A notorious gangland boss from Warrington who armed organised crime groups around the UK after sending a weapons list on the encrypted platform EncroChat has been sentenced to 26 years and eight months in prison, following a National Crime Agency investigation.
Philip Waugh, 40, supplied terrifying military grade weapons to organised crime groups and plotted with a gangland enforcer to blind a victim with acid.
Waugh sparked huge concern among UK law enforcement in 2020, when the NCA discovered an unidentified British crime boss was advertising the list of sought after automatic and semi-automatic weapons on EncroChat.
The information was discovered in Operation Venetic – the NCA-led response to the takedown of EncroChat by European partners.
A criminal using the handle Aceprospect, who was operating from abroad, offered: two AK47 firearms, a Skorpion machine gun, an Uzi machine gun, a range of pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
A series of linked investigations has seen dangerous offenders across the country jailed for conspiring to buy and transfer the weapons.
NCA investigators worked tirelessly to unmask and trace Aceprospect.
And on 12 September last year they joined colleagues from the Spanish National Police (SNP) to arrest Waugh at his rented villa in Benahavis, Malaga.
The breakthrough came when Waugh, who had been living in Thailand, left the country for Spain. Thai partners alerted the NCA and SNP and an international plan was organised to arrest him.
Waugh was extradited and on 11 April he appeared at Liverpool Crown Court and admitted a range of firearms offences and a count of conspiring to inflict grievous bodily harm in which he instructed an accomplice to throw acid in a victim’s faces. His sentence had a third deducted because of his guilty pleas.
Waugh, who is originally from Warrington, smuggled the guns to the UK where his right-hand man Robert Brazendale, 38, took possession of them and provided them to customers from various organised crime groups.
In February 2022, Brazendale, of Selworthy Drive, Warrington, Cheshire, was jailed for 11 years and three months (later reduced to 10 years on appeal) for transferring other firearms from the gun list. He admitted new firearms offences committed with Waugh and was jailed for 11 years and four months. This is in addition to the term he is already serving.
Waugh, who has a previous conviction for domestic assault of a partner, plotted with gangland enforcer Jonathan Gordon, a member of Liverpool’s Deli Mob, to blind a man with acid.
Waugh told Gordon, 37, of Kirkdale, Liverpool, and who used the EncroChat handle Valuedbridge, to “double the dose” and “cook” the intended victim with acid.
“Just need him blind and face melted,” Waugh messaged Gordon.
On the day Gordon was due to carry out the attack, police patrol officers approached him in Liverpool and he ran off and the car was seized and attack prevented.
Brazendale also admitted conspiring to inflict GBH on this victim.
The NCA and policing partners recovered two AK47s, Uzi and Skorpion machine guns, a Grand Power automatic pistol, a Smith and Wesson pistol and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Ben Rutter, NCA senior investigating officer, said: “Waugh’s sentencing is extremely welcome and is the result of huge amounts of work by NCA officers who persisted tirelessly for five years to trace, locate and bring him to justice under Operation Venetic.
“Waugh only cared about making a lot of money. He supplied an array of automatic and semi-automatic weaponry to offenders who were planning horrific crimes and had no regard for public safety. He didn’t care at all about who might be killed in the process.
“The NCA and policing partners went into overdrive when we discovered Waugh’s gun list, doing everything possible to find and seize them. We will continue to do everything we can with partners at home and abroad to prevent organised crime groups trafficking firearms.”
