A notorious Scottish gangster, Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for masterminding a massive operation to smuggle £100 million worth of cocaine from South America, hidden in shipments of bananas.
Stevenson, aged 59, admitted to directing the large-scale importation of the drug, which was intercepted by Border Force officials at Dover in September 2020.
The elaborate smuggling plot was uncovered following the infiltration of an encrypted messaging service, EncroChat, by French law enforcement.
The platform was commonly used by criminal organizations for covert communication.
Stevenson’s gang, which included five other individuals, was responsible for not only the cocaine smuggling operation but also a plot to flood Scotland with millions of Etizolam tablets, a potent drug often referred to as “street valium.”
The tablets were being manufactured in a factory in Kent that Stevenson had helped establish.
At the time of his arrest, Stevenson, hailing from Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire, was a prominent figure in organized crime within Scotland.
His notoriety had earned him comparisons to Tony Soprano, the fictional mafia boss from the television series ‘The Sopranos’.
In 2022, he was listed among the UK’s 12 most wanted men. In September,, Stevenson pleaded guilty to his involvement in both the production and distribution of Etizolam and the smuggling of a tonne of cocaine into the United Kingdom, a quantity police estimated would have a street value of £100 million.
Appearing before the High Court in Glasgow, Stevenson received a 20-year sentence for his role in orchestrating these criminal activities.
His co-conspirators—David Bilsland, 68; Paul Bowes, 53; Gerard Carbin, 45; Ryan McPhee, 34; and Lloyd Cross, 32—also pleaded guilty to charges of serious organized crime and drug-related offenses.
Carbin was sentenced to seven years in prison, while Bilsland, Bowes, and Cross each received six-year sentences.
McPhee was sentenced to four years. Another individual involved, Lewis Connor, 27, was jailed for three years in July after investigators uncovered encrypted phone messages proving his involvement in arson attacks on properties and vehicles throughout Central Scotland.
The sophisticated drug smuggling operation spanned multiple countries, including the UK, Spain, Ecuador, and Abu Dhabi.
It was part of a larger investigation by law enforcement under Operation Pepperoni.
Authorities had initially begun investigating Bilsland, a Glasgow-based fruit merchant, due to suspicions of his links to organized crime.
Surveillance revealed Bilsland meeting Stevenson at a hotel in Spain, raising further alarms.
Simultaneously, investigators uncovered evidence linking Stevenson to the operation of a factory in Kent, which was producing vast quantities of Etizolam tablets.
In June 2020, the factory was raided, and Stevenson was arrested in Glasgow. Although initially released on bail, he fled the UK and evaded capture for nearly two years before being arrested in the Netherlands.
Despite being on the run, Stevenson continued orchestrating the cocaine importation operation from abroad.
During the trial, Prosecutor Alex Prentice KC presented evidence from EncroChat messages that demonstrated Stevenson’s role as the mastermind behind the cocaine smuggling plot.
These messages showed Stevenson coordinating with Cross to import kilogram blocks of cocaine and using Bilsland to give the operation “an appearance of legitimacy.”
The plan culminated in a Border Force raid at Dover in September 2020, where 119 packages of cocaine were discovered concealed within banana shipments from Ecuador, destined for Glasgow.
It took law enforcement three days to fully extract the drugs from the shipment.
Defense counsel Thomas Ross KC acknowledged that Stevenson knew exactly what he was doing, admitting, “He takes ownership of all those decisions and doesn’t seek to cast blame in anybody else’s direction.”
Ross further stated that Stevenson’s motivations were clear and that his actions stemmed from “a series of bad decisions.”
Deputy Crown Agent responsible for leading the fight against serious organized crime for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, Kenny Donnelly, emphasized the significance of the convictions.
He said, “The cocaine they were planning to distribute would have undoubtedly contributed to misery in our communities. These convictions are testament to the forensic and meticulous work undertaken by specialist Crown Office prosecutors to bring Stevenson and his five co-accused to justice.”
In sentencing, Judge Lord Ericht commended the efforts of law enforcement and underscored the gravity of Stevenson’s actions.
Addressing Stevenson, he said that the convicted gangster had directed “a complex operation” aimed at importing and distributing cocaine, while playing “a leading role” in the production and distribution of millions of Etizolam tablets.
