Former football player gets 9 years for drug deals worth half a million

6 February 2026

2–4 minutes

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

An ex-football (or soccer) player who used his club’s name as the password for an encrypted phone with which he made drug deals worth half a million pounds, has been sent to prison for nine years on Monday. 63-year-old Francis Ventre, of West Derby, Liverpool, once played as a defender for Barrow A.F.C. That was a long time ago. Now investigators proved he was a leading figure in a conspiracy to supply cocaine and ketamine worth £479,500.

Ventre used an EncroChat phone to carry out the deals between April and June 2020. EncroChat phones were heavily encrypted devices used by criminals to communicate anonymously with each other under aliases, but in 2020 an international law enforcement team cracked into the platform, enabling investigators to read millions of messages and rendering the platform defunct.

The messages included those of Ventre, hiding behind the handle “Dillforest”. Dillforest’s messages were investigated by Merseyside Organised Crime Partnership, a joint National Crime Agency and Merseyside Police team dedicated to tackling serious and organized crime in the county.

It was evident from the messages that Dillforest was playing a leading role in the supply of harmful drugs. He offered contacts cocaine and ketamine, sometimes at discounted prices, and directed others where to deliver the illegal substances, or else delivered them himself. He also shared images of the drugs he was supplying and discussed the transfer of profits from and payments for the substances.

READ: “Invisible cocaine” flooding Europe thanks to chemical camouflage

In total, Dillforest was involved in the supply of a kilogram of cocaine and 63 kilograms of ketamine, with respective street values of £38,500 and £441,000.

Password helped ID former footballer

When Merseyside OCP officers began their investigation, they had the password for Dillforest’s EncroChat account as it had been identified during the international operation, but the significance of the word “barrow” within the password only came to light once the officers began looking for clues to Dillforest’s real-world identity.

The tenacious investigators spent hours trawling through thousands of messages, identifying small details Dillforest had shared about his relatives and himself, including the day and month of his birth and his postcode. These, in combination with the password, enabled investigators to prove that Dillforest was the former Barrow A.F.C. footballer Francis Ventre.

READ: The Untouchables: How Britain’s top gangsters got rich off armed robberies and smuggling tons of drugs

The officers arrested Ventre at his home address on November 25, 2025, and subsequently charged him with a number of drugs offences.

Faced with the evidence against him, Ventre pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply cocaine, conspiracy to supply ketamine and conspiracy to convert criminal property at Liverpool Crown Court on December 10, 2025. He was sentenced on Monday, February 2, at the same court.

“It was clear from Dillforest’s messages that he was playing a leading role in the sale of cocaine and ketamine, two drugs which are extremely harmful and a terrible blight on communities,” NCA Senior Manager Jon Hughes, of Merseyside OCP, said. “My officers spent countless hours sifting through messages to painstakingly piece together clues to Dillforest’s real-world identity, eventually uncovering Francis Ventre as the man behind the alias. The investigators’ hard work has ensured that Ventre is in prison, and not out in Liverpool, still selling, delivering and profiting from drugs.”