A man who stashed £10,000 high purity cocaine in a fridge has been exposed as EncroChat drug dealer "HeroicFox".
Jacob Bullen was caught with two large blocks of cocaine when police raided his girlfriend's home in December 2020. The 26-year-old, who claimed "it's not mine, I'm looking after it for someone else", was jailed for six years and eight months in January 2021.
But on the day of his arrest, he handed over his iPhone 7 and the PIN to the device, which was sent away for examination by specialists. The content of that phone, combined with EncroChat messages, revealed his role as a £2m drug and cash courier.
READ MORE: Man held loaded gun to his head outside Royal Liverpool Hospital
Liverpool Crown Court heard a joint police operation involving the Ministry of Defence, Yorkshire Police and Essex Police led to Merseyside Police raiding Bullen's girlfriend's property. Officers struck at her home in Appleton Road, Walton on December 16, 2020.
There they found Bullen had one block of cocaine weighing 249g, with a purity of 77%, worth up to £10,000 at a wholesale value. A second block, weighing 398g, had a purity of 23%, and was estimated to be worth up to £38,829 at street value.
In January last year, Bullen admitted possessing cocaine with intent to supply, plus breaching a suspended 16-month prison sentence, imposed in July 2020 for dealing cannabis. A Proceeds of Crime Application hearing later saw £3,631 seized from him.
Bullen appeared back in court on Friday, via video link from prison, having admitted new charges of conspiring to supply cocaine, heroin and cannabis. Keith Sutton, prosecuting, said detectives had accessed EncroChat messages, which were recovered when the secret phone network was hacked in 2020.
The messages showed Bullen's past dealing as HeroicFox, from April 4, 2020 to May 27, 2020. Mr Sutton said: "The data shows he was acting as a courier of kilogram amounts of cocaine, heroin and cannabis and doing so on a regular basis.
"That was under the direction of another, who had links to a serious organised crime group." The court heard this was a fellow EncroChat user, who went by the name "BushTern".
Mr Sutton said it was the prosecution case that "overwhelming evidence" showed Bullen was "HeroicFox", which was further supported by notes in his iPhone, where he had "kept a record of some of, if not all of the transactions" he had in fact made between July 2018 to July 2020. He said the total value of those transactions "came to over £2m in cash".
Mr Sutton said: "As far as the EncroChat messages themselves are concerned, they revealed that his role was to deliver Class A drugs and hundreds of thousands of pounds of cash". He said the EncroChat messages, over just a two-month period, referred to five kilos of cocaine, five kilos of heroin and three kilos of cannabis, which Judge Neil Flewitt, QC, said "must be the absolute minimum".
When interviewed by police, Bullen gave a largely "no comment" interview, except to state that an amount mentioned on his phone meant £100, not £1,000. The court heard Bullen's drug dealing dates back to September 2014, when he was first convicted of possessing cannabis with intent to supply.
Callum Ross, defending, said his client knew he found himself "in a very precarious position" and accepted he would be serving "a very substantial" prison sentence. He said there were numerous examples in EncroChat messages of Bullen being "ordered about" by BushTern and that he was "simply a courier".
However, he accepted that the data also showed "he does have clearly at least some awareness of the scale of this operation". The lawyer said this was shown by him "discussing tops [kilo amounts of cocaine], bottoms [kilo amounts of heroin] and other drug deals".
Mr Ross said: "His instructions are he was taking £100 for every couple of collections. If the court does accept that, then my respectful submission is that is not very much money to be making in the grand scheme of things, considering the sizable quantities of drugs in terms of this conspiracy".
Judge Flewitt said: "I have a degree of scepticism at the suggestion he was only being paid £100 for every two trips involving kilo quantities of Class A drugs, given the value of those quantities." However, the judge said this was unlikely to make a difference to his sentence.
Mr Ross said since being in prison, Bullen had undertaken maths and English courses, and a painting and decorating course. He had also got a job as a cleaner and in a canteen serving food to other inmates, and recently worked as a gym orderly.
A woman sitting in the public gallery burst into tears as Judge Flewitt said Bullen had played a "significant role" in the plots and jailed him for five years, to be served consecutively to his existing prison term. This means he is now serving a total sentence of 11 years and eight months.
