‘Iceman’ crime boss jailed in Scotland over ‘industrial-scale’ drug trafficking

A crime boss known as “the Iceman” has been jailed for 20 years for attempting to flood Scotland’s streets with £76m of cocaine and millions of etizolam “street valium” tablets.

James Stevenson, 59, pleaded guilty in mid-trial at Glasgow’s high court to directing a serious criminal offence of importation of cocaine and being involved in organised crime through production and supply of etizolam.

Det Ch Supt Dave Ferry, Police Scotland’s head of organised crime, had pledged to create a “hostile environment” for gangsters and said Wednesday’s convictions “will have undoubtedly saved lives”.

Stevenson ran a drug-trafficking operation “on an industrial and global scale,” said the deputy crown agent Kenny Donnelly. The gang was linked to a string of locations, including Glasgow, Ecuador, Spain, Abu Dhabi, London and Rochester in Kent.

A plan to import banana boxes full of 1kg blocks of cocaine, at 73% purity, was hatched when Stevenson met David Bilsland, a 68-year-old fruit market trader, at a hotel in Alicante, Spain in February 2020. The cocaine would be sent from Ecuador to Bilsland in Glasgow to give the appearance of legitimacy.

But in a cross-border investigation, French law enforcement officers disrupted the plans when they infiltrated an encrypted EncroChat network in April 2020. Border Force officers at the port in Dover seized 18 consignments of bananas addressed to Glasgow Fruit Market between May and September 2020.

Meanwhile, Stevenson was involved in separate plans linked to a factory in Kent capable of producing 258,000 etizolam tablets an hour. Police raided the factory in June 2020, seizing 13.5m pills, and Stevenson was arrested in Glasgow. But he was released, jumped bail and fled to the Netherlands.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) issued a most-wanted appeal for him in January 2022. A couple of weeks later, Stevenson was out jogging in Bergen op Zoom when he was detained in a joint operation with Dutch police. He was extradited to Scotland.

“Jamie Stevenson and his organised crime gang are now where they belong thanks to tenacious investigations by officers from the NCA, Police Scotland and the Metropolitan police,” said the NCA’s regional head of investigations, Gerry Mclean. “Offenders who peddle drugs don’t care about the harm to our communities, they don’t care about the lives destroyed by addiction.”

Donnelly said: “We will leave no stone unturned in our pursuit of drug traffickers.”

Bilsland, Paul Bowes, 53, Gerard Carbin, 45, Ryan McPhee, 34, and Lloyd Cross, 32, also pleaded guilty to serious organised crime and drug offences.

Carbin was sentenced to seven years in jail, while Bilsland, Bowes and Cross were each jailed for six years, and McPhee was jailed for four years.

In July a 27-year-old man, Lewis Connor, was jailed for three years after the investigation found proof that he had set fire to properties and vehicles.