One of the brothers behind Liverpool’s notorious Huyton Firm has been jailed for 18 years after breaking his cover while on the run in the Netherlands by going on an alcohol-fuelled bender.
Francis Coggins had managed to evade the authorities for five years before he was arrested by Dutch police for being drunk and disorderly.
The 60-year-old had been living in the coastal town of Zandvoort, where he bought cocaine and heroin before shipping it to the UK via the UPS network.
He remained at large after his younger brother Vincent, 59 – who focused on the gang’s UK operations – was arrested and jailed in 2020.
Liverpool Crown Court heard yesterday that Francis Coggins was arrested by beat officers from the Dutch National Police.
He was found ‘collapsed’ in the street outside a residential property.
Coggins made his first appearance at a court in Amsterdam to begin the process of extradition to the UK on June 4.
He was returned in late August after consenting to extradition and in September pleaded guilty to a series of drugs charges, including conspiracy to import and supply cocaine.
Coggins sent drugs from mainland Europe to North Wales by putting them into parcels with UPS waybills attached.
The packages were sent using genuine account numbers, predominately for unsuspecting clothing company G-Star Raw, with the waybill stating that the receiver would pay the costs of shipping.
The parcels were addressed to real homes in the area covered by UPS’s Deeside depot in North Wales, but intercepted by a corrupt worker who then passed the drugs onto couriers to be distributed to other UK gangs.
Over just a year, Coggins oversaw the import of more than a tonne of class A drugs with a minimum wholesale value of over £16m.
Alex Langhorn, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court: ‘The OCG which were engaged in sourcing, storing and supplying wholesale, multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine and diamorphine, more commonly known as heroin.
‘They sold to people locally on Merseyside, across the country, and in Scotland.
‘Francis Coggins, based in the Netherlands, organised the importation of drugs being supplied by the group. Vincent Coggins, although kept up to date with when imports were due to arrive, was focused on the domestic operation – the supply of cocaine and diamorphine in England and Wales.
‘Francis Coggins was also involved in this aspect of the business and negotiated directly, and via others like Paul Fitzsimmons and Edward Robert Jarvis, deals for the supply of cocaine and diamorphine – approving the giving of credit and the prices to be charged.’
Prosecutors said the two brothers were ‘equals, each with their own areas of responsibility, albeit those working for them in the United Kingdom, such as Mr Fitzsimmons and Mr Jarvis, appeared to have deferred to Francis Coggins as to the prices which should be charged’.
Messages showed both of the Coggins brothers were referred to as ‘gaffa’ or ‘headmaster’ by other members of the gang.
Their gang – known as the Huyton Firm – supplied 350kg of drugs over a three-month period in the spring and early summer of 2020.
The operation earned them huge profits, with £880,000 of cash collected over just one two-week period.
The Huyton Firm had a reputation for extreme violence and employed Thomas Cashman, the murderer of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, as a hitman.
Their downfall began on May 23, 2020, when one of their stash houses in Merseyside was raided and £1million of cocaine stolen.
The court heard that in the following days, ‘it was Vincent Coggins who took the lead in seeking to identify the culprits and recover the money’, blackmailing and threatening the family he believed responsible for the robbery to hand over money and property.
Mr Langhorn told the court: ‘Vincent Coggins was the driving force behind the conspiracy to blackmail, and whilst Francis Coggins did not encourage his brother to use violence, nor did he dissuade him from doing what they considered necessary to recover the drugs counselling him on how they might identify those responsible.
‘He was also kept up to date by others about what had occurred and what was known about the robbery.
‘It would seem that whilst he wanted to know what was going on he was content to let his brother deal with the issue, not least as in the context of messages being exchanged about new information someone had been able to find on their police records for them Francis Coggins asked his brother, ”how man more peopled we terrorism there all terrified off you really (sic)”.’
In mitigation, Sam Blom-Cooper, defending, told the court that his client’s responsibility in the ‘bleak coastal town’ of Zandvoort was the ‘physical handling of drugs, inspection of drugs, giving customers an idea of the quality of drugs and putting them into the UPS system.’
Mr Blom-Cooper put to the court that his client fell below Vincent Coggins in the crime group hierarchy.
He said: ‘The overall decision maker was Vincent Coggins. Vincent Coggins himself says ”boss of the Huyton Firm, aren’t I”.
‘If there was a case of joint decision making it is not a comment he would have made. It is clear he is at the pinnacle of the group.’
Mr Blom-Cooper added: ‘[Francis Coggins] is physically there, he is exposing himself to a level of risk that Mr Gibney (who organised the North Wales importation plot) and Vincent Coggins did not do.
‘You don’t have Vincent Coggins engaging physically with the drugs in the same way Francis Coggins is…he is there on his own because part of his role is to roll his sleeves up and deal with the drugs physically.’
But Judge Robert Trevor-Jones told Francis Coggins, who appeared to the court via video link from HMP Manchester, disagreed with the mitigation and said his position was at the head of the crime group with his younger brother.
Sentencing, the judge told him: ‘In conclusion, you were directing or organising the buying and or selling of these drugs on a commercial scale. You had substantial links and influence on others in a chain and you had an expectation of a substantial financial advantage.’
Francis, who wore a grey prison-issue sweatshirt and glasses and sported greying, brown hair, was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
The father, who was supported in court by a large number of his family, muttered ‘thank you’ after hearing his sentence.
Vincent Coggins and eight other members of the crime group, including Jarvis, money man Fitzsimmons, enforcer Paul Woodford and drug dealer Michael Earle were arrested in June 2020 as part of an investigation by the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (NWROCU), codenamed Operation SubZero.
The gang were sentenced to a total of more than 150 years in prison.
