Overview
- Manchester Crown Court sentenced Bell after his guilty pleas to money laundering and to conspiring to supply cocaine, heroin, MDMA, ketamine, amphetamine and cannabis.
- Access to his EncroChat messages via the French-Dutch takedown, part of Operation Venetic, showed him directing multi‑kilo deals and coordinating with more than 70 suppliers and customers nationwide.
- Safe houses in Alderley Edge and Bury were used to store and package drugs, where officers found 4kg of cocaine, half a kilo of heroin, £35,000 in cash, weapons and a money-counting machine at one site and £150,000 in cash at another.
- Key associates were also jailed, including Ian Ogden for 16 years and eight months and Paul Brown for 10 years, with several other gang members sentenced at earlier hearings.
- Investigators detailed a lavish lifestyle funded by crime, with a large property portfolio including Spanish villas, heavy gambling through bookmakers and private school fees paid in cash, and assets now under restraint for confiscation.