Jailed druglord and cohorts ran operation like a 'supermarket'

Lord Mulholland described the gang of five - including one from Glasgow - as a "sophisticated" organised crime group.

They flooded Inverclyde with heroin and cocaine from a heavily fortified Larkfield base known as "the shop".

Kingpin Docherty, 37, his brother-in-law Ian Millar, 39, accomplice Brendan Gillan, 32, Gillan's father Daniel, 60, and associate Christopher McKellar, 44, from Castlemilk, were each given lengthy prison sentences at the High Court in Glasgow.

The quintet had earlier pleaded guilty to orchestrating the lucrative criminal enterprise which raked in hundreds of thousands of pounds in profit through the production and supply of class A, B and C narcotics.

The High Court in Glasgow (Image: NQ)

Lord Mulholland told the gang: "You were involved in the running of a sophisticated crime group.

"You ran it as a drugs supermarket and kept a warehouse to house the drugs.

"One involved said it was a drugs empire and another said it was a business.

"You used EncroChat phones to communicate with each other and had CCTV to see who was coming to the premises and metal doors to stop people entering the property.

"Recovery of the drugs and money shows the extent of the drugs trafficking operation ran by you all."

Docherty, who led the lucrative business that was launched at the height of the first Covid lockdown four years ago, has been locked up for eight years, while Millar will be behind bars for six.

Accomplice Brendan Gillan has also been imprisoned for six years, while his father Daniel received six years and four months, and McKellar has been jailed for five years and four months.

Sentencing had been postponed in February while outstanding crime prevention orders - to impose binding conditions on individuals aimed at stopping further offending - were prepared for three of the cohort.

The group counted daily takings of between £5000 and £10,000 selling cocaine, heroin, cannabis and etizolam from an address known as the "shop" in Greenock’s Larkfield estate.

'The shop', on Oxford Road, was also referred to as 'the trap' (Image: NQ)

The powder and pills, stocked up in huge quantities and stored along with thousands of pounds in cash at multiple stash houses in the area, were pushed out to "punters" before police raided a number of locations in December 2020 as part of a multi-agency investigation.

Lord Mulholland said the money and drugs recovered - including £146,000 worth of narcotics and almost £13,000 in cash - shows "the extent of the drug trafficking operation".

We previously reported the "drugs empire" was smashed by authorities during a Europe-wide probe into the EncroChat encrypted messaging service commonly used by criminals.

At a previous High Court hearing, advocate depute Alexander Sutherland said Docherty was the "principal of the organised crime group orchestrated by him".

Second-in-command Millar was one of his most trusted associates, while Brendan Gillan collected and counted cash and referred to himself as "fronting a drugs empire".

Daniel was said to have provided advice on how to run the day-to-day operation and often sampled the freshly-made drugs before offering "feedback on its quality and where improvements were needed".

The court heard that over a two-month period between April and June 2020, the gang took in more than £130,000 from selling drugs to users in Greenock and the surrounding areas.

McKellar was said to have had a lesser involvement in the scheme but still regularly arranged pick-ups of hundreds of thousands of pills and other drugs for delivery to Larkfield and elsewhere.

Anthony Graham KC told an earlier hearing that Docherty's life had been "peppered with continuous contact with the drugs environment", and he had contacts with people in the drugs trade "because he was a user".

Mr Graham told the court that Docherty had had "a period of reflection as to his involvement and the consequences of that on his nearest and dearest and others in society".

Millar was described as "far from a stupid individual", while Daniel was said to be "an intelligent man" who studied accountancy and business law at Strathclyde University before "things went off the rails" in the late 1980s when he began taking drugs.

Thomas Ross KC, representing first offender Brendan Gillan, said his client was "vulnerable to temptation" after losing his job and "made the wrong decision" to become involved.

Meanwhile, a solicitor for McKellar - who admitted to assisting with the couriering of pills and powder between March and June 2020 - claimed that he has been "at pains to try and distinguish his involvement from others on the indictment".