A jailed drugs baron dubbed Britain's Pablo Escobar will be freed next month, but when he is out he will be banned from WhatsApp - and won't be allowed to travel to Scotland without telling the authorities first.
Curtis 'Cocky' Warren, now 59, is poised to be released from his prison sentence but he will be subject to the terms of an uber-strict crime prevention order which means his liberty will be restricted. The Liverpool mobster once reputed to be worth almost £200m, who had links with Manchester gangland, has been behind bars for the last 14 years.
But when he finally emerges from jail next month he will be prohibited from using WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and from using cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin.
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He will also have to give his National Crime Agency (NCA) minder a day's notice even for the most mundane activity the rest of us take for granted, for instance getting into someone's car or van. A recent Times report said if Warren wants to travel to Scotland he will have to provide the National Crime Agency (NCA) with seven days' notice.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who was the director of public prosecutions in 2013, previously applied for a serious crime prevention order against the former nightclub bouncer. Sir Keir said at the time: "There are very real grounds to believe that, without this order being made, Curtis Warren would continue to be involved in serious crime."
Warren was known as the key man in Europe for Colombia's Cali Cartel which controlled a large portion of the world's cocaine supply. At the age of 34, Warren's empire, built off drug money, included properties in Wales, Spain and Gambia, a winery in Bulgaria, petrol stations and apartment blocks in Turkey, a yacht, a 16 room mansion in the Netherlands and more than 200 rental properties, the Liverpool Echo reported.
He was jailed for 13 years in 2009 for planning to smuggle £1m worth of cannabis into Jersey. He was later slapped with a further ten years for failing to obey a £198m confiscation order under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
The mobster has served all his sentence behind bars, so he isn't being released on licence. Instead, the crime prevention order will come into effect.
An NCA) source told the Daily Star: "The confiscation order is outstanding. If, for example, he purchased a house, that house would be taken away as part of the order."
The restrictions will be underway once Warren is freed from high security prison HMP Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire in November. Warren will still, however, be allowed back to Liverpool where his most of his crime took place. An NCA source added: "Preventing him from entering Liverpool was regarded a possible human rights violation."
It has been reported Warren would not be supervised in Liverpool by the probation services because he has served his full sentence. But according to the NCA, Warren will be watched by the agency's lifetime management team, who are in charge of upholding the crime prevention order for the next five years.
Warren will not have a curfew and has the right to apply for a British passport. In a bid to prevent any suspicious activity, he can only use one mobile phone, one sim card and one phone number. It was reported he cannot hold more than £1,000 in cash, even in coins - and he will be closely watched when trying to borrow money, hold trusts or shares, or make transfers.
The NCA said: "Action against serious and organised criminals doesn't end with a conviction. These restrictions protect the public but will have little impact upon those who are genuinely reformed."
Any breaches of the order could see him taken straight back to prison.
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