Unmasked at last: The leaders of one of Liverpool’s most notorious gangs
Unmasked at last: The leaders of one of Liverpool’s most notorious gangs
Plus: another knees up for Eurovision and our literature festival recommendations
Dear readers — we hope you had a wonderful time sunning yourselves in the tropical climes of Costa Del Liverpool over the weekend. Temperatures climbed into the twenties on both Saturday and Sunday.
Over the weekend we published a brilliant tribute to the late screenwriter and director Terence Davies, written by first-time Post contributor Laurence Thompson. As always, he received a warm reception thanks to you lovely lot.
“This piece alone is well worth my annual sub to The Post,” one of you kindly wrote. “I greatly value your regular investigative journalism, and I suppose I should regard the pieces of superlative writing such as Laurence’s as the icing on an already superb cake!”
We have a jam-packed edition for you today, which includes our big story on the downfall of two key players in the Huyton Firm, one of Merseyside’s most notorious gangs. Elsewhere we have this week’s recommendations for Writing on the Wall literature festival and a boost for Bootle.
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The big story: How an encrypted network brought down Merseyside’s notorious crime brothers
Top line: The bosses of one of Merseyside’s most notorious gangs have been jailed after police infiltrated an encrypted text network and uncovered a web of messages detailing a violent feud over drugs.
Key members of the Huyton Firm in Knowsley were caught plotting to murder men they believed stole more than £1 million of cocaine from them. They communicated via Encrochat, a text network cracked by French police in 2020 that was previously thought to be impenetrable. Since then, hundreds of members of organised crime gangs in the UK have been arrested and put on trial based on evidence obtained via the network.
Context: the Huyton Firm has long been a feared gang, dominating the drugs trade in the region for years. Members of the group are also thought to be responsible for numerous murders in Liverpool — including the inadvertent killing of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt Korbel in 2022. The gang has been run for three decades by two brothers, who up until last week remained unknown to the public.
Unmasked: Following the conclusion of a series of trials at Manchester Crown Court, the brothers have now been identified as Vincent and Francis Coggins. Messages obtained by Panorama show the brothers communicating openly via the Encrochat platform, discussing corrupt police insiders, millions of pounds worth of drug deals and boasting about a series of murders.
In one message Vincent threatened to torture someone, writing: "then we deside weather we slash him, chop his fingers off or wotever".
In another they mention their hitman Thomas Cashman — referring to him as “tom cash” — who was found guilty of the murder of Pratt Korbel in 2023.
Francis also sent photos of blocks of cocaine, discussing a deal to sell half a tonne of the drug for £16 million.
The brothers discussed their police insider called “piggy”, who provided them with information from police databases to see what detectives knew about them.
Despite this, Merseyside Police said an extensive investigation was conducted and no officers were identified in relation to this case.
On the run: So far, only one of the brothers has been jailed for their role in the Huyton Firm. 58-year-old Vincent Coggins received a 28-year sentence for drug trafficking and blackmail earlier this year, however Francis Coggins remains on the run and is believed to be abroad.
A Panorama special has now been aired about the Huyton Firm, with Matt Horne, former deputy director of investigations at the National Crime Agency, telling the programme that the gang's willingness to resort to violence put them "in the upper tiers of organised crime in the UK". He added the Encrochat bust of 2020 completely transformed the police's fight against gangs like the Huyton Firm, who up until that point had evaded capture and identification due to the secretive nature of their communications. "What it's done is it's opened up that world,” he said. “It shone a light on it like never before."
Home of the week
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Your Post briefing
Children as young as ten may now be fined for antisocial behaviour, as Liverpool City Council admits that “nothing is working.” A report from the council claims that Toxteth has seen an increase in very young children being left unsupervised and engaging in abusive and intimidating behaviour, with poor street lighting and overcrowded housing being cited as reasons for the rise. 13 Acceptable Behaviour Contracts have already been issued to children in the area.
Liverpool may not have hosted this year’s Eurovision but it certainly didn't dampen spirits this weekend. The Grand Final took place on Saturday with Eurovision fans from all over the country flocking to the city’s waterfront for a screening party. As always, there were some fantastically outrageous costumes donned by Eurovision diehards — with performances from the likes of the Venga Boys and DJs Rich Furness and Katy Alex. This year Switzerland took home the first prize; the UK traipsing behind at 18th. Take a look at some of the action from the ‘Malmo on the Mersey’ screening party here.
Liverpool Lib Dem leader Carl Cashman was booed at a pro-Palestine demonstration last month, and a video of the incident has begun to circulate online. Cashman was giving a speech at an event towards the end of April when he condemned Hamas’ attack on October 7th. A number of people watching began to boo him, chanting “resistance is justified”. Speaking to the Daily Mail last week, he said it was the first time he’d been asked to speak at a pro-Palestine rally and thought it was the “right thing to do” to make it clear from the beginning of the speech he was going to “strongly condemn both sides”.
Post Picks
There are some fantastic talks and performances happening across the city during the month of May for the literature festival Writing on the Wall. We’ve already been along to a few (including a fantastic tribute to dub poet Benjamin Zephaniah last week), but here are two of our top picks for this week:
🖊️ On Wednesday, One Fine Day & Little Leaf is hosting the literary salon Polari — an event launched in 2009 by author Paul Burston to celebrate LGBTQI+ language and culture. The evening’s event features Burston himself, as well as author Rosie Garland, poet Ciaran Hodgers and performance poet and author Gerry Potter. The event starts at 7.30pm — buy a ticket here.
🎞️ Then on Thursday, head over to Toxteth TV for a film viewing about George Orwell’s 1984, followed by a panel talk from Dolan Cummings, director of the Manifesto Club, the director of English PEN Daniel Gorman and freedom of speech expert Sara Whyatt. The event will also include a new poem inspired by the film by Francesca Beard. Doors open at 7pm – buy a ticket here.
🤼♂️ Have no fear — if literature isn’t your thing, new venue Boxpark is hosting a screening of the tense fight between boxers Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk this Saturday. Grab a ticket for that here.
🎨 And over at Hidden Art Club in the Baltic, you can sign up to a tuft your own tote bag session with artist Hunkneebunknee on Saturday. Find out more here.
Recommended reads
From Brollywood to Hullywood (but without much hope for Liverpool’s Littlewoods), Amelia Tate takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the British film industry’s billion-pound boom. Her latest feature for the Guardian also contains all the hottest UK film and media updates – like Samuel L Jackson swanning about Halifax, eating tiramisu.
Is Bootle finally getting a boost? With The Strand all set to be demolished, and the new Salt and Tar venue imminently opening up, the BBC chats with long-suffering Sefton residents about the good old days, and maybe – just maybe – the good new days to come.
In 2023 I was part of the delegation of a Merseyside Violence Reduction Partnership (MVRP) conference that featured a talk from the lead consultant who was overseeing the A&E crash team that was on duty the night Olivia PK RIP was admitted.
She described minute by minute (as they have to log it in minutiae detail) all of the actions taken by the armed response police who picked her up from her hallway, blue-lighted her to casualty, the casualty staff and the medics who tried to keep her alive.
I'll be straight, I couldn't sit through and found myself in tears in the corridor. Seeing the faces of those men linked to her death directly or indirectly, who put money, violence and stature before Life get caught and sentenced just made me think about the bravery of those emergency staff, the tragedy and the loss of her life and that afternoon at the conference listening to those accounts, but also made think ultimately, what was it all for?.
It’s no coincidence the brothers operated at the top tier of organised crime for so long and had help from someone working for law enforcement.
There’s no way crime gang that is so violent can operate for so long with impunity without help from an insider at the police .
I know they were generally based abroad and had subordinates selling the drugs and carrying out the violence , but I still can’t work out how they were operational for so long .