National Crime Agency officers have arrested a 60-year-old man from Liverpool on suspicion of committing numerous breaches of his Serious Crime Prevention Order.
He was detained at a location in Boldon Colliery, South Tyneside, just before 6am this morning (5 July) and is now being questioned.
The order came into force after his release from prison for drug trafficking offences, and the breaches under investigation relate to the unauthorised use of mobile phones, vehicles, bank accounts and travel.
NCA officers also carried out searches at the location in Boldon and another address in the Royal Albert Dock area of Liverpool. Mobile devices, documents and a quantity of cash were seized, and they are now being examined by investigators.
The operation was supported by Merseyside Police and the North East Regional Organised Crime Unit (NEROCU).
Alison Abbott, from the NCA’s Lifetime Management of Offenders Team, said: “These court orders are vital tools for preventing and deterring future offending. Once criminals come onto our radar, they never leave, and the NCA will take action over breaches.”
Breach of a serious crime prevention order is a criminal offence subject to a maximum sentence of five years, an unlimited fine, or both.
Curtis Warren has been freed from prison after 14 years and is understood to be back in Liverpool.
The Toxteth native once dubbed ‘Target One’ by Interpol was released from the maximum security HMP Whitemoor, in Cambridgeshire, on Monday. Liverpool’s most infamous gangster is now subject to a strict raft of restrictions including a ban from instant messaging apps WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, being in possession of more than £1,000 in cash, giving police a day’s notice if he wants to use a friend’s car and a ban on travel outside of England and Wales without giving seven days notice to police.
Warren, now 59, was jailed in Holland in 1996 for a £125million cocaine importation scheme. While in the Dutch Nieuw Vosseveld jail, Warren killed fellow prisoner Cemal Guclu by kicking him in the head, after the Turkish convicted killer launched an unprovoked attack in the prison yard.
A Dutch judge accepted Guclu was killed in self-defence but found Warren used “excessive violence” and convicted him of manslaughter, landing him an extra four years. He was briefly a free man upon his release in 2007, and returned to the UK.
However he only managed five weeks on the outside before being arrested over a plot to smuggle cannabis worth £1million into Jersey. He later had 10 years added onto his sentence failing to pay back £198million as part of a Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) confiscation order.
Warren was in the headlines again in 2020 when a sordid affair with prison officer Stephanie Smithwhite came to light while he was serving time in HMP Frankland. Smithwhite, then 40, had cut an “intercourse hole” in her trousers and was so infatuated with Warren she got his name tattooed on her next to a picture of a rose.
