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Karen Stott |
Mum and sons drugs gang are jailed
‘It’s certainly a new one for us,’ admit police as they end matriarch’s cocaine-dealing empire
DETECTIVES believe they have stopped Camden’s first-ever matriarch leader of a drug-dealing gang in her tracks.
Officers who investigated the day and night delivery service of drugs to anywhere within the M25 provided by Karen Stott and her two sons said the nature of the case was “certainly a new one for us”.
Ms Stott, 49, of Longford Street in Euston, talked her two sons Vidal, 22, and Khan, 24, into joining her in the family business which police believe had been operating for a number of years.
Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Martin, head of the Metropolitan Police’s clubs and vice unit, described her as “arrogant” and said her sons’ involvement demonstrated a “particularly sad” case of misplaced “family loyalty”.
“It’s particularly sad because most drug dealers co-opt people through intimidation or if people want to make money,” he said. “But this is almost family loyalty that kicks in, which is more beneficial to the mum, but puts people into an area they wouldn’t normally have gone.
“I think it’s very sad that she has influenced her sons to commit crime in this way and let them believe it is acceptable.”
The family were jailed on Tuesday after they pleaded guilty to selling drugs to undercover police officers. Investigators revealed they had been sold £5,000 worth of high-grade £50-a-gram cocaine during 23 separate meetings.
DCS Martin said they were able to operate “under the radar” for so long because they worked a shadowy “mid tier” of clientele, mostly made up of West End clubbers, that didn’t “tread on any toes”.
He said: “They were in a unique position where they were not dealing enough to worry the gangs, but enough not to be as observable to police as some of the street dealers.”
He added: “Because they were at this mid-tier they expected to keep going and that’s where the arrogance kicks in. I think there was an arrogance there and I think that was because of the fact she’d been dealing for a long time – quite some years – and didn’t expect to be caught.”
The Stotts delivered at any time of the day or night. They worked in shifts – Ms Stott did the daytime work while her sons took over at night and while she was on one of her many lavish holidays.
They made hundreds of thousands of pounds from the business during their reign, spending the proceeds on Caribbean trips, designer clothes and fancy sports cars.
But unbeknown to the criminal trio, they were under police surveillance. Six months after undercover detectives launched Operation Fairsailing, one night in September Ms Stott received a knock at the door that meant her highly profitable game was up.
Ms Stott and Vidal, of Kilburn, received three years’ jail each while Khan, of no fixed abode, was handed a 27-month sentence.
Sentencing the trio, Judge Martin Beddoe told Karen Stott she was driven purely by a “desire to make financial gain”.
He added: “This was well organised and on no less than 23 occasions over the course of some five months test purchasers were able to buy significant quantities of cocaine, acting very speedily to requests made for such supply.”
Khan told officers he was driven to crime to help pay off his girlfriend’s debts, while on one occasion Vidal drove to a deal at 1am with his eight-month-old daughter in the back seat. Ms Stott has another son, aged under 15. |
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