Revealed: UK’s most notorious drug baron Curtis ‘Cocky’ Warren launched small ‘business support service’ five months before his dramatic arrest
- EXCLUSIVE: Drugs baron Curtis Warren started small business before his arrest
- He was living in £112k house bought by his partner Stephanie Smithwhite, 44
- READ MORE: Moment drugs boss arrested in raid seven months after jail release
Britain’s most notorious drugs baron, once worth hundreds of millions of pounds, started a small enterprise described as a ‘business support service’ shortly before his dramatic arrest this week.
Curtis Warren is listed at Companies House as the sole director of the firm registered in Birkenhead and founded in February, MailOnline has learned.
The revelation of the apparent unlikely new career move for the veteran drug runner comes two days after he was arrested in a high profile raid.
‘Cocky’ Warren had been living with his former prison officer lover in her humble home when he was arrested which has raised questions about what has happened to his multi-million pound fortune.
The Liverpool-born gangster who has served multiple jail sentences was once estimated to have a £198m drugs fortune tied up around the world, enabling him to live a life of luxury. He was even cited in the Sunday Times Rich List.
Britain’s most notorious drugs baron Curtis Warren (pictured), once worth hundreds of millions of pounds, started a small enterprise described as a ‘business support service’ shortly before his dramatic arrest this week
Curtis Warren is listed at Companies House as the sole director of the firm registered in Birkenhead and founded in February
But Warren, 60, is thought to have been living quietly for a number of months in the modest semi-detached home of his partner Stephanie Smithwhite, 44, who served a two year jail sentence for having an affair with him behind bars.
READ MORE: Moment crime boss ‘Cocky’ Curtis Warren is arrested in dawn raid by Britain’s FBI seven months after he was released from jail
MailOnline can reveal that the house was bought for just £112,000 by Ms Smithwhite, according to Land Registry records which list her as the sole owner.
Warren, 60, was arrested when police staged a dawn raid at 6am on Wednesday on the three bedroom redbrick house on a suburban road in Boldon Colliery, South Tyneside.
He is being quizzed by police on suspicion of committing numerous breaches of a Serious Crime Prevention Order relating to the alleged unauthorised use of mobile phones, vehicles, bank accounts and travel. It’s unclear whether any of this is related to his new business.
The order came into force after his release from prison in November 2022 for drug trafficking offences.
Warren, who at the height of his criminal career was said to be a master money launderer, is thought to have a property portfolio but its ownership is far from transparent.
MailOnline can disclose that Warren chose to stay with Stephanie at her low key home, despite apparently having his own plush flat in Royal Quay in Liverpool, opposite the Albert dock where ITV’s This Morning used to be filmed.
Officers in two vans descended on the flat at around the same time as Warren was dramatically seized in South Tyneside
One builder, working at Royal Quay, told Mailonline: ‘I arrived at 7am and there were two police Matrix vans here and loads of police milling round.
‘They went into one of the flats. I had seen Warren before here. In fact, I asked if I could come into his flat to take pictures, but he told me to come back another day. We are working on the cladding for the flats.’
A woman living in a nearby flat, said: ‘I didn’t know he lived here. I’m shocked as he is a scary man. I haven’t seen him.’
Warren’s lover Smithwhite was jailed for two years in February 2020 at Durham Crown Court after she admitted two counts of misconduct in a public office.
One count related to her sexual relationship with Warren which is said to have lasted between June and December 2018 when he was serving time at top security HMP Frankland near Durham.
Warren, 60, is thought to have been living quietly for a number of months in the modest semi-detached home of his partner Stephanie Smithwhite (pictured), 44, who served a two year jail sentence for having an affair with him behind bars
MailOnline can reveal that the house (pictured) was bought for just £112,000 by Ms Smithwhite, according to Land Registry records which list her as the sole owner
The second count related to her not reporting that she knew he had access to a smuggled phone which is understood to have been a tiny a so-called ‘prison phone’ little bigger than a £2 coin.
Smithwhite, denied cutting a hole in the trousers of her prison uniform for a sexual purpose, but the sentencing judge said it was hard to imagine why else it was there.
Warren famously became an international drug trafficker worth tens of millions of pounds after being born in Toxteth and leaving school with no qualifications.
In 1997 he was jailed for 12 years following a Dutch police investigation that established he was importing cocaine and cannabis worth £125 million into Britain.
In the same year he made his appearance in The Sunday Times Rich List as a ‘property developer’ and by 2005 the newspaper estimated his wealth at around £76million.
He was also organising shipments of guns and hand grenades, tools of the gangland trade.
In jail, he established himself as a hard man when he beat a Turkish inmate to death. He was sentenced to a further four years for manslaughter.
Warren moved to Jersey after he was released in 2007. Two years later he was jailed there for 13 years for a plot to ship £1million of cannabis to the island.
The Jersey court drew on evidence from his life in Holland, and heard how Dutch police intercepts of phone calls show he had squirrelled away his money in investments.
It is claimed by the National Crime Agency that he invested £4 million in a gold mining venture in Guyana, as well as more money in petrol stations, properties in numerous countries and a pallet business.
The judges were told: ‘The stark fact is that Warren had ways of laundering his assets in ways that are simply untraceable.’
In one recording he was heard to say that he used a ‘cheap’ money launderer who only charged one per cent commission.
It was said that on ten separate occasions between 1991 and 1996 he passed around £10 million through this contact, meaning he laundered a staggering £100 million.
From this figure alone it was calculated that his assets, after inflation, were worth more than £170 million.
Warren was given a Serious Crime Prevention Order in October 2013 which banned him for owning more than one phone and he was forced to declare his movements and finances.
The following month at a three-week confiscation hearing at Jersey Crown Court, prosecutors claimed he had £198million drugs fortune.
However he told The Guardian he was unable to pay such a ‘fantastic’ amount and insisted ‘there is no money’.
In December 2013 a court imposed a 10-year prison sentence after he did not pay up the £198million in the given 28 days.
While he was on remand in La Moye prison in Jersey in 2007, Teresa Rodrigues, a former senior manager who ran the jail’s drugs and alcohol counselling unit, confessed to an affair with the gangster.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday in 2014, she claimed it lasted two years and only ended when he was convicted of drugs smuggling and transferred to a prison on the mainland.
Lisbon-born Ms Rodrigues said: ‘We had sex in his little cell most days.’
Officers from the NCA were seen battering through the door with a battering ram
An unknown man can be seen in the doorway after the door was smashed through
Warren (right) could be seen being led away from the property and into a car
Curtis Warren arriving to a hearing at the Royal Court in Jersey in October 2009
Durham Crown Court heard in 2020 how prison officer Smithwhite ‘fell in love with the wrong man in the wrong situation’ and exchanged hundreds of sexually explicit love letters with the infamous drug baron.
She set him a picture of herself and admitted kissing him and performing sex acts in his cell, a prison kitchen and a laundry room.
In interview, Smithwhite admitted other sexual encounters.
Warren was arrested yesterday in an operation involving Merseyside Police and the North East Regional Organised Crime Unit (NEROCU).
Breach of a serious crime prevention order is a criminal offence subject to a maximum sentence of five years, an unlimited fine, or both.
The Toxteth native who was once dubbed ‘Target One’ by Interpol had the order imposed when he was released from the maximum security HMP Whitemoor, in Cambridgeshire.
He was made subject to a strict raft of restrictions including a ban from instant messaging apps WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, being in possession of more than £1,000 in cash, giving police a day’s notice if he wants to use a friend’s car and a ban on travel outside of England and Wales without giving seven days notice to police.
Alison Abbott, from the NCA’s Lifetime Management of Offenders Team, said: ‘These court orders are vital tools for preventing and deterring future offending. Once criminals come onto our radar, they never leave, and the NCA will take action over breaches.’
Warren who was nicknamed ‘Cocky’ for his disdain of authority is thought to have been moved to HMP Whitemoor after his affair with Smithwhite was discovered.
Durham Crown Court heard when she was sentenced how she was found to have a tattoo of a rose with the name ‘Curtis’ next to it, which she said she had done in December 2018.
She was also found to be in possession of a Zanco ‘prison phone’ of the kind often smuggled into jails – though she denied she intended to take it in for Warren’s use.
The pair were rumbled when other members of staff at the prison became suspicious.
Smithwhite was subject to direct surveillance until December 13, 2018, when she was caught passing a note to the Warren, which he had attempted to eat.
The note was recovered and further searches were carried out including of her car where two mobile phones were found – one black and one white Samsung.
Smithwhite, who has a young grandson, was dismissed from her role and found work as a carer while on bail before she was jailed herself.
Judge Jonathan Carroll told her as he sentenced her that prisons were there to ensure the protection of society and victims of crime and they ‘are not easy places to manage.’
He added: ‘You knew who he was, what he had done. Perhaps it was his notoriety itself that attracted you to him.
‘It was equally clear that you were infatuated with him, demonstrated by your tattoo of his name on you.’
The judge added: ‘I accept there is no evidence that you did supply contraband or information but the degree of risk of compromise to prison security when you yourself had been compromised.
‘There could be no-one in Frankland prison, least of all an officer who would not know of his notoriety.’
The court also heard that a copy of ‘Cocky – The Rise and Fall of Curtis Warren’ – a book about the inmate, was found at Smithwhite’s home.
Prosecutor argued that it meant she was ‘clearly aware of his notoriety’.
Warren was first sent to Borstal at 18 for attacking a police officer and being involved in a riot.
On his release, the 5ft 9in, barrel-chested fitness fanatic worked as a bouncer, and took steroids to bulk up, in an attempt to appear even more intimidating.
He was eager to exert a ruthless authority over the streets of Liverpool. He ‘taxed’ prostitutes and their punters in the city’s red light district by threatening them with blackmail if they did not meet his financial demands.
In 1983, he was jailed for five years for armed robbery. But for Warren, prison simply provided an entry into the real criminal underworld.
He made contacts who, on his release, helped him establish himself as a top player in a nationwide drug-dealing network.
He forged links with a Colombian drugs lord to guarantee the best supply of cocaine into the country, and came to realise that establishing links with international dealers was the way to move into the upper echelons of Britain’s drug hierarchy.
In 1992, he was among 28 people arrested on suspicion of masterminding a 1,000-kilo shipment of cocaine to the UK.
However, he was acquitted halfway through the trial when the judge ruled there was insufficient evidence against him.
It was said that when he walked free from court he taunted officers who had brought the prosecution by saying: ‘I’m off to spend my f*****g money,’ but Warren denies uttering those words. A few years later, he moved to Holland.
Around that time, he was named as Interpol’s ‘Target One’ – a ranking that made him the most wanted international criminal. Consequently, Dutch police placed him under surveillance, tapped his phones and tailed him.
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