Crime lord Jamie Stevenson could have got years off his sentence – but he blundered by hanging on to the chance of getting off in court.
The mob leader took it to the wire before pleading guilty – and earning a 20 year sentence for being the mastermind of huge cocaine and street Valium operations.
The Iceman will be expected to spend two thirds of that sentence behind bars – meaning he’s out on the street when he’s in his early seventies.
The judge in his case could have reduced his sentence by up to a third for an early plea – but Stevenson’s initial decision to have his day in court, where he’d have sought to blame others, is likely to now cost him extra years behind bars.
Stevenson, 59, was handed the bumper sentence for directing major operations to smuggle £76 million of cocaine from Ecuador and produce street Valium at a factory in Kent, which pumped out at least 28 million pills.
One source close to the case said: “He will be regretting the decision to fight the charges and he’d have been hoping that he could put the blame on others in court. But the reality is that the case was so watertight he’d have been going down no matter what nonsense he tried to spin in court.”
Last night Scotland’s most senior organised crime investigator admitted that career criminal Stevenson may yet emerge from jail to pick up the reins again – as he did in 2013 after a 12 year sentence for an operation he ran with son-in-law Gerry Carbin. But Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Ferry said, this time, police will be ready to stop him his tracks.
Ferry said: “People like Stevenson come back in for two reasons – money and power. I think when you operate at that level, he obviously has the connections with which to ply his trade. Even after a lengthy jail term he can get the commodity moving again – he’s a highly organised criminal at the highest level and his enterprise makes him a lot of money.”
Ferry said it was no surprise that Stevenson would run his operation again in 2020 with Gerry Carbin once again as his right hand man.
He said: “These people surround themselves with trusted individuals, like anyone does in an organization. These people have to prove themselves over years. They have the trusted sergeants throughout an organization. It’s just the evolution of serious and organized crime gang. “They operate it as a business, to make money, and they have trusted lieutenants that will discharge what they want.
“And there is a hierarchy, with Jamie Stevenson at the top and his the people that facilitate that underneath.”
But Ferry said that police will be alert and equipped to stop Stevenson in his tracks. with powers to monitor and control who he communicates with, how he handles cash and restrict many other recognised civil liberties.
He said: “We’ll have a serious crime prevention order, which will make things difficult for Stevenson. And if I have a message for him it’s that we will still be here – and we’ll be ready for him.”
The Scottish Sentencing Council guidelines state: “Offenders who admit their guilt can get a reduction in their sentence of up to one third, depending on how early they plead guilty.
“Admitting guilt shows that the person has taken responsibility for the offence. An early guilty plea also saves victims and witnesses from having to give evidence, which can be traumatic.”
Any decision on the actual reduction would be down to the trial judge Lord Ericht – who told Stevenson on Wednesday: “I am satisfied the total period [of imprisonment is fair and proportionate.”
Stevenson was extradited back to Scotland in 2022 after going on the run to Spain and then the Netherlands two years earlier. When he appeared for trial in Glasgow in August he was determined to fight the charges – seeking to incriminate other men.
But after his close associate Lloyd Cross admitted his role in the South America cocaine racket before the trial began, the writing was on the wall.
Gerry Carbin and Ryan McPhee then followed suit, admitting to running Stevenson’s huge scale etizolam factory. That capitulation led to Stevenson throwing in the towel, along with Bilsland and Bowes. Carbin was jailed for seven years; Bilsland, Bowes and Cross were all jailed for six years; and McPhee was jailed for four years.
The drugs operation, which spanned the UK, Spain, Ecuador and Abu Dhabi, had been targeted by police in an inquiry which was named Operation Pepperoni. A tonne of the cocaine was seized in a raid by Border Force teams at Dover in September 2020.
They found 119 packages of cocaine concealed in boxes of bananas from Ecuador, which were destined for Glasgow. It took officers three days to recover the drugs from the shipment. Defence counsel Thomas Ross KC told the court Stevenson had known exactly what he was doing and had made “a series of bad decisions” for which the motivation was obvious.
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