A “TRUSTED lieutenant” who transported multi-million class A drug cargos across the UK and into north Cumbria has been jailed for almost eight years.

Bailey Highton’s key role in an illegal supply plot of staggering scale came to light after police mounted surveillance on a known Carlisle area organised crime group boss, Robert Smith, during 2022.

Officers seized cash and also heroin which had been adulterated to boost its quantity and sale value, along with hand blenders used to cut the drug. They had previously recovered a package on an area of land linked to Smith which bore Highton’s fingerprint.

Smith, of Garden Street, Carlisle, was jailed for nine years in December for conspiring to supply heroin and possessing criminal property.

But the eye-watering extent of 23-year-old Highton’s criminal activity was laid bare when he, too, was arrested and his phone examined.

Prosecutor Brendan Burke told Carlisle Crown Court today (tues): “Mr Highton is responsible for a national distribution network which involved industrial quantities of drugs and money.”

But Highton was brought down by his own meticulous record-keeping, the court heard, having carefully logged dates and quantities of his trips in phone notes. Detectives leaned he had travelled across the length and breadth of England, Scotland and Wales.

 

Based on calculations, these showed he had delivered 6kg of heroin to Cumbria during one month alone in late 2022. Overall Highton had moved 7kg of heroin, 4kg of cocaine, 49kg of class B ketamine and 20kg of amphetamine.

The class A drugs alone, if adulterated, could have weighed in at 22kg and been potentially worth £3.6 million on the street. The sums of cash passing through his hands totalled £823,805.

Mr Burke said there was an element of “stupidity” in Highton’s offending over several months, telling the court: “I think he was using his own car, insured to him, at his address.”

Highton admitted five drug peddling crimes, including conspiring with Smith to supply heroin, and being concerned in the supply of cocaine.

Defence barrister Andrew Evans, mitigating, agreed the information stored by Highton on his phone had been a key element of the case against him, saying: “The evidence was all in his pocket on arrest.”

Recorder Julian Shaw imposed a total prison sentence of seven years and 10 months on Highton, latterly of Station Road, Blantyre, near Glasgow.

“You were clearly highly trusted and an important cog in the outfit; a trusted lieutenant; a trusted driver,” said the judge. “The sheer level and scale of the industrial supply you were engaged in was shocking.”