A FORMER footballer has been jailed for 30 years after running a major £2million international drugs and arms ring.
Wayne McKenzie, 48, was jailed for smuggling cocaine and cannabis into the UK from the Netherlands, Spain and the US.
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Ex-footballer Wayne McKenzie jailed for running drug and firearms ringCredit: SWNS
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Officers searched his home in 2022 and found expensive sneakers and cell phones Credit: SWNS
Together with his brother Craig McKenzie, 41, the 48-year-old managed to supply British dealers with class A and B drugs with a street value of more than £2m over a four-month period.
The men were arrested in 2022 after police hacked the EncroChat phone network the couple used to buy and sell drugs.
McKenzie, who played professional football in Scandinavia, appeared at Liverpool Crown Court on Friday charged with six offences.
A jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to three decades in prison.
The BBC reported that the National Crime Agency (NCA) found that McKenzie and his brother were linked to the supply of drugs worth a total of more than £2 million between March and June 2020.
Most of the drugs that the former footballer imported were sent to dealers in Liverpool and Manchester, but he also supplied Wales and London.
He was caught when French police hacked the EncroChat platform – used almost exclusively by criminals – in 2020.
The police then forwarded the evidence to police forces across Europe.
McKenzie was also found to have been involved in “extensive” discussions about bringing firearms into the country.
In one conversation he bragged about smuggling the gun into the UK hidden in chemical waste – saying the firearm went “straight to the kids in London”.
In another, McKenzie said she was talking to a trawler who could help bring cannabis into the UK.
He was also in contact with “notorious criminals” based in Spain, who helped him launder his profits.
When officers raided McKenzie’s home, they found a stack of hidden phones and a “burner” phone, pairs of expensive designer sneakers and paperwork related to the business used to launder money.
And it wasn’t the first time the 48-year-old had been caught – he was jailed for drug-trafficking offenses in 2015.
McKenzie pleaded guilty at a previous appearance to being concerned in the supply of cannabis and money laundering.
On Monday, after a two-week trial, a jury found him guilty of conspiracy to import firearms, conspiracy to import cannabis, involvement in the supply of cocaine and participation in an organized crime group.
Sentencing, Judge Andrew Menary, KC, said yesterday that McKenzie’s offending had “brought misery and deprivation to local communities”.
His brother Craig, 41, was jailed for 20 years in October after being convicted of drug-trafficking offences.
The NCA’s director of operations, Dean Wallbank, said: “Wayne McKenzie was prolific in the drug and firearms trade, selling them to gangs and laundering the profits through notorious criminals without a care.
“Our investigation has broken up this family crime group, which has brought harm to the streets of the UK. Those streets are safer with him behind bars.”
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