They were just ordinary Liverpool lads who grew up in Thatcher's Britain and created an international criminal empire.
Their mum and dad moved from the top of West Derby Road to a brand new estate called Cantril Farm in the late 60s.
They were a typical Liverpool family who moved from the heartlands of the city to a new estate.
But their two sons would go on to affect many thousands of lives - for all the wrong reasons.
The brothers went onto to build Liverpool's most powerful drug gang - close to being seen as a bona fide cartel to rival Europe's significant criminal factions from Ireland, Russia and North Africa.
Unlike household names such as Stephen French, John Haase and Curtis Warren, the brothers had little notoriety.
Their names only have currency within the upper tiers of the drugs economy.
The two men have escaped justice for decades which is why the ECHO cannot name them.
They operated at a level that was light years ahead of their contemporaries in Liverpool.
Despite their genial manner the men were prepared to send gun and grenade toting thugs to the front door of anyone who compromised their interests.
In May 2017 Spanish police launched a raid on the brothers' compound in the Costa Del Sol - the footage was like a scene from Netflix series Narcos, as heavily armed men stormed a villa while a helicopter roared overhead.
A Huyton man who remembers the brothers from the old days offered a unique insight into their astonishing rise to power.
Under the radar
He said: "They were never bullies. We knew about the boxing families who like to threw their weight around. But not these two.
"They were not into anything. Yes, the odd pint at the weekend. They were always under the radar."
The brothers are believed to have become involved in drug dealing in the 1980s.
The Huyton man said: "They had money in the 80s and started laundering into property schemes. So in many respects they were ahead of the curve.
"The key to these two is that they avoided all the things that caused problems for other drug dealers and gangsters. They avoided disputes and silly fall outs. They never had a security firm and stayed away from the doors.
"And they did not care what people thought of them. For them, crime was a business."
After an unrelated case at Liverpool Crown Court last year, the ECHO spoke to a senior detective about their dealings. He said that the brothers operated on a different level to mainstream Merseyside criminals.
So who are they?
The brothers moved to Spain in the 90s and by the end of the decade began to enter the slip stream of international organised crime.
After Dutch police raided a farmhouse in rural Holland and arrested Curtis Warren they became Liverpool's biggest drug dealers.
They formed an organised syndicate which smuggled cocaine from South America through Europe and into the UK.
Despite being low key, reserved, and all about the business, the brothers were ruthless when it came to protecting their interests.
In 2002 a young man from Liverpool city centre went to work for the gang in southern Spain. Later that same year, his remains washed up on a gravel beach near Benalmadena.
He had been tortured, suffocated and had his lower legs amputated. The man is rumoured to have fallen foul of a vicious enforcers who worked for the Cantril Farm cartel.
The grotesque murder sent a message. Nobody has been convicted of the murder.
These enforcers later returned to Liverpool and became one of the city's most feared gangs. They were linked up to more violence but somehow managed to stay one step ahead of the law.
Gang war
In 2009 a gang war erupted after Southport car dealer Carl Boyd claimed to have been attacked by masked men during a business meeting in the office of his garage.
Mr Boyd told police that two masked men burst into his office on Brewster Street in north Liverpool during a meeting.
He claimed they ordered him to sell his share of the business. He described a terrifying encounter when a gun was rammed in his mouth.
Three men were arrested and charged with blackmail, false imprisonment, assault, and possession of an imitation firearm.
But due to complicated reasons which cannot be published the brothers from Cantril Farm did not want the trial to go ahead and unleashed a terrifying campaign of violence on a number of individuals they blamed for the mess.
During one particular incident a grenade was left outside the home of Kenny Dalglish after a botched raid nearby.
And then months later a live grenade was thrown at a family home near Royal Birkdale.
The device showered the house in shrapnel and left locals shocked and bewildered.
Sources later told the ECHO that the Cantril Farm brothers had paid contract criminals Kirk Bradley and Tony Downes to organise the violence in order to try and sabotage the controversial trial from going ahead.
During his trial Tony Downes told Liverpool Crown Court that the grenade left outside Sir Kenny's home was linked to the Brewster Street dispute.
The brothers' drugs' money paid for a terror campaign that waged across Sefton during 2009.
On one occasion police stopped a car travelling towards Southport from Huyton.
A man on board was found to have an Uzi machine gun with him. It was feared he was on his way to 'spray up a house' in broad daylight.
After Downes and Bradley were jailed for life for organising the terror campaign, a senior officer with Merseyside Police's Matrix unit alluded to the brothers when he spoke of how police had removed only 'one layer of the hierarchy'.
The three men who were charged in relation to the Brewster Street incident were later cleared of all charges.
There is no evidence to suggest they had anything to do with the terror campaign which took place while they were on remand.
Assassinations overseas
In 2010 the brothers became locked in a major fallout with a powerful drug gang rooted in the back streets of Speke.
In particular they were in dispute with a feared member of the gang who was known as the 'bird of prey'.
According to reliable sources, the brothers flew a team of criminals over to Amsterdam to shoot their enemy. However, UK police sent over intelligence to their Dutch counterparts which led to a raid by elite police.
A group of Merseyside men was arrested and police also found their arsenal of weapons. The haul included battlefield weapons including assault rifles with silencers.
At the time the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) said that the crew had been sent to Amsterdam to assassinate a rival and that the feud was linked to a 'string of murders'.
Some of the men were found to have false passports, although police soon established their real identity.
One man, said to be the leader of the gang, was jailed.
The ECHO has since been told by sources that the hit team was sent to assassinate a former Liverpool boxer who was a leading member of the Speke firm.
Argentinian beef
In 2013 police found a haul of 400 kilos of cocaine concealed in Argentinian beef at Tilbury docks.
SOCA officers decided to swap the drugs for dummy packages of bricks and put a tracker in the wagon.
The wagon then headed up north and delivered the load to a cold storage unit in Lancashire. But senior members of the Huyton firm were furious when they found they had lost their haul of drugs worth millions.
A group of criminals were drafted in to try and recover the drugs - but when they met up at Aintree Retail Park, police filmed their every move.
Ian Stanton, Anthony Short, James Mossman, Gary Keating, Francis Oakford and David McDermott were all later jailed for their part in the plot.
More grenade mayhem
In November 2017 barmaid Tina Knight was getting ready for a night out when a grenade rolled off a wardrobe and went off.
The tea-time explosion brought police to Beresford Road where they discovered 158 kg of amphetamines, 1kg of cocaine and 9kg of mixing agent.
The drugs were probably worth around £1m on the street.
Police then started to join the dots and linked the incident to sprawling web of criminality in Spain.
In May 2017 Spanish police and the National Crime Agency led a series of spectacular raids across the Costa Del Sol.
Dramatic footage released by the police showed heavily armed officers storming a villa as a helicopter provided air cover.
Sources on Merseyside have told the ECHO the villa belonged to the brothers from Cantril Farm and was the headquarters of their drug business.
In a statement, Spain's Policia Nacional said it was a joint operation with Merseyside Police. The force also said the gang was led by two brothers from Liverpool, aided by their son-in-law who "directed other members of the ring".
Police also said they had targeted a major cannabis export operation - the drugs were set to he concealed in slabs of marble and driven back to the UK.
In total 24 people were arrested in a series of raids from Barcelona to Alicante. Although senior members of the Huyton firm were held they were bailed by the Spanish authorities. None of the leading members of the Huyton firm were charged with drug offences.
Sources have suggested the brothers who run the Huyton cartel have wound down their operation in recent years but they are still powerful and wealthy criminals.
What the police said
A spokesperson for the NCA said: "We cannot confirm nor deny the existence of ongoing investigations."
A Merseyside Police spokesperson said: “We are relentless in our pursuit of those individuals and groups who are involved in serious and organised crime across Merseyside and beyond, and continue to have success in disrupting and dismantling these groups.
“Key to any action against organised crime groups is information provided by those communities affected and we continue to appeal to anyone with information to come forward, either directly to police or via the charity Crimestoppers, which is completely independent of the Merseyside Police.
“We will treat any information sensitively and will continue to invest significant resources to pursue offenders and put them before the courts.”
Anyone with information about serious and organised crime can contact the force social media desk @MerPolCC, or by calling us on 101. You can also report crimes anonymously via @CrimestoppersUK or by calling 0800 555 111.
