Drugs gang had £100k of cocaine in kitchen

THREE more members of a Greater Manchester crime gang which supplied drugs across the country have been jailed after cops found a kilo of cocaine in the kitchen of one of the operation's main players.

- JOHN SCHEERHOUT

After Ryan Ridgeway and Anton Nash were caged in 2020, now three more members of the operation have been jailed, although one of them has jumped bail and is now on the run.

Officers on GMP's Stockport division began their investigation into the organised crime group around January 2020 when they raided the rural home of Ridgeway in Disley in Cheshire some seven miles from Stockport.

Cops found one kilo of cocaine with a street value of £100,000 in the kitchen. They arrested Ridgeway and two accomplices, Paul Cooper and Charles Ebbrell.

GMP's 'Operation Challenger' team tracked down the other members of the gang and their movements through ANPR, CCTV and phone work. They established that Cooper and Ebbrell travelled to a KFC in Meir, Stoke-on-Trent, in Ridgeway's Audi A3 earlier on the day of the Disley raid.

At KFC, they met with Nash who supplied them with the 1kg block of cocaine. This deal 'was facilitated' on the phone by a fifth member of the gang, Liam Duggan, who acted as a middleman between Ridgeway, Ebbrell, Cooper and Nash, according to GMP.

Following the drug deal, Nash returned to Birmingham but Cooper and Ebbrell returned to Ridgeway's flat, arriving back moments before the police carried out the dramatic raid.