- 3 months ago
- #crimewatchcaught
- #realityinsighthub
Crimewatch Caught Season 2 Episode 4
#CrimewatchCaught
#RealityInsightHub
🎞 Please subscribe to our official channel to watch the full movie for free, as soon as possible. ❤️Reality Insight Hub❤️
👉 Official Channel: https://www.dailymotion.com/TrailerBolt
👉 THANK YOU ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
#CrimewatchCaught
#RealityInsightHub
🎞 Please subscribe to our official channel to watch the full movie for free, as soon as possible. ❤️Reality Insight Hub❤️
👉 Official Channel: https://www.dailymotion.com/TrailerBolt
👉 THANK YOU ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:01Hello, police emergency.
00:08I'm quick, stay away!
00:21We'll work around the clock if it means putting criminals behind bars.
00:24It only takes that one mistake for us to catch you.
00:27Crime doesn't pay. You will be caught.
00:30Criminals often hide in plain sight.
00:38Operating under the guise of a legitimate business can help them avoid police detection,
00:43whilst providing access to locations they would otherwise not have.
00:48From a covert criminal network disguised as legitimate road workers,
00:53stealing millions of pounds of electricity to power cannabis farms,
00:57to a ruthless construction worker who swindled thousands of pounds from vulnerable individuals he promised to help,
01:03these criminals weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life,
01:08hoping investigators won't unravel their web of deceit.
01:13In Bangor, North Wales, a disused building with a strange odour forces locals to call the police.
01:21Over 100 cannabis farms identified.
01:31Potential street value in excess of £21 million.
01:35The risks that they took were off the scale.
01:39A multi-million pound criminal network and the corrupt workmen that enabled it.
01:45Stay where you are. Stay there.
01:47Operating across North Wales and the North West is the Regional Organised Crime Unit,
01:59a collaboration of six police forces with a simple mission.
02:03We're here to disrupt and dismantle organised crime groups.
02:09May 2023.
02:11An old defunct store on the once bustling High Street has started to arouse suspicion with the locals.
02:18North Wales Police referred an investigation.
02:21They'd identified a shop on the High Street in Bangor.
02:25There'd been some suspicious activity that had been reported at the shop premises.
02:30It was disused and there was also quite a pungent smell.
02:34So on the 30th of January 2023, as a result of this suspicious activity,
02:40North Wales Police executed a warrant at the building.
02:45What detectives would discover would be the beginning of an extraordinary investigation.
02:51The lead officer in this case is unable to reveal his full identity.
02:56Inside the abandoned shop they found a large-scale cannabis factory
03:01with over a thousand cannabis plants, bulbs, fans, a complex irrigation system set up.
03:09They found that the cannabis plants inside were actually worth in excess of £1.2 million.
03:15They found a small area as well that had clearly been lived in recently
03:19and when they searched the roof space, they found two Albanian men inside.
03:24Move! Move! To me!
03:27Walk, sons!
03:29Stop! You! Stop them! Stop!
03:33They told the police they'd been trafficked into the country
03:35and forced to work in cannabis factories.
03:38When North Wales Police discovered that there were Albanian men inside the building,
03:43it indicated to them that the investigation may be larger than they initially thought.
03:51As officers searched the building, it became apparent to them quite quickly
03:55that the wiring used to power the lights and the irrigation system
04:00was extremely dangerous with exposed wires and cables all over the floors and walls.
04:07So it takes a great deal of electricity for a cannabis farm.
04:12So as a result, the criminals, they're not going to pay through electricity boards like normal people.
04:17So they've gone into the supply outside and they've diverted that electricity into the building
04:23and it's undetected.
04:25When the power company attended and investigated the cable,
04:31they noticed that it was taken actually from the street outside,
04:35which involved the street being dug up and the mains cable being tampered with whilst live.
04:41This is incredibly dangerous.
04:42The power that they tapped into was actually powering the entire high street.
04:48Touching that cable could be fatal.
04:50Bangor's a small university city set in a really idyllic location in North Wales.
04:57The high street certainly isn't somewhere that you'd expect a large-scale cannabis factory to be located.
05:02But as the investigation unfolded, police quickly discovered this was just the tip of the iceberg.
05:09In fact, there were five more cannabis farms along that one high street,
05:14leading them to recover a further £800,000 worth of plants.
05:19North Wales Police identified a number of other cannabis cultivations within that very area.
05:25And they had links to Albanians.
05:28The biggest question to answer would be how this organised crime group were undetected.
05:33It was on a high street.
05:35How did they manage to dig up the street, dig up the road and divert the electricity into the building without being noticed?
05:44Whilst North West Police were conducting their enquiries,
05:48a member of the public came forward with some vital information.
05:52And he was told police that he'd seen men on the high street digging on a Sunday, almost six months earlier.
06:02When investigators checked the CCTV footage, they noticed that on the 7th of August, 2022,
06:09a van and a car drove onto the high street.
06:11Five men got out wearing orange, high-visibility clothing.
06:14The men carried barriers and work equipment with them, tools.
06:18The men, throughout the day, put barriers around, dig the high street, expose the cable and link it inside the building.
06:29Believing these men were digging up the road and diverting Maine's electricity to a makeshift cannabis farm,
06:35the team started investigating the company the workmen came from.
06:40Elevate, civils and utilities based in Wigan.
06:44They came across as legitimate.
06:45So the untrained eye, they looked like a company that were putting themselves out there for legitimate work.
06:52Social media posts revealed they had a team of staff and a small fleet of vehicles
06:57and claimed to carry out work in towns and cities across the UK.
07:02But detectives quickly established that Elevate had no permit, licence or permission
07:09to dig up a high street on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
07:12So, what exactly was going on?
07:15We checked the company's house now that we had the name Elevate Civils and Utilities.
07:20It showed that it was a ground working business registered in the Merseyside area and it had two directors.
07:26One of them was a man called Ross McGinn and the other was a man called Andrew Roberts.
07:31Just how big was this? Who are these people?
07:37But were McGinn and Roberts behind the work or had their vehicle been used without their knowledge?
07:45During any investigation it's really important to keep an open mind and to check everything.
07:51We compared the vehicle against the police national computer and it showed that it wasn't stolen.
07:57Mobile phone data and automatic number plate recognition gave them more information about the van's movements.
08:04With those cameras we could build up a comprehensive picture over the last few months of where that registration had been.
08:11They had literally travelled the length and breadth of the country over the last few months.
08:15We then identified the names of several of those workmen that were on the high street.
08:24One of the names was of real significance to the police and that was a man called Greg Black.
08:29We noted that he'd been arrested by Merseyside police in a completely unrelated incident.
08:35During that unrelated investigation police had taken a mobile phone belonging to Greg Black.
08:40Within the phone download it contained a WhatsApp group and that WhatsApp group was the majority of the Elevate Civils and Utilities members.
08:51It was absolutely key. It showed locations, it had chats, it had photographs and videos of previous digs and previous locations where they had abstracted electricity.
09:06It was very clear from some of the conversations that what they were doing was illegal and criminal.
09:12Several times they discussed wanting to blend in or trying to make things look more authentic.
09:18I just couldn't believe it. It was like a treasure trove.
09:22Evidence like this is absolutely fantastic and it confirmed a lot of our suspicions around how they were operating, who they were operating with and where they were doing this.
09:33And that really did blow the investigation wide open.
09:38While they continued to dig into this nationwide operation of abstracting electricity in Cardiff, a very different type of crime had come to the attention of trading standards.
09:54They'd been alerted to their own rogue trader, a man preying on the elderly and vulnerable, doing shoddy work in exchange for extortionate sums of money.
10:05I'm Sarah Smith. I run a major investigations and safeguarding team.
10:18We're based in the local authority setting across Cardiff, Bridgend and the Vale of Glamorgan.
10:28And we primarily focus on economic crime and financial fraud.
10:33So rogue traders, doorstep crime, scams.
10:37In November 2020, Sarah's team received a complaint from the charity Age Cymru concerning a 91-year-old lady.
10:50The lady confided in them. She paid for work to be done, a driveway and rubbish removal, and she'd agreed a price of £3,500.
11:01Despite having been paid the £3,500 in full, the trader and an associate returned the next day.
11:10They came back to ask for more money for the rubbish removal, and that was £350.
11:17But that had already been paid and quoted for in the original price.
11:25The worker that accompanied him on this occasion obtained the lady's card and PIN number
11:32under the guise that their card machine wasn't working and took that offer.
11:37This lady was quite trusting of the gentleman.
11:43He was quite charming. He'd come across really well.
11:48With access to this elderly lady's bank card and PIN code, the trader somehow managed to withdraw
11:54a staggering £35,000 from her bank account, all without her knowledge.
12:00We're unfortunately dealing with detriment on a daily basis, people being ripped off or scammed.
12:09But actually this was another level. Taking that amount of money from a vulnerable lady in that situation
12:17is really quite despicable.
12:19The elderly victim was able to confirm the trader was a man by the name of William Hanson.
12:25He was already well known to us. He'd been operating for a number of years.
12:31We'd had complaints about him before.
12:33William Hanson had changed his name, so we'd previously known him as William Connors.
12:39You immediately begin to have some greater concerns.
12:43Days later, after realising £35,000 had been stolen from her account, the 91-year-old victim called Hanson to find out what had happened.
12:55So in response to that, she then gets a letter through the post accompanied by a cheque for £35,000.
13:04In the letter, Hanson apologised and claimed the withdrawal was a mistake.
13:10So in the letter, I mean, it had no legal status, but he clearly wanted her to believe that that was done and dusted.
13:19She's had her money back and therefore there was no cause for alarm.
13:23But when the victim tried to cash the bank cheque...
13:27The account the cheque was issued from had already been closed for six months, so it was never going to be able to be cashed.
13:35Despite us getting a proportion of that money back for her, she was still left £20,000 out of pocket.
13:43It just shows the nature of how some of these people operate.
13:47They take advantage of someone who perhaps is vulnerable and then they try and cover their tracks afterwards as well.
13:56Once she knew that that cheque had bounced, that really affected her in terms of not wanting to go out, not wanting to open the door.
14:06And certainly her health took a real turn after that moment.
14:12Despite stealing a staggering amount of money from a customer, Hanson brazenly continued to trade.
14:20Between September and December 2020, Sarah and her team received a further three complaints about Hanson.
14:27In one of these cases, he'd provided a quote for sandblasting the windows at the front of a property.
14:33Some work on the guttering and soffits as well, and a price of £10,500 was initially agreed for that.
14:41And then at some point after that, Hanson informed the consumer that he couldn't undertake the work on his guttering and soffits
14:49because the roof was in such a bad condition, it needed completely replacing.
14:55And he quoted another £30,000 to do that work.
14:59At this point, the consumer said, I'm not in a position to have all this work done.
15:06And they agreed an amount to just replace the first few rows of tiles and batons.
15:12And that was another £10,000.
15:15So all this work had been added on over and above that initial contract.
15:21And that is part of the MO, to identify things that are not needed, that perhaps people won't question because they're not experts.
15:30We were able to employ a surveyor to go out and look at the property.
15:36That report comes back and says the work was way below industry standard.
15:41Having already paid Hanson over £20,000 for poor work, the homeowner was forced to spend another £10,000 putting it right.
15:53From the four victims that had bravely come forward between September and December 2020, Hanson had taken an enormous £175,000 through fraudulent practices.
16:06You hear about con men or rogue traders like Mr. Hanson, but never imagine that you'll fall victim to their lies in the ways that we did.
16:15It was very hard to grasp the fact that an individual so seemingly warm and friendly could conspire to steal tens of thousands from us.
16:25The impact it has on normal people is quite significant.
16:30It's partly what makes you want to do this job, but it can be heartbreaking to see.
16:36There's just the distress and destruction it can have on people's lives.
16:43Hanson was invited in for a voluntary interview.
16:48During that process, you know, he can be quite personable and charming.
16:53And at the point that the questions became harder, he turned and he was then quite intimidating, shouting.
17:02And basically, he didn't like the line of questioning and he had no answers for it.
17:07And at that point, the interview didn't continue.
17:10But despite this, Sarah had enough evidence to charge Hanson and a pretrial hearing was set for the 6th of January 2022.
17:21Hanson failed to attend. And then at subsequent hearings, he also failed to attend.
17:27In fact, Hanson failed to attend a further four court hearings claiming various medical issues that were later proved to be false.
17:36Finally, in May 2023, he entered six guilty pleas for fraud and theft, but then threw a huge curveball.
17:45He then does a complete U-turn, something we've not seen before.
17:50He vacates all his pleas and claims that his solicitor basically strong-armed him into pleading.
18:02It was so frustrating because at the end of the day, we want to get closure for the consumers.
18:10And throughout that time, he'd obviously still been trading and making money and evading justice.
18:18In early December 2024, having missed multiple court appearances, a warrant was issued for his arrest, at which stage he finally handed himself in.
18:30He was sentenced to five years and two months for 13 counts of fraud and theft and was given a 10-year criminal behaviour order at Cardiff Crown Court for defrauding victims out of £175,000.
18:45I think the relief on all sides that we got there, and actually that the sentence was fair and just, it was a real moment of finally.
18:59We are so grateful to these people for all four of them to come forward and give their evidence in this case.
19:08Ultimately, the success is down to them.
19:15Unfortunately, though, our first victim, because of the time that ultimately passed from us receiving the complaints to actually getting that sentence in court,
19:26she had unfortunately passed away.
19:29Her son said Hansen's deception had an enormous effect on her.
19:34My mother became very withdrawn and upset.
19:37She was frightened and she feared repercussions from these people and became extremely nervous if the doorbar rang,
19:43as she feared it might be them wanting more money.
19:46We'd encourage anyone that thinks they may be or have been a victim of a rogue trader to come forward and report the matter to Trading Standards,
19:58who will try and make sure justice is done.
20:01Back in Bangor, North Wales, a utilities firm had been digging up roads and splicing power cables to run dozens of industrial-sized cannabis farms.
20:16Detectives hit a gold mine of information when they uncovered incriminating phone data from a member of the gang who had been arrested for an unrelated incident a few months before.
20:28It was quite fortunate that Greg Black had previously been arrested and his phone had been seized.
20:35The investigation team were able to recover that phone and also the contents.
20:40It showed locations, it had chats, it had photographs and videos of previous digs and previous locations where they had abstracted electricity.
20:53Black's phone allowed detectives to identify the key members of the group.
20:58This wasn't just about cannabis. This was a criminal network at scale.
21:04And crucially provided them with the intelligence on other possible sites Elevate had been working at.
21:10Armed with this information, 32 different police units raided 54 properties linked to these locations, leading them to discover a further 100 cannabis farms.
21:21And the videos the gang had taken of their work demonstrated what dangerous risks they were taking.
21:28When checking the images, one of the images that really stuck with me was a picture of Andrew Roberts with quite severe burns to his face.
21:37A conversation attached to that was how he'd accidentally touched an exposed cable that he didn't mean to.
21:43It just really drove home the risk that these men were taking.
21:50In one of the videos sent in by a member of public, you can actually see just how dangerous this type of work is.
21:56You can see the cable actually catches fire. There's a small explosion in the street and the Elevate crew panic and just leave that exposed cable.
22:05So the risk to members of the public, the risk to themselves was quite high.
22:11A lot of the pictures and the videos that I saw in the group were taken as proof of the work completed by the group,
22:17which they then need to send on to their employers, the organised crime group, to get payment for the work done.
22:23As detectives poured through the WhatsApp messages, the roles each group member played became clear.
22:29Graham Roberts' role was a cable jointer. Cable jointing is the actual process of stripping back live mains cable and then attaching a new cable onto it.
22:42And he was a really, really important member of their group because without him they wouldn't have been able to actually get electricity into the cannabis factories.
22:52This wasn't Roberts' first brush with the law.
22:55There was a significant incident in 2023 when Graham Roberts was arrested. He was at a dig. He told police that he had a lawful permit to be there.
23:06All right, what's your name, mate? Graham Roberts.
23:08Right, OK. Where are you from, Graham? From Wigan.
23:11He gave the name of Ross McGinn as his boss and he gave his telephone number.
23:16The only one it's going to be is a guy, Ross, who's his supervisor.
23:20Ross? Yeah, he's the supervisor on the street work side.
23:25Clearly then, he was linking himself to Ross McGinn.
23:30Hello. I came across your number because of an incident in Sunderland.
23:34Apparently you are the person in charge that I've been told to speak to.
23:38I've been past your number.
23:41Well, he's just hung up on me as soon as I identified myself as a police officer.
23:46Police also found a haul of stolen property in the van Roberts was using, later establishing this had been stolen to order by a man called Colin White.
23:58Colin White worked for a supply warehouse for Scottish Power in the Merseyside area and he'd actually been stealing the items to order for the Elevate group.
24:07Elevate weren't growing the cannabis themselves, they were setting up the infrastructure for other organised crime groups from Albania to run factories and produce vast quantities of addictive drugs.
24:20It was clear to me now that the Elevate group were enabling national organised crime group to not only exploit vulnerable people, but to make millions of pounds from the cannabis inside the factories.
24:34By February 2024, the team had enough evidence to arrest the group.
24:41After some meticulous planning, there was a large strike day.
24:51This involved a number of warrants executed very early in the morning at the Elevate group's home addresses.
25:01DOORS OPEN, PLEASE FOR THE WATER, STAY WHERE YOU ARE! STAY WHERE YOU ARE! STAY WHERE YOU ARE! STAY WHERE YOU ARE! STAY THERE!
25:13As well as a warehouse that we'd identified linked to the company.
25:17All members of the group were arrested.
25:28Ours was Colin White.
25:34During the search, a number of stolen items were recovered including vehicles, diggers and cabling, all of which had been used to carry out their illegal works.
25:44In some of the searches, we found large quantities of cash,
25:47sometimes tens of thousands of pounds.
25:50It is a considerable amount, isn't it?
25:52Cash, which is uncounted.
25:55There you go. Trash here now.
25:57It was clear that this money was ill-gotten gains.
26:00On the phones recovered, it became clear that Ross McGinn and Andrew Roberts
26:05were liaising with a middleman who had direct contact
26:09with the Albanian organised crime group.
26:14On the phones as well, there was a direct reference to payment
26:18from the organised crime groups via the middleman to Elevate.
26:22There were large sums of cash deposits in the director's accounts.
26:26We believed these were cash payments from the illegal works they'd been completing.
26:32This group knew what they were doing.
26:35They were enablers for other crime groups.
26:40Due to the nature of the overwhelming evidence against them,
26:43the men in the Elevate group and Colin White entered guilty pleas
26:47before a trial could take place.
26:49On 7 March 2025, at Liverpool Crown Court,
26:53the men were all convicted of conspiring to abstract electricity.
26:58Roberts was sentenced to six years,
27:00and McGinn to five years and four months.
27:03They received the longest sentences of the group.
27:06The investigation spanned over four years,
27:12and that directly linked to 54 cannabis factories being shut down.
27:18And on a wider scale, over 100 cannabis farms identified.
27:22The potential street value of the recovered cannabis from the factories
27:27was estimated to be in excess of £21 million.
27:35I feel really pleased with the outcome of the investigation.
27:39I'm particularly happy that we prevented an organised crime group
27:42from supplying power to more cannabis factories around the country.
27:46This is just one example where we've disrupted and dismantled
27:52an organised crime group, and we will continue to do this.
27:55Thank you very much.
28:25Thank you very much.
Be the first to comment