Gangsters have to return £330,000

Gangsters from the Black Country behind a massive drugs trafficking enterprise have been ordered to pay back more than £330,000 netted in their evil empire.

Thirteen people were convicted over the huge crime syndicate, which saw large quantities of crack cocaine and heroin secretly moved between Wolverhampton and Aberdeen.

At one stage, the dealers - dubbed the Night Express Gang because of their tactic of using trains to travel between the Black Country and Scotland - netted around £40,000-a-week.

But today its members, who were jailed for up to 12 years each in 2006, were facing the prospect of more time behind bars.

A judge at Birmingham Crown Court has now ruled the gang must pay back a total of £338,000 within 18 months or face additional imprisonment.

A probe by the elite West Midlands Police economic crime team found the crooks had ploughed their drugs money into properties in the UK and Jamaica, as well as cars, sporty motorbikes and designer clothes.

In 2006, convicted murderer Adam Joof, aged 25, of Willenhall, and Great Barr man O'Neill Smith, 28, were jailed for 12 years each for leading the operation. Police surveillance footage captured them roaring around the streets of the West Midlands on powerful motorbikes, bought with the proceeds of their crime. Aswone Bogle, 22, of Bilston; Stephen Evans, 51, of Rugby, and Septon Jackson, 43, of Birmingham, were among those jailed.

Joof's barrister brother Ebrima, 40, also of Willenhall, was convicted of money laundering in connection with the case. Det Ch Insp Simon Wallis, of West Midlands Police, said today: "This was a ruthless gang who did not care what misery they inflicted upon the streets of the UK, in particular Wolverhampton.

"They had a highly lucrative criminal enterprise and today marks the end of a thorough investigation into both the drugs gang and their criminal business support.

"Yet again this demonstrates our resolve to ensure crime does not pay. We are committed to tackling serious and organised crime and the gangs who supply the local dealers who would blight our neighbourhoods.

"Their support network included people in professions, such as barristers, who might have thought they were sufficiently removed from the dirty end of the business.

"They were not. Painstaking financial investigation has shadowed the investigation and now it's pay-back time."

Detectives who smashed the ring said it was run like a successful business with efficiency and organisation. Its management knew that dealers could make huge profits in Aberdeen, which was made wealthy by oil in the 1980s.

Heroin worth £900 on the streets of Wolverhampton would go for £1,800 north of the border. Gangsters would put money into a kitty, while leaders Joof, formerly of Derwent Close, and Smith, 28, who lived in Burnham Road, would act as wholesalers.

Earlier this year Joof was jailed for life for the 2002 gangland execution of 20-year-old Wolverhampton footballer Kevin Nunes, a rival dealer.