legal technicality in Rome by Appeal Court judges in 1998 when she fled back to Lancashire. While the Italian authorities continued to pursue her to finish a long prison sentence, it wasn’t finally until 2010 when their bid to have her extradited was refused at London Westminster Court. Categorised as category A high-security inmate, in the UK she’d been prisoner at HMP Durham at the same time as other notorious prisoners such as Linda Calvey (Black Widow), Myra Hindley and Rose West.

Impossible to sum up in but few words, but in essence she was born into a feared clan of the Ndgrangheta syndicate that itself dates back to the 18th century and control the peninsular region of Calabria. The head of her family’s clan was her grandmother Maria Serraino, having first set up a modest local business in Milan (1963) that transformed itself into a 200-strong criminal enterprise and significant international crime outfit. Maria Serraino’s first born child Emilio Di Giovine (who was Marisa’s father) went on to assume the role as Mafia Don, albeit it appears his mother (nicknamed ‘Granny Heroin’) remained the true family boss. She in turn was one of the first Italian women to be sentenced to life in prison (in 1997) for murder among countless other crimes, one of which was linked to when a rival Naples-based Camorra mob boss visited their house in Milan in 1989 to seek permission to carry out an assassination.

The family is everything in Italy and despite ruthless activities there are certain protocols, discipline and lines not to be crossed. All the same regular mob wars that ensue are brutal. This Milan Ndgrangheta clan funded one such war in Calabria with Marisa Merico transporting Kalashnikovs, bazookas and explosives herself to assist their allied clan in winning one. Her father was often a fugitive from the law (extradited from the US in the 1980s) but it was when he was arrested in Faro, Portugal in 1992 that Marisa Merico at just twenty-two years old assumed the role of running the family business in conjunction with her father now in prison.

Between the ages of 9 and 17 she’d been brought up in Poulton, Lancashire with her English mother Patricia who’d returned from Italy, not having known at first that her husband was actually a mob boss. It was regular summer holidays back to Italy where she was treated as a princess through her teenage years that led to the decision to return in 1988. The clan was ultimately dismantled by the Italian authorities between 1993 and 1995, all arrested and many sentenced to prison for life sentences. This is the lead-in and one reason for the briefest of overviews above that cannot possibly do justice to the extent of her intriguing story, with her book assuredly an insightful read.

It was her own aunt (so Emilio Di Giovine’s sister) Rita, that became state witness in 1993 that brought the entire organisation down with large waves of arrests, subsequently bringing all to justice. It came out of the blue but it’s understood she was the weakest link! To draw a parallel, this is all it takes to see justice for Nikki - she and her daughters are waiting on someone to spill the beans.

As for her father Emilio Di Giovine, after 13 years in prison he too became state witness and collaborated with the authorities, giving up many assets and property in the process. By early 2020 he was able to fly into the UK from an unknown location where he’d been in hiding, to be reunited with his daughter for her 50^th birthday. He was also present at a Tuscan villa in Italy for his daughter’s marriage celebration to Jim Boggis from July of last year.

It initially struck me as bizarre and high-stakes to have openly written a book about the ins-and-outs of her experience as part of a family that ran a respected clan of the larger Ndgrangheta syndicate, however as I understand it mostly everything’s on public record through state witness testimonies so no additional disclosures that can further incriminate people. This branch of the organisation was dismantled by the Italian authorities during the 1990s and perhaps it’s even looked on favourably as useful PR, to suggest a decline in organised crime whereas nothing could be further from reality.

A brief summary to consider what the wider Calabrian Ndgrangheta syndicate looks like as of 2023. According to Italy's Anti-Mafia Investigative Directorate they are “the absolute dominant force in the criminal world”.

Ndgrangheta in 2023

Estimated to have an annual turnover upto €60 billion per year, the control of c. 80% of the cocaine trade into Europe through South American cartels and as having supplanted Sicily’s Cosa Nostra as the country’s most powerful mafia organisation.

Having berated Sky News on numerous occasions for their now blown covert role as a modern-day Operation Mockingbird media behemoth intertwined with Nikki’s fate, here for a change is a recent and insightful production that’s worth the time to watch. It’s too easy to get detached from the abject misery these organisations inflict on decent, honest people by reading stories alone - such as the book ‘Mafia Princess’ as authored by Marisa Merico.

While it comes as no surprise that there are friends from the time Nikki was in a relationship with Simon Booth that go back a long time with hardened criminals (past or present), Marisa Merico Boggis represents but a coincidence and not red flags that I’ll come onto. Everything was done to gloss over and censor Nikki having had any sort of life before or apart from Paul Ansell to the point of almost appearing reclusive and this, in my opinion, was done to conceal some of these relationships.

Organised Crime - Lancashire reality show?

Fast-forwarding to more recent times, since 2015 there has been a spate of media reports on efforts to fight crime. In addition to headline grabbing names such as Operation Leviathan, Operation Lawson, Operation Jennet, Operation Matterhorn, Operation Barchetta and Operation Warrior there’s clear collaboration between police and media seeking to impress on the public that the good guys are taking on the bad guys.

There’s a total absence of any journalistic integrity and unfortunately if you look hard beyond the reported hyperbole of taking down ‘drug lords’ and ‘complex investigations’ leading to police dismantling ‘Breaking Bad’ style operations - it look’s a lot like much is fixed.

It reminds me of the British wrestling scene from the 1970s and 1980s, a whole generation beLIEved this to be real, genuinely not knowing it was scripted.

Controversial so but a couple of examples as best as I can sum up, before progressing to the criminal family units that are the main reason for this post.

(1) “A gigantic cannabis factory hidden by secret lifts and false walls has been described as Britain’s ‘most sophisticated’ weed farm” - August 2017

Police discovered 20 hidden rooms inside a former mill building in Wood Street, Darwen containing 1,300 cannabis plants valued at about £760K. To quote Lancashire Constabulary’s DI De Curtis: “Almost every single room had been converted for the wholesale production of cannabis plants. This was an enormous set-up – I am convinced it is one of the most sophisticated set-ups in the UK.”

Finding the proverbial needle in a haystack?👏🙄

(2) Turning to Terrence Ball’s (very junior) partner John Rowe in what originally looked to be a snail farming venture, until that got kiboshed early 2020. Mr Rowe subsequently found himself sentenced to three years and nine months as part of an Operation Warrior investigation alongside twenty-two others all previously charged with multi-million pound drugs conspiracy June 2021 (John Rowe with Sam Stone, referenced below, sentenced on 17^th February 2023).

Pictured is the core of this organised crime group that imported hundreds of kilos of drugs from mainland Europe to their Lancashire warehouse, the reports of which showed video evidence via the media of Sam Stone (allegedly head of the OCG - top middle) togged up in forensic suit who’d spend hours on end preparing and cutting the drugs before sale. The final sentencing of this group announced below:

“Last month members of a ‘Breaking Bad’ style gang who imported millions of pounds of drugs from mainland Europe to cut and then sell on from their Darwen headquarters were jailed. Today (12^th April’23) more members of the gang have been sent to prison as our #OpWarrior fight against serious and organised crime continues.” [Lancs Police]

A couple of observations. First, where was this sophisticated and covert operating base? It was a short walk away from the above Darwen cannabis farm in another unit, part of Hollins Grove Mill. It would seem re-purposed mills make for a good venue if someone could pass on this information to Lancashire Constabulary. Secondly, having reviewed many mugshots of the criminals prosecuted and jailed these are clearly lackeys with liberal use of terms applied such as drugs lord, kingpin, head of the OCG all plainly ridiculous but as an effective distraction away from seeing the same career criminals being recycled into the system time after time to make for a good show of fighting crime. Is that contentious?

How challenging then was it to bring down and dismantle Sam Stone’s OCG? Especially since this is the same Sam Stone that in June 2016 was pulled over as a courier heading for Carlisle from Lancashire with cocaine, heroin and cannabis having a potential worth of around £60,000 found in his possession. He received a three-year sentence then which was also extended by a further 18 months in March 2017 when the wider gang was brought to justice.🤔

(3) “A drugs gang headed by two brothers flooded a seaside resort with millions of pounds worth of cocaine and cannabis. The leaders of an organised crime group which supplied the Fylde coast were taken down by Operation Jennet, launched by Lancashire Constabulary's Serious Crime Team.”

So here we supposedly have the brains of the operation. Convinced? The leaders of the gang running a ‘£3 million drugs empire’ [quote from The Mirror newspaper] were aided by their 21-year old student hairdresser sister having trafficked cocaine into Blackpool from Liverpool between May 2016 and July 2017 (jailed in 2018). The brothers sentenced to 14 years and their sister 5 years respectively, among seven other gang members jailed. Daily Mail made the most of creating a gallery of this gang that outwitted the police for so long, including an entire portfolio for Ms Lang below.

This show can carry on forever, rinse and repeat with a plentiful supply of not especially bright and often desperate individuals who’ll adopt the only roles available to them as career criminals, while the proper untouchable deviants with all the right contacts within the necessary public organisations ensure business continues to boom. Yes, you heard that right, in my opinion there’s considerable choreography involved in the timing and selection of gang members that can be pursued and taken off the streets. A mutual understanding at the highest level as to how the system can work to nearly everyone’s benefit, but principally to keep the public distracted.

This is just a natural extension to what the entire nation was made to witness on Sunday 19^th February. If the deception is so blatant that the regular man in the street can flush it out with hard facts, it could be argued the National Crime Agency who’re considerably better resourced are oblivious to the shenanigans of Lancashire Constabulary some eight months on. No, they are not oblivious at all.

A last example before returning to the connections that tie back more specifically to Nikki.

(4) “This was a complex investigation. The setting up of these illicit labs and manufacturing of such drugs needs specialist knowledge and co-ordination by sophisticated and organised criminals, who are now removed from the streets” - [DI Pye, National Crime Agency]

More apparent ‘drug lords’ with ten men and one woman having established a ‘Breaking Bad’ style meth lab that ran successfully for several years in East Lancashire, manufacturing hundreds of kilos of ampthetamines at any one time (as well as distributing cocaine). They expanded the enterprise in 2017 to a second facility before law enforcement first swooped in June 2018. The gang were all sentenced in 2019 but the expectation should be that this cohort will all since been released, the being the usual drill. Give them a couple of years back in the field and then they’ll be ripe for another investigation case study report showcasing the brilliance of policing.

Here a still image from police surveillance footage that helped bring the ‘complex investigation’ to life in the imagination of the audience, as provided via the media.

Not to doubt the technical skill and specialist knowledge required for a meth lab for one moment, however be it Lancashire Constabulary or the National Crime Agency on this occasion front and centre regarding the investigation to ‘take it down’ - who the hell are you kidding? Perhaps this gang had proven too ambitious and encroached on bigger players territory, with their time having run it’s course.

Organised Crime - friends of friends

Seven years prior to the day from when the public were duped into believing Nikki’s body was retrieved from the river.

There’s quite a family theme to explore, but the mutual friends of SB and NB go back a long way with most of the characters predominantly of Thornton-Cleveleys origins. The brother and sister - Michael and Julie - headed up this gang that was caught in June 2015 before sentencing the following year.

From Facebook alone (incredible isn’t it?!), easy to see the relatively small but loyal group of friends to the media-labelled drugs baron ‘Mickey Blues Eyes’ (the affectionate nickname inspired from the film where Hugh Grant gets involved with his father-in-law’s mafia connections). Mr Welsh clearly enjoyed flaunting his gains in trips abroad - Gibraltar a favourite - with those closest to him (such as Chris Bateman above for example). This is a link to the article showing the sort of poetic licence exercised by the media (published by the Daily Mail Feb 2016🔽).

Drug baron called Mickey Blue Eyes splashed out on luxury yacht, fleet of cars and lavish holidays funded by his £13,000-a-week crime empire

Less than a half mile from SB and NB’s house in Thornton-Cleveleys, it comes as a bit of an anticlimax that his home (Briar Cottage) from where he operated his racket, had been bought for a modest £250k in October 2005. There are bigger fish, much bigger fish.

From 2014 & 2015, here is the ‘drug lord’.

Rinse and repeat

Sam Stone mark 2 and recycling? Some concentration required - as reported by the Daily Mail (March 2023):-

“Lancashire Police officers from the West Targeted Crime Unit took down the major supply operation (a gang of 26 Class-A drug dealers jailed for 139 years), which involved a number of organised crime groups, over the course of nine months, between October 2020 and June 2021. The Operation Warrior probe resulted in Daniel Myerscough, kingpin of a cocaine and heroin supply ring, being rumbled for arranging and purchasing bulk quantities of drugs. The group included members Michael Welsh, Gary Johnson, Kristoffer Pilkington and Christopher Dixon, who were sentenced to over 14 years behind bars altogether.”

The gang were sentenced at various hearings at Preston Crown Court between December 2021 (Michael Walsh and Gary Johnson) to the final sentencing or Daniel Myerscough and James Black on 9^th and 10^th February 2023.

There we have it, from drug baron to a gang member here is Mickey Blues Eyes again (in and out of prison from first time around), in time to be sentenced again in 2021 - the same day as the same Gary Johnson as from before too. It appears he’d recruited his son William Welsh this time, now old enough to receive a four year sentence (2^nd December 2022) himself.

Turning to the ‘kingpin’ of the operation we get an insight into the less impressive nature of the breakthrough the police have made here.

Look familiar? He could do. Julie Welsh was jailed in 2016 (since released) and this is one of her sons who goes back years with Michael Welsh - yes, Thornton-Cleveleys too.

It’s possible that Lancashire Constabulary came to realise how transparent their March 2023 reporting on this Operation Warrior investigation was after all the sentencing was complete the previous month. In any event they removed all trace of the details from their own website - the URL link was:

https://www.lancashire.police.uk/news/2023/march/prison-sentences-for-26-members-of-a-lancashire-drugs-gang/

Gone, page not found! My rhetorical question would be why have the police since removed it.

A final bit of trivia, I mentioned James Black who is the closest of friends especially with Daniel Mysercough. He received the longest sentence of all the 26 gang members (13 years). We know it wouldn’t have proven too difficult to make arrangements for his arrest…..…..as he was already in prison, never left the entire time, after being sentenced back in 2018 for two drug supply offences (from Liverpool), money laundering and possessing amphetamines. This was part of another great result, Operation Leviathan, an investigation led by DSI Rebecca Smith between March and September 2016 where she was quoted:

“I am really pleased with the sentences, which follow a long and complex investigation into this criminal gang and its activities - causing misery to those addicted to drugs and their loved ones. This police work remains a real priority for both us and our partners, who are working closely together to tackle organised criminality and taking these gangs off our streets.”

There is no mystery, everyone knows who everyone is, lots of clear family links. Even the media struggled to sell the ‘complex investigation’ part of Operation Leviathan stating that James Black was targetted after his extravagant lifestyle betrayed his unemployed status. Well done detectives🤦‍♂️

Small world - what are the chances?

Back to a 2012 profile update and as I mentioned previously, Michael Welsh kept a reasonably modest social circle, but it seems to write itself. Yes, that’s Andy Pilley’s wife, Susan - the same Andy Pilley of Thornton-Cleveleys also sentenced at Preston Crown Court and jailed recently in July for 13 years for fraud and money laundering totalling £15 million.

Wrapping Up

This hotchpotch of a post comes from flicking through social media and media reports alone, so is but the tip of an iceberg again. The cover-up is fully buckling under the strain of the truth, with barely a few stitches holding it together and that’s before the College of Policing issue their long-awaited report anytime now

It appears Preston Crown Court was particularly busy sentencing criminals the week leading up to when the so-called missing person investigation was brought to a close in February. As is the norm, a constant stream of criminals relatively low in the pecking order in the scheme of things, among which many are well-known and go back a long way with certain mutual friends of SB and NB as it happens. The Thornton-Cleveleys area especially, has one of the highest proportion of rotten apples per capita compared to almost anywhere in the country.

Lancashire Constabulary has a precedent of kicking an investigation into the long grass as shown previously with the follow-up to the Panzuto affair, which could have implicated persons possibly too well-connected to pursue. It seems a moot point to debate whether this comes about as a result of Masonic contracts or pure, unadulterated corruption - there’s likely a lot of both.

Taking a closer look at reported high-profile prosecutions following lengthy (‘complex’) investigations raises many a question. There are signs that there may be parameters that the police restrict themselves to, either on (renewable) drug production facilities or what in transportation terms is known as last-mile delivery - which lead to arrests of replaceable couriers and street dealers on a rotation basis, whilst not troubling higher levels of organisational hierarchies.

Like whac-a-mole, gangs can continuously multiply because of an inexhaustible supply of drugs shipped through sophisticated networks using experienced freight forwarders - logistics experts involved in moving cargo around the world for importers and exporters.

Extracts from Lancashire Constabulary’s website:-

“Operation Warrior is our response to tackling serious and organised crime in Lancashire and delivering on Police and Crime Commissioner Andrew Snowden's Fighting Crime Plan priority of disrupting and dismantling organised crime……Nobody knows their local community better than the people who live there. We need your help to put these offenders where they belong – behind bars…..You can also speak to Crimestoppers anonymously and if your information leads to an arrest, you could be eligible for a reward of up to £1,000.”

Perhaps it’s time to make enquiries ahead of another road trip, a drive through the area which might prove profitable depending on the conditions attached to being eligible for a reward. For those living nearer to the Blackpool area it should be like shooting fish in a barrel, but much like we have witnessed in this conspiracy to remain silent over Nikki’s unlawful death, is it that nobody dares speak out?

What might Nikki herself have known and was this in some way instrumental to the outcome of a heavily-scripted twenty-three days? A cover-up that now continues at all costs to prevent implicating the most senior of corrupt individuals across many an organisation. These are the individuals that must be exposed, prosecuted, stripped of office and made to serve the remainder of their years at His Majesty’s pleasure. JUSTICE FOR NICOLA BULLEY!

Or maybe having played devil’s advocate, people prefer to remain in denial and believe that none of this is the case and all is well. That Lancashire Constabulary did their utmost in seeking to investigate what was but a tragic slip into a river, disappearing and then mysteriously reappearing a few weeks later with the aid of a psychic medium.