Hotel meet in Alicante was the 'eureka' moment for stunned cops

Surprise piece of jigsaw led to 'Soprano's' £100million downfall

- MARK MCGIVERN

TOP cops have hailed the "eureka moment" that sealed the fate of crime kingpin Jamie Stevenson.

The photo above shows Stevenson at ease in a meeting at the Melia Hotel, in Alicante, Spain, in February 2020.

Stevenson, 59, was oblivious to the reality that the innocuous snap would be the first piece of a jigsaw that would obliterate his £100million drug smuggling operation.

Intelligence had already suggested that respectable-looking Glaswegian fruit trader David Bilsland had been corrupted by gangsters and was potentially planning something big.

That sparked the birth of Operation Pepperoni in December 2019 which turned out to be one of the most important in the history of Police Scotland.

Detectives tracked Bilsland's movements to Alicante on Valentine's Day 2020 before asking their Spanish counterparts to case the hotel, favoured by British tourists. They were stunned when the man popping up in the photo with the bent fruit merchant was none other than Stevenson.

A few months later it emerged that French cops had cracked the encrypted EncroChat system, used by crooks to run their secret operations.

And after many months of intense analysis, the evidence from EncroChat made a case against Stevenson and his cronies, which would be impossible to overcome.

Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Ferry, head of organised crime at Police Scotland, said the revelation of Stevenson at the meeting with Bilsland was a gamechanging moment.

He said: "He had to be meeting someone of some significance. We knew that.

"Bilsland had booked a strange trip, which was very short and involved no luggage.

"And we were aware of deals he was setting up involving bananas from Ecuador, which our sources told us didn't make any business sense. So we knew something untoward was happening.