Albanian drug supply

By Gangsters Inc. Editors

An Albanian drug supplier who arranged cocaine deals within the United Kingdom worth almost £1.4 million has been jailed for 10 years on Tuesday. 35-year-old Taulant Stoica (photo above) was identified by British police as the fixer behind a number of drug deals in London and Bristol, arranged on encrypted messaging platform EncroChat.

Stoica used the EncroChat handle ‘Palefog’ to organize the handover of drugs by fellow Albanians Muhamet Quosja and Eduard Hadjini. They acted as runners for Stoica and were jailed for 10 years and three years respectively last year.

30-year-old Quosja was arrested October 13, 2020, when he was found in possession of £23,000 in cash. A handgun with 20 rounds of ammunition and 11 kilos of cocaine, with a street value of £1.1 million, were subsequently recovered from his home in Ilford.

“Daku”

Quosja’s phone was searched and contained a contact called ‘Daku’ (an Albanian term for friend) which matched Stoica’s number. Messages show an exchange between the two men, with Stoica directing Quosja to a postcode to handover cocaine.

39-year-old Hadjini, who lived close to Stoica in Abbey Wood, was arrested on April 1, 2021 after police followed him in his car to Bristol. It had been loaded with one kilo of cocaine which he was due to handover to 28-year-old Thomas Scarrett. Hadjini was arrested alongside fellow dealer Sokol Ajazi around a month after the Bristol exchange.

Officers searched a garage, seizing three more kilos of cocaine. The combined value of these drugs, plus an additional two kilos Hadjini handed to another dealer the previous month, could have fetched around £360,000 if sold on the streets of Great Britain.

Ajazi and Scarrett were both arrested and later sentenced to 5 years and 2 months and six years respectively.

Three phones and thousands in cash

Stoica himself was detained by police near his home on June 30, 2021. He had three mobile phones and more than £4,000 in his possession. A further £12,000 was recovered from his house. He was subsequently hit with drug and money laundering charges.

He admitted these offences at Woolwich Crown Court on October 6 last year and was jailed for 10 years at the same court on February 15, 2022.

“Stoica was pulling the strings behind these drugs deals which, had they not been prevented by OCP officers, would have resulted in cocaine flooding our streets,” Andrew Tickner, from the Organised Crime Partnership, said.

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