Delay in sentencing gang that flooded region with top-quality cocaine

Kingpin Richard Gray, 32, and his older brother and ‘trusted lieutenant’ Patrick Gray, 44, had been due to be sentenced on Friday morning together with four other members of the conspiracy.

READ MORE: Everything the prosecution alleged against 'cocaine conspirators' Patrick Gray and Mohamed Ali

READ MORE: Watch surveillance footage from Burford car park cash exchange

However, lack of court time meant that the hearing had to be put back for a month.

Judge Michael Gledhill QC told the seven barristers at Oxford Crown Court on Friday: “I am sorry that we’ve not been able to list this case for sentence today.

“There are a number of reasons for that, not least I am part heard with a jury out [deliberating] at the moment.”

The Gray brothers are expected to be sentenced on April 28, with the remainder of the gang dealt with on the following day.

Patrick and Richard Gray's 2015 mugshots Pictures: TVP

Patrick Gray and ‘downstream’ customer Mohamed Ali, 50, were convicted at the start of the year of conspiracy to supply class A drugs.

Jurors at Oxford Crown Court heard that the gang supplied ‘at least’ 50kgs of cocaine over more than a year in 2020 and 2021.

Gang leader Richard set up a fake courier business to make it easier for him to move across the country during lockdown.

He was recorded on a secret police probe, fitted to Gray’s specially-adapted white van, bragging about his illegal business. In one call with his brother, Patrick, he bragged that they would be able to live the ‘life of Ryan’ if they kept up the business and funnelled the profits from their dealing into a property empire.

Gray sent couriers north to Preston and Bury to pick up two kilos of cocaine at a time. In May last year, he took a consignment of 12kgs of cocaine hidden in a gas canister.

The drugs were taken to a ‘stash house’ in Banbury. Cutting agents, used to dilute the cocaine, were found at Lower Whitley Farm, near Farmoor Reservoir.

Police pounced in late May 2021 after a lengthy undercover investigation that was launched when the force’s organised crime squad was handed a file of EncroChat messages from Richard Gray arranging cocaine deals with others on the heavily-encrypted telephone network.

Richard and Patrick Gray at Lower Whitley Farm, near Farmoor Reservoir, from police surveillance footage Picture: TVP/CPS

In coordinated raids on properties in Oxford, Witney, Banbury and Milton Keynes, detectives seized 2.5kg of high-purity cocaine and around 110,000 in cash.

The defendants are: Richard Gray, of Furrow Crescent, Witney, Patrick Gray, of Radford Close, Oxford, Mohamed Ali, of Chervil, Milton Keynes, Lewis Court, 36, of Scott Close, Kidlington, Jamie Shepherd-Smith, 33, of Bramling Cross, Abingdon, and William White, 36, of no fixed address.

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