Scotland's Narco Blood Feud Explodes!
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It's September 2020 in Dover, a town on the Kent coast some 80 miles southeast of London. And Britain's border force is about to hit the jackpot. It's six months since cops all over Europe cracked EncroChat, a messaging service used by the continent's biggest narco traffickers. And the Dover team is sure there is a big shipment of cocaine hidden in consignments of fruit arriving from Latin America.

They've already searched 17 loads in that time. They found nothing. But you know what they say, 18 times a charm. And on this chilly day, tucked inside dozens of cardboard boxes full of Ecuadorian bananas are 119 parcels wrapped tightly in tinfoil.

When the officers cut into the packages, they discover almost a thousand blocks of cocaine, a ton of the drug in total, with a street value of well over 100 million US dollars. The boxes are on their way to David Bilsland, a grocer by trade, but cops are more interested in his underworld connections than his market stalls.

The 63-year-old is from Glasgow, 500 miles north of Kent, and he's linked to one of Scotland's most notorious gangsters. A man whose reputation for cold-bloodedness has earned him the nickname the Iceman, and whom others have described as Scotland's answer to Tony Soprano. Billsland expects to shift the gear from Dover in trucks belonging to his own firm.

But the bust, part of a police op called Pepperoni that spans the UK, Spain, Ecuador and, tellingly, Abu Dhabi, has made sure that will never happen. Instead, Bill's Land, a gangster named Jamie Stevenson and four others are banged up for their blunders in the Great British Bodge Banana Box Border Bust. It's one of the border force's biggest seizures in years. A huge success, but only on paper.

Because Bilsland and Stevenson have been around for years and they're key players in a bitter family feud for control of Scotland's lucrative cocaine, heroin and benzo markets. A feud that has, for over two decades, seen daylight assassinations, high-speed car chases and gruesome machete attacks. Cops know that every time they take a win, there's going to be a power struggle in the underworld.

And with Bilsland and Stevenson behind bars, their enemies in Glasgow, Edinburgh and far further afield will spot a chance to bury them. By 2024, the feud has spilled into an all-out war. Homes are firebombed, gang associates shot, stabbed and threatened. Even kids have been targeted.

Cop numbers are down since the pandemic and detectives fear they're sleepwalking into something even more brutal than the razor wars that slept Glasgow in the 1920s and 30s or even the blood-soaked ice cream wars of the 80s. Those guys, they never had social media. But today's mobsters are desperate to Instagram their crimes, posting videos of burning vehicles and homes accompanied by poetic threats and a pulsing Motown soundtrack.

Among them, a new crew has come to Scotland. Its skull and cross rifle badge is a grim, ultra-violent watermark throughout. It calls itself "Tamahunto", which doesn't sound very Scottish, and it isn't. Tamahunto's boss lives a thousand miles away, and he's got connections to some of the scariest gangs on the planet. In Spain, Dubai, and in the favelas of Brazil. Tamahunto. We're together in Portuguese.

The feud just took a giant leap into the abyss. Over the coming months, as Glasgow and Edinburgh burn, details about this shady new character's life will leak in local media. He's in Dubai, with links to Glasgow's football hooligan scene, in bed with the mighty Kinnahan cartel, and heir to Latin American cocaine roots bequeathed by a pair of fallen brothers. Some call him Mr. Big, others Miami.

Welcome to the Underworld Podcast. Welcome to the Underworld Podcast.

Thank you.

Hello everyone and welcome to a weekly dose of true crime that dives into the criminal underworlds that affect all of our lives whether we like it or not. I am Sean Williams, an investigative reporter and aspiring golfer in New Zealand and I'm joined as ever by filmmaker Danny Gold who's once again in Spotify's shiny New York office while I'm just sat here in the cold in my apartment. It's winter here and cold Danny. It's summer there. Have you been enjoying that New York heat?

No, dude, it's been pretty cold and rainy. Haven't been able to tan. I also don't think I've made a film in like five years, but okay.

All right. Well, I was coming to you from some positivity. But anyway, a first shout out to review us, follow us on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want even more of us in your ears, why not throw us a couple of bucks each month on Patreon? We've got plenty of bonus shows there, reading lists, ad-free shows. That's patreon.com slash the underworld podcast, or you can sign up directly on Spotify or iTunes. Yeah, and there's always merch available too at our website, underworldpod.com. Check that out.

And if anyone's interested, I was on a recent episode of the Jordan Harbinger show chatting about Chinese money laundering in North Korea. I think I'm also on an upcoming episode of Borderlands talking about the Pacific Drug Highway. And that's something we covered back here at the beginning of this year, I think.

uh now this show actually comes from a tip by listener henry smith and if you've got any topics or stories you think we should follow up on reach out the underworld podcast at gmail.com thanks henry for getting in touch with this one actually um i think like you were saying it earlier there's there's a bunch of people who've reached out about this topic because it's uh it's pretty nuts and if you're listening from scotland you are going to know all about what is happening between edinburgh and glasgow right now there's firebombs murders campaigns of

terror hasn't been this bad in a long long time but if you're anywhere else perhaps even in England or the rest of the UK you might even not know this is happening up north at all because there hasn't been a huge amount of media outside Scotland apart from one one really good feature of the Telegraph so shout out to that but I

But this stuff is fully insane, right? And it stretches all the way from Scotland to Ireland, out to the Middle East and Latin America. And a lot of it is wound around the bitterly fierce rivalry between the hardline ultras or hooligans of Scotland's two biggest football teams, the old firm of Rangers and Celtic.

Oh, dude, you know, I need to rewatch Football Factory. That movie completely rules. Great movie. I love that scene where they're talking about the size of HMS. Anyway, yeah, yeah, that is a good that is a good film. We'll touch on that a bit later on the football stuff. But what I basically mean is that none of what you're going to hear today is happening in a vacuum. Right. The current gang war is actually a direct product of violence going back to decades and blood feuds that have raged in a Scottish narco underworld ever.

ever since. Why do people in the UK love cocaine so much, Sean?

I think because of the weather, Danny, and the general disposition. Actually, that adds up, adds up. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, before we dive into all that, a quick note to check our episode on Glasgow's ice cream wars, which did rage in the mid-80s over control of heroin supply via ice cream vans, of course, to the city's most deprived slum areas. It's going to give you a good idea of just how bad things were back then.

and some of the background on how Glasgow's most notorious criminals came to rule the roost.

But while the ice cream van wars arguably end in 2003, when drug lord Tan McGraw flees Glasgow for Ireland, gang-related killings continue. In 2004, 83 people lose their lives in mostly knife attacks, and this is of a city of just 600,000 people. And it prompts the World Health Organization in 2005 to dub Glasgow the, quote, ''murder capital of Europe''.

Yeah, that's actually a lot, like especially for a place without that many guns. I mean, it's not Mexico or Brazil, but that's U.S. numbers right there. Yeah, I mean, it's especially crazy when you consider that Italy is just it's just right there, guys. There's plenty going on there. Anyway, city officials are sparked into action and police put in place a series of violence reduction units or VRUs to stem the flow of blood and.

works so well in fact the experts from as far afield as canada and new zealand flocked to see just how glasgow did it a story for another show perhaps similar to post escobar medellin in some ways yeah now the major issue in medellin is you know guys going up from the states and canada getting scopolamine by the woman they thought were totally into them for their personality yeah i had a friend who did a documentary on that and uh he said it was the darkest he ever reported it was really grim

Yeah. Anyway, while cops are focused on stopping violence, drug use in Glasgow and across Scotland, it soars.

Fewer organized criminals are being arrested and heroin is being joined on the streets by cocaine because well, yeah, of course. And benzodiazepine, more commonly known as benzos, which are pretty strong tranquilizers. Valium and Xanax are benzos, for example. Yeah, I mean, the worst. Just pray you never have to get off those because they are or go on them to the point you have to get off them because it's brutal, man.

Yeah, I- Probably worse than a lot of other drugs. I was gonna do a personal anecdote, but let's not go there. Add to this the tightening of belts at City Hall and fewer bobbies on the beat, which is policemen in public for American listeners. And you got a pretty decent recipe for narcos to thrive.

All this time, the two biggest crews in Scotland are the Daniel crime family and the Lyons crime family. Both emerged in the 1990s to serve Glasgow's lucrative drug market, then worth around $400 million. Jamie Daniel, the head of his clan, has risen from scrap metal dealer to cigarette smuggler to heroin kingpin, and the Daniels are the better established of the two groups.

But in 2001, a few kicks off when members of the Lions crew steal a five-figure consignment of Daniel cocaine in the Glasgow suburb of Milton during a house party. Think Montagues and Capulets only with Stone Island jackets and face like chewed up dog toys. Really makes you proud to be British, this stuff.

Now, this feud explodes in January 2003, when members of both sides are shot and injured in separate attacks. Among these are the Daniels' chief enforcer, a crackpot named Kevin Gerbil Carroll and Johnny Lyons, brother of Lyons' family leaders, David and Eddie Sr.

So far, so scrappy. In 2004, Gerbil Carroll is charged with attempted to murder a Lions associate with an AK-47, but the case falls apart at trial and he's a free man. Everybody's scared of him. The Paulists, I'm trying to do my Limmy voice there, the cops, they are now very much aware of the feud and they're deploying more resources to Glasgow's underworld.

But in Carol, they're up against by far the most unpredictable player in the whole game. As near as a psychopath as they come, in love with the violence. His rivalry with the Lions clan goes back to childhood, when he'd been bullied by members of the family. At age 19, he's jailed for three months for car theft.

By his mid-twenties, Carroll is a hardened gangster and the Daniels' chosen man for dirty jobs. And no job is dirtier, arguably, than the one he carries out in November 2006. That's when Carroll, with the aid of a 4x4 and a rope, tears down the gravestone of Eddie Lyon's senior son, Gary, who had died in 1991, aged just eight, of leukaemia.

What are the point? Like, what's the point of these stunts? I mean, this is for like teenagers to do to each other. Like, this is just stupid. Yeah, it's dumb. And it kind of like is the inciting thing that kicks off a bunch of violence thereafter. I mean, days after this, Carol ambushes and shoots Eddie Lyons Jr. and one of his friends,

in a town around 10 miles southeast of Glasgow. A week after that, Carroll himself is shot and injured, yet again, in Bishop Briggs, just north of the city, in what is clearly a revenge attack. The following month, in December 2006, the Daniels-Lyons feud kicks into a whole new gear. On the afternoon of December 6th, two men pull up outside a garage on a busy road in the northern Glasgow suburb of Lambshill, in a blue Mazda.

Raymond Anderson and James McDonald, dressed in trench coats, pull on old man face masks and then step out of the car. The pair walk inside, traffic flying by the whole time, and open fire. David Lyons, the garage owner, finds cover. But his 21-year-old nephew, Michael, is shot and killed. Another nephew, Stephen Lyons, is also shot but survives, as does an associate who loses a kidney.

This murder, which a lawyer would describe at trial as, quote, a scene from The Godfather, makes headlines across Britain. Anderson and MacDonald are, of course, hitmen for the Daniels. Ten days afterwards, David Lyons gets a note through the mail.

The boys owe me £25,000 and I want what's owed to me. It's for drugs, it reads. Very, very direct and to the point. I like it. Yeah, yeah, they do it different up north. And it goes on, quote, they all know what it's about. The money doesn't matter to me as it's got to be paid to the piper. I don't want the police, the boys, not even your wife knowing about it. If you keep them out of this, then all your lives can go back to normal as we are all losing money through this.

If you have any tricks for my pickup man, then the deals are off. Remember to keep your mouth shut. No cameras, no surveillance, as the pickup man doesn't know nothing, so he's no use to you. Drop off 4 p.m. Saturday. I'll draw you a map. An X will mark the spot. That's pretty threatening, but Lyons never pays the 25K. Instead, he hands the letter to the police.

Anderson and McDonald, meanwhile, have been under surveillance since the December 6th shooting, and they've hardly been discreet going around describing themselves as the Untouchables and talking about a mysterious Piper, which you presume is probably the same Piper in the letter to David Lyons.

The pair lead detectives to a house on the east side of Glasgow where they discover a machine gun, grenades and ammunition, plus a bunch of weapons that have been stolen from a nearby army barracks. It's a pretty open and shut case. And in May 2008, a judge sentences Anderson and McDonald to a Scottish record 35 years in prison, later knocked down to 30 on appeal for what he describes as a, quote, cold blooded, premeditated assassination.

This is all the bloody conclusion of an attempted power grab by the Lions, basically. The Daniels have been on the scene since the 90s. They'd been the strongest, but the Lions were young, impulsive and thought they'd spotted a chance to get the throne. But the December 2006 killing and the actions of Gerbil Carroll are the Daniels' way of snapping back, putting their rivals down.

The Lions are weak at this point, they've lost a prominent family member. Stephen Lyons, the nephew of David who wasn't killed in that garage, he flees to Spain. And this is crucial.

because it's over there that he meets members of the Kinahan cartel, the Irish mafia that's taking over Europe's cocaine trade, amalgamated into one giant so-called super cartel with capos from the Netherlands, Albania, and way further beyond. We've done a bunch of shows on them, so go to your search bar, type in Kinahan and get educated. But essentially...

Young Stephen Lyon is about to make connections in some very high places and they're gonna pay dividends down the line a bit like a Danny Gold shitcoin investment. How's that doing by the way? Okay, dude, so uh, not good But we had a spur-of-the-moment trip to Atlantic City the other night with my my buddy Simon Ostrovsky who's a fantastic journalist who reports a lot on Ukraine stuff and I don't know if you've ever been to Atlantic City, but it is not a nice place to go so we had a we had a system and the system is

did not work. When you step up to the roulette table and the first spin is a double zero, you should just leave the table, keep walking, walk out the door of the casino, and then leave.

We did not do that. And now I really need you guys to support the Patreon this month. But also, Atlantic City is the only casino I've ever been to. We went to, where did we go, the Borgata and Oceans, where the people working the tables, like the dealers and the table people, they're like significantly rude to you. Like they'll like give you shit for losing. It's the exact opposite of Vegas, where they're nice and they like want to be hospitable. They'll like talk shit to you and like make fun of you for losing. It's ridiculous.

It's ridiculous. I mean, it's Jersey, dude. What do you expect? I need to go. Anyway. I want to go. Take me there, please. No, you don't. You don't need to go. You don't need to go. I don't know, man. Just listen to the song and that's all you need. Anyway, now in the story, remember this podcast thing we're doing? We've rattled all the way up. I forgot about that. We're all the way up to late 2009. So the Daniels have beaten the Lions into submission and Gerbil Carroll, lifetime member of the Psycho Club, he rules the streets of Glasgow.

He carries out a series of so-called alien abductions on rival dealers across Scotland. They're named because, having been brutally tortured, beaten and robbed, none of the victims tell police they can remember a thing about it. Gerbil was, by most accounts, a maniac, writes Glasgow Live, and incorrigible, not a great combination.

Carroll is unsurprisingly making enemies left and right, he's getting more and more out of control and it's clear that if anybody's going to silence them, they're going to need to come at him with something more audacious than anything that's gone before. Not least when, in January 2010, Carroll shoots and injures Eddie Lyons Jr. again, this time in the arm. The Lyons might be down, but they're not out.

And the latest act by Carol is an excuse they need to do something big. On Jan 13, 2010, at around 1 p.m., Carol has arranged to meet a drug pusher named Stephen Glenn, who is associated with the Lyons family, at a supermarket car park in Glasgow. You're working for me now, he tells Glenn, trying to poach him from the Lyons. Anybody that doesn't fall into line is going to get banged.

But listener, Glenn isn't going to get banged. It is he who will do the banging. Minutes later, Carol was sitting in the back of a black Audi A3, a great car, a winner's car, true Wellington dad's car, when a Volkswagen Golf screeches to a halt in front of it.

Carol's two associates leaps out of their front seats, leaving him alone in the vehicle. The child locks are on. He's trapped. Two masked men emerge from the gulf and open fire. The rear window shatters, as does Carol's head and chest, from 13 shots in total across almost 30 seconds, leaving him slumped dead on the sea.

Now, sure, Glasgow can be a rough place, but a military-style execution in broad daylight in an Asda car park? That just ain't cricket. Local media goes into overdrive talking about a Sopranos-style hit. I mean, is there a Sopranos hit like that, Danny? And the BBC describes it as, quote, arguably the most public gangland hit ever carried out in Scotland. I mean, there's a hit like that in every single mafia movie and show there is. What's the... I mean, when they kill, um...

Who did they kill in his driveway? Ah, when they're at war. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually remember this one, but I don't remember any of the things in the Sopranos. But the two guys that asked him what directions are, they're Italian, ask him what directions are. And they also shoot up, is it Mustang Sally who they kill? Who Junior has killed? Um, I don't know.

I don't know. They shoot people on their calls all the time, but who knows? That's every mafia movie or something like that. Although the machine guns, I think is machine guns, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That might be different. Yeah. I mean, um, I don't know. We've got like Godfather style hit and Sopranos style hit. So I think you throw that in there. Lazy media. That's how you do it. You throw it. You throw that in there. Yeah.

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I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and I hope you'll join us for Season 4 of Dateline Missing in America. In each episode of Dateline's award-winning series, we will focus on one missing persons case and hear from the families, the friends, and the investigators all desperate to find them. You will want to listen closely. Maybe you could help investigators solve a mystery. Dateline Missing in America. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.

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Patterson, who because he's clearly innocent, flees to Spain 10 days after the murder. I mean, I don't know why

any of these guys are getting out to Spain. It's just nuts. Buff spends more than four years on the run and he features on the UK serious organized crime agency's top 10 most wanted list. But in 2014, he hands himself into a police station in Madrid. He's sent back to the UK and he's convicted and sentenced to 22 years. In a mark of Carroll's notoriety, court officials read out a list of 99 potential suspects in his death.

A number of tit-for-tat killings follow, but the scales of power in Glasgow and Scotland are really tipped in the Lions' favour in July 2016.

That's when Jamie Daniel, chief of the Daniels family, dies of cancer aged 58. Carol, the crew's top enforcer, is long dead, and nobody's been found with half the appetite for chaos since. Furthermore, Daniel's son and heir apparent Xander Sutherland is behind bars on a lengthy heroin rap. So there's a big power vacuum at the top of the Daniels crime family, and it's unclear who's going to fill it.

At the same time, the Lions, supercharged by their connections to the Kinnahans and Europe's exploding cocaine trade, spot yet another chance to become the kings of Scotland's underworld, almost a decade after the garage shootout that nearly killed them off.

In the five months following Jamie Daniels' death, they carry out five attempted murders. One of them is Robert Daniel, who on December 8th, 2016, is rammed in his car by another vehicle, chased into a house, then hacked at twice in the head with either a hatchet or a machete. Here's the BBC quote.

Asked in court if he was aware of any ill feeling between the Daniel and Lyons family, Robert, 29, replied, not that I know of. Now that, guys, is a real omerta for you. No pentiti here, Italians.

The most gruesome of these attacks is dealt out to Stephen Bonzo Daniel on May 18th, 2017. Daniel's heading home after dropping off some friends when his car is rammed again by a VW Golf, which is then joined by an Audi A3. It's a great car, Danny. It's really, it's a really cool car for like super cool people. And a crazy chase ensues through Glasgow, hitting speeds of up to 100 miles per hour.

You know, Audi is like a luxury car in America. I don't know if it's like that in New Zealand or Europe, but you're like a luxury man. Is it still a luxury car when it's from 2011 and you can't switch any of the dials over from the Japanese, which it is initially in? So,

I have a Hyundai Genesis, which is a luxury sedan. I think it's just a Genesis now. Also from 2011. Amazing car. Those Koreans, they know what's up, man. They know what's up. I think, I mean, like modern cars, they just ain't built like that anymore. You could slam my car into a roll. It's like a 2000 Honda Accord, dude. You could do anything with that car. It's like a Mario Kart car. Incredible, man. Anyway, Daniel's car eventually hits an off-ramp north of town.

He's probably got a shit car in comparison, which leaves him unconscious, slumped at the wheel. You wouldn't get that with the Audi. While he's in that state, his chasers cut him so badly with a series of blades that his nose is almost severed entirely. And his facial wounds are so bad that first responders assume he's been shot.

Daniel survives the ordeal, telling a courtroom he doesn't remember it at all. Neither does Daniel, age 39. Does he believe he has any enemies? It's just a complete shock attack. Who would have thought? These guys just like to slice. You know, a wise man once said, you're whack if you don't appreciate knives. Yeah. And yeah, that is really good advice.

Obviously, the police just don't pack their stuff up and abandon the case, right? It turns out that Daniel's car, a bad car, an idiot's car, had been fitted with a sophisticated tracker allowing his attackers to mark his whereabouts. And this is one of the key bits of evidence leading to convictions for six associates of the Lyons family in May 2019 for five murder plots, sentencing them to a total of 104 years in prison.

You sought to turn Glasgow into a war zone for your feud, says the judge, Lord Mulholland. This is a civilized city, which is based on the rule of law. There is no place for this type of conduct, retribution, or the law of the jungle. But, well, we'll watch Mulholland Drive. The beginning is the end and everything comes around in circles, right? Great movie, but, um...

I don't know, man. Just writing that. Do you remember the creepy hobo jump scare? I watched that after smoking a bowl and it just about gave me a heart attack. I think our listeners really want to know or they want you to specify a bowl of what exactly? A bowl of soup. Anyway, Lord Mulholland is totally wrong. Glasgow definitely is a place of retribution. I mean, you just heard it like for the last 20, 25 minutes and the law of the jungle. In early 2020, French diplomat

Dutch and British authorities crack the EncroChat system though giving them access to millions of messages exchanged by the biggest narco kingpins in Europe we did a show way back when this all happened with reporter Ed Caesar who wrote a brilliant New Yorker piece about the fallout from EncroChat so definitely listen to that when you get a chance but among the top level criminals giving away their secrets to the cop like they're on MySpace one of them stands out in the UK

Jamie Iceman Stevenson is a 59-year-old drug smuggler who is well, well known in criminal spheres. Back in 2007, a judge jailing him for 12 years had said that, quote, it is clear that you occupy an important position in the world of organized crime.

Money laundering provides an essential service to the drugs trade and contributes materially to its profitability. What they're saying by that is that this guy is a really, really big deal. He's really sophisticated and crucially, he is a Lions associate and by extension, an associate at the Kinnahans, operating out of Dubai and working with members of the Lions family. But with the Dover banana shipment from the cold open, he's been caught absolutely bang to rights.

Stevenson goes on the run in the Netherlands but in 2022, two years later, he's caught when, get this, a pal he's on the land with goes on a bender in Amsterdam's red light district using a bank card the police are monitoring. They're caught, brought back to the UK and in October 2024, Stevenson is jailed for 20 years while his associates, including David Bilsland, the grocer who was in the Moldova plot, they get a total of 29 years.

During the trial, authorities lift the lid on a Stevenson plan to flood Scotland with millions of tablets of Etizolam, also known as street Valium, from a factory in Kent. Stevenson's kingpin days may be over thanks to this banana bust, but drug use is going bananas across Scotland nonetheless.

In 2023, there were 1,172 drug misuse deaths in the country, which is a 12% increase on the previous year. This is actually over four times higher than the number of deaths back in 2000 when heroin was ripping through communities and opioids still account for four-fifths of all deaths today. And still no fentanyl. Interesting that, huh? Despite the profit margins there being way higher.

Mm hmm. Yeah, there's there's a bunch of ideas for that. But I guess we started getting into that in the China episode a little bit as well from from that. That's the whole point. Yeah. Yeah. Dundee, the fourth largest city in Scotland and really close to Edinburgh, has some of the worst stats of drug abuse in the whole U.K.,

Cuckooing, which is the practice of criminals taking over somebody's house, usually under threat of death to use as a drug den or stash house, has become so rife in the city that NGOs have been set up specifically to combat it. And folks have even fled town to escape it. That practice needs a scarier name. Yeah, it is awful. Like, it's fully...

Oh my God, the stories you read about that. Just, yeah, don't read it. Just listen to this show. Anyway, benzos have been identified in almost 60% of drug deaths cases in Dundee. So it's fair to say that if Stevenson's pill factory had got up and running, it could have been a public health disaster on Scotland's streets.

In recent years, of course, cocaine has flooded Scotland's streets just like it has everywhere. I mean, there are uncontacted tribes in the Indian Ocean that are probably on the gear each Friday night. In Scotland, there has been increased concern over the rise in people injecting the drug, especially in Edinburgh. Locals call this prop. And one user has told local station STV that its use is, quote, an epidemic. It's actually shook the town, to be honest.

Add to this increased levels of synthetic opioids like nitroxenes finding their way into the Scottish drug supply chain. And you've got this situation whose potential for death and destruction, not to mention the crimes associated with tons of folks being off their heads on coke and smack, far outweighs the stuff Irving Welsh was writing about back in the early 90s. Okay, so there's your context.

But what doesn't help in all of this either is the role of football hooligans or ultras being thrown into the mix. Glasgow is home to two of the biggest clubs in Europe, Rangers and Celtic, and

And it's one of the darkest rivalries in world sport. Very long story, very short. Glasgow is very closely bound to the history of neighbouring Northern Ireland, traditionally being a place of high immigration by Irish Catholics, especially after the great famine of the mid-1800s. And so it's taken on the North Sectarian divisions between Catholics and Protestants. Rangers, traditionally Protestants. Loyalists, they're often Union flags and royal imagery at their games. And Celtic, as the name suggests,

of the Irish Catholic Club, with all the links that entails, including to the IRA. At the extreme ends of this spectrum are two sets of ultras. On one side, Rangers, Uni and Bears, which does sound like a gay club, and Celtics Green Brigade, which sounds less gay and more like a name for the Hoots bar staff on St Patrick's Day. Both...

are deep into cocaine use. What else? And along with it, violence British football hasn't really seen since the 1980s when English clubs were banned from Europe and deaths at matches weren't too uncommon. Research last year suggested that cocaine use, which is so rife in this world, may have superseded excessive drinking as a cause of violence and antisocial conduct in the modern game.

Fans, supporters associations, police officers, government advisors and safety groups in England and Scotland were all interviewed about the relationship between match goers and alcohol during an extensive three year study. And it was found that Class A drug use was a far greater concern.

Cocaine, they say, is part of the problem. How do they do that research? Are they like test subject A said he had a couple of pints and he was feeling okay and then did a bunch of lines and then he beat the crap out of someone? How does that work? Yeah. Is it just based on sentiment? I guess. Come back to me on that one. Yeah, the methodology needs to be investigated. Yeah.

But the ultras aren't just involved in taking drugs. Entire Scottish clubs have been found out to be owned by criminal figures and gangsters have long taken cuts in transfer fees. I guess a bit like the Yasso Puig stuff in the US. Fun fact, I once caught a Puig fly ball in Oklahoma City. Wait, what's that story? Was he one of the guys? You know, there was like an 80s baseball cocaine ring among players. Is that the one you're talking about?

That's much more recent, right? He was part-owned by gangsters with the Mexican cartels or something that brought him over from Cuba. Then he owed them a bunch of money, I think it was. Yeah, I can't remember how that finished, but I think he's playing in Mexico now. So maybe he's having a better or worse time. Reach out to us. Yes, he'll...

Back to Scotland, however. One of the key players in the Jamie Stevenson banana bust is Lloyd Cross, a self-styled top boy of the Union Bears, who's followed Rangers all around Europe and has been arrested doing so. It is Cross's vehicle recovery firm that's been used as a drug shipping group for Stevenson, and Cross has been working closely with Billsland, the grocer, to get the gear from Dover to all corners of the UK.

In October 2024, just weeks after Cross's sentence alongside Stevenson, Bilsland and their gang, the Union Bears unfurl a banner at a Europa League match against Lyon reading No Surrender LC, Lloyd Cross and Rangers Riot Crew while setting off fireworks over the head of their own goalkeeper.

Cross is a union bear, rangers daft and still has a lot of friends in the group, one source tells the Scottish Sun. But flaunting your support for a drug dealing thug while aiming fireworks over your own goalie's head shows just how brainless this mob are. Here's the thing. Stevenson, Billsland and Cross, like I said earlier, they're all Lyons family associates. Kinnahan associates. With them behind bars, things will likely get more violent.

And on the other side of the feud, remember how Jamie Daniels' death left a power vacuum at the top of the Daniels clan? That void is filled by Edinburgh-based Mark Richardson, who in 2018 is jailed for eight years after being caught with a Glock pistol, and another 18 months is added to his sentence for a high-speed car chase with the cops. So, some of the biggest Lions players have gone down for the banana bust, and there's trouble at the top of the family too.

Remember Stephen Lyons? The Lyons family nephew who ran off to Spain after the 2006 garage shootout? He's gone from there to Dubai, the mothership for global organized crime. And he's alleged to have racked up debts to the Kinahan cartel for a bunch of failed deals during the pandemic. And those are not the people you want to be in the red with. The Lyons family seems like it's in a state of disarray. But the Daniels crew is arguably even more shambolic.

With no Jamie Daniel or Gerbil Carol, Mark Richardson takes over, a crook from Edinburgh with a long and distinguished rap sheet. In 2010, Coults sentenced him to 10 years prison aged just 23 when he's caught trying to sell $3 million of heroin and crack across Scotland's capital.

Several years later, he hooks up with Steven Bonzo Daniel, remember the guy who got his face macheted half off? And together they run the Daniels criminal enterprise. Bonzo's face is a complete mess. Looks like a topographical map, real Hellraiser vibes.

In 2017, Richardson is swept up in a huge police sting, Operation Escalade, which reveals, among other things, that Scotland's biggest gangsters are now travelling to Brazil to meet face-to-face with leaders of the First Capital Command, the PCC, stockpiling military-grade weapons and torturing enemies with incredible levels of violence. Among them are brothers James and Barry Gillespie, who then go on the run in Brazil.

And the following January, Richardson cops this almost nine year sentence, later increased to over a decade. And then Richardson just looks like a regular bloke. He's like pink skin, loose shirts, slightly overweight. He's basically British, but he's sophisticated. He launders money for a series of complicated schemes and he runs the Daniels family from prison, quarterbacking drug deals and building up a groundswell of support in Edinburgh to try to take Glasgow from the Lyons family.

which is a pretty dangerous business, even if the lion's leadership is all over the place. Between 2017 and 2021, Scottish police track over 70 incidents related to this violent turf war in something they call Operation Engagement, which threatens to blossom into an all-out war at any moment.

The authorities, though, they're fighting a losing battle, not least because their own house is in shambles. As Glasgow climbed from its murder capital status and politicians down south in Westminster had hopped aboard the bandwagon narrative of positive change, the Conservative government had cut budgets dedicated to combating organised criminal groups. The number of Scottish police officers has fallen by almost 1,000. And all this is coming at the same time as Scotland's cocaine market is soaring.

Says Graham Pearson, former head of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, quote, those involved in organized crime have had a fairly joyful time developing their business with the odd casualty as law enforcement intervenes.

Most of those who might have been able to change the situation have lacked the commitment to see things through and have prioritised other areas, such as the NHS and education. Organised crime was overlooked and the wealth and power of those people has developed and become more confident. Another retired cop speaking to The Telegraph puts it simpler, quote, you need to keep your foot on the neck of the violence.

Today, there are 90 serious organized criminal groups operating in Scotland and over 1,400 people involved in criminal activity. As of last March, only 158 of them were in prison. Scotland now has the worst drug death rate in Europe with over twice the rate of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, which are the UK's other three constituent nations. Wow, that's worse drug rate than all of, like, including Eastern Europe? Apparently so. Yeah, it's nuts. That's really, really bad there.

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Find Sleepy on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes each week. Sweet dreams. All of this is mixing into a deadly cocktail of cocaine riches, power vacuums and blood feuds. Add to this the fallout from Operation Venetic, Ed Crow chat and the banana bust, and you have a recipe not just for turf wars, but chaos. Every time police have a success like the Stevenson case, it has repercussions in the criminal world, a former undercover cop tells The Telegraph.

The criminals look to see how vulnerable they are. They start looking inwards at the scapegoats and violence is their answer to everything. When police have a success, it's actually pouring petrol on the fire.

Stephen Lyons, the Lyons family scion, leaves Dubai amid his debt trouble with the Kinnahans. Into this void and chaos steps a third player, a guy keen to stamp his own mark on Scotland from a home in Dubai, where he'd been since 2022 after evading criminal charges back home. A man with a history as a Union Bears ultra, with links to Lloyd Cross and Jamie Stevenson, who can source drugs from the Kinnahans and get them to the Lyons and Daniels from Europe's shipping ports.

a man known to media only as Miami. Miami also has links to James and Barry Gillespie, the fraternal mobsters who've gone missing in Brazil, presumed by now to be dead and killed out there. Perhaps Miami had a hand in it, perhaps not.

But this guy has friends in almost all the high places you can imagine. And in March this year, he makes a $700,000 cocaine deal with associates of Mark Richardson, the head of the Daniels clan. Here's what happens next, according to anonymous source speaking to The Sun: "One of Richardson's crew went out to Dubai for a few weeks and agreed to take 16 kilos of cocaine but didn't pay. Another guy ended up paying with fake notes rather than genuine cash.

Moves like this just aren't tolerated. It's the old paper in the briefcase trick, guys. I mean, I guess it must work sometimes, but I wouldn't advise ripping off some psychotic cocaine kingpin with it. And Miami, unsurprisingly, goes into a bloodthirsty tailspin. A contract is put out on Richardson's life and guards move into a new prison. Bonzo Daniels, he of the slashed-up face, actually moves from Glasgow to Dubai as he thinks it'll be safer out there.

By late March, masked goons are firebombing homes, businesses and cars belonging to Daniel's family associates. Before long, attacks are being filmed and posted to social media. One minute long example on March 23rd includes a montage of Alston's strikes set to the Vandellas' Nowhere to Run, which, yes, a stone cold banger and something straight out of a Guy Ritchie movie.

This is a message to anyone associated with Mark Richardson. The caption reads, We are only just getting started. We are coming for all of you. The violence, of course, is just getting started. Throughout March and April, more homes and cars are vandalized as Miami makes his mark on Richardson and the Daniels. In late April, the perpetrators named themselves Tamo Junto, which means we are together in Brazilian Portuguese.

Their badge is pretty gnarly. A growling skull in St. Andrew's flag colors, flanked by cross-assault rifles and TMJ 2025. I've put it in the script so Danny can actually give his professional opinion. What do you reckon? It's pretty sick. I mean, it does look like a death squad from a Marvel movie. But also, I see TMJ. Isn't TMJ that thing that people get in their jaw?

We're like, you got to get Botox for it because it's a grinding thing, I think. So this is like Brazilian plastic surgeons or something. No, I think that skull in the logo is suffering from that, which is unfortunate. Fair enough. That wasn't the analysis that I'd expected. But anyway, one video shows members breaking into a residential home in broad daylight, battering down the front door with weapons and leaping for a ground floor window.

We are urging everyone in Scotland on the streets and those incarcerated to join us in the fight against Mark Richardson and the Daniels family," a caption reads. This is like Mexican cartel level stuff happening here, huh? Yeah, it's mad, man. It's so public as well. Amid all of this, Bonzo Daniels' home is firebombed and 135 grand bounties placed on his head. In May, Bonzo comes back from Dubai to Glasgow, weirdly,

He's got a panic room in his house and still bollards in the drive outside to avoid any vehicle ramming attacks. Miami's men, one source tells Glasgow Live, quote, know everything about his movements and haven't ruled out going after him at a Rangers game. But attacking him at Ibrox, which is the stadium, with the amount of police there would be difficult. Another Daniels associate who flees to Thailand is tracked down there and slashed across his face, leaving a pretty brutal wound.

More recently, children and family of gangsters have been targeted, something that hasn't happened since the early days of the Lions Daniel feud some 20 years back. Says Graham Pearson, the former cop, quote, It is a complex picture because you've got people who are in prison who still want to have influence inside and outside and look after what was their business.

On the outside, you've got wannabes who are coming forward and they think this is an opportunity for them. And you've got others who have old scores to settle that they could not settle when crime bosses were around. All of that mixes together. And the greed for the money that comes from drugs and from the kudos that comes from being a main man and you end up with competition, violence and the kind of incidents we've seen. On May 17th, media finally lift the lid on Miami's identity.

His name is Ross McGill, a 31-year-old former leader of the Union Bears Ultras. He's actually fled Scotland in 2022 at the fallout of the EncroChat banana busts, initially to Spain and then, of course, to Dubai. He's had a bunch of failed legit enterprises, including a pie company, construction, takeaway food, mobile phone stands, a restaurant, a dry cleaning firm, management consultancy and a fitness outlet.

McGill could have attended failcon or blogged about his corporate woes on LinkedIn, but he went down a far more honorable path, cocaine trafficking. I mean, honestly, he gave literally every other business a try, which is like fair play.

But also, I would assume you would have to be a better businessman to sell cocaine rather than pies, but I guess not. I don't know. It's hard to make a... I know all too well how hard it is to make a good mince pie. The Sun reports that McGill took over narco roots in Brazil after the demise of the Gillespie brothers, who are still missing, presumed dead.

And being young and protected, he doesn't seem to care whether Tamahunto's war lasts for months or even years, which despite some low-level arrests, seizures and raids, it really could do. McGill's men are hardly hiding their intentions either. Goes a recent post, quote, Daniels and Richardsons, every associate, every business will be targeted. Leave Scotland immediately. Exterminate the Daniel virus. To be continued.

Which, as an addendum, just yesterday as we're recording this, so June 1st, two men were shot dead outside a bar in Malaga. Their names? Ross Monaghan, who I'm sure this is a complete coincidence, but who was linked to the killing of Kevin Gerbil Carroll in 2010. And, get this, Eddie Lyons Jr.

So this one, folks, is very much live. And if anyone knows anything about it, get in touch. The Underworld Podcast at gmail.com. It is a crazy one. Yeah, wild, especially with that happening yesterday. As always, patreon.com, Session Underworld Podcast, Spotify, iTunes, write reviews, say nice things. Thank you guys again for tuning in. ♪♪♪

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