A Manchester-based crime network involved in the wholesale supply and distribution of drugs has been smashed thanks to Greater Manchester Police.
Thanks to Operation Medusa, which was set up by police to expose the activities of this organised crime group, officers seized up to £380,000 worth of Class A and B drugs.
Today Thursday 7 June 2012 the main players of the network are starting jail sentences following a trial hearing at Liverpool Crown Court.
William Michael Skillen (born 04/10/1985), of Blueberry Avenue, Moston, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class A drugs and two counts of conspiracy to supply class B drugs and was jailed for eight years.
Mark Anderson (born 04/11/1985), of Tutbury Street, Ancoats pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class A drugs and conspiracy to supply class B drugs and was jailed for five and a half years.
Christopher Phythian (born 31/03/1984), of Longham Close, Beswick pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class A drugs and was jailed for three and a half years.
Lewis Thompson (born 12/11/1985) of Ordsall Lane, Salford pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class A drugs and conspiracy to supply class B drugs. He was jailed for five years.
Jason Bennett (born 19/04/1971), of Kilmington Drive, Cheetham Hill pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class B drugs. He is due to be sentenced 3 December 2012.
At the head of the network was Skillen, who controlled and directed the other members, overseeing and directing the collection and delivery of multi-kilo amounts of Class A and B drugs throughout the UK.
The others were trusted members of this crime group all involved in the wholesale distribution of the drugs.
On 18 January 2011, police seized a large block of white powder from two men at a house in Stockport. This was later forensically examined and revealed to be 1.016 kilos of cocaine with a purity of 60 percent and a street value of £169,000.
At this time, Skillen and Anderson were in Thailand having flown business class, but inquiries showed Skillen and Thompson, who remained in the UK, were controlling the supply of this block of cocaine.
On 12 April 2011, Thompson visited Bennett's home in Cheetham Hill and left carrying several bags which he put into the boot of his car. He was stopped and found in possession of 2.35 kilos of cannabis worth about £14,000 on the streets. Again, mobile inquiries established Skillen controlled this deal.
Thompson was bailed, and during the summer of 2011 the police operation to uncover the activities of the OCG continued.
On Friday 30 September 2011, Skillen, Thompson and Phythian went to Anderson's home in Ancoats. Skillen, Anderson and Phythian were seen taking a plastic carrier bag out of the boot of a silver Chevrolet Captiva and put it into a silver Ford Focus.
Phythian and Anderson drove off in the Focus, and Skillen and Thompson in the Chevrolet. The Focus travelled to Essex that evening and then returned to Manchester, where it was stopped by police with Anderson and Phythian inside. Three large blocks were found in the boot, and when forensically examined were found to be just shy of 3,000 grams of cocaine with a street value of up £150,000.
Anderson's home was searched and officers recovered an Asda shopping bag underneath his bag containing four bags of white powder, later found to be amphetamines worth up to £3,000.
On 17 November 2011, Skillen was spotted leaving a gym in Rochdale in a black Vauxhall Zafira. Police carried out an armed strike on the car on Edge Lane, Droylsden, and Skillen was arrested. A foil package was found in the boot containing three plastic bags with a combined weight of 2.99 kilograms of Methylethlcathinone with a street value of £45,000.
Skillen's home was also raided and about £10,000 in cash found in a kitchen drawer.
Detective Inspector Stephen Earnshaw, from GMP's Drug Unit, said: "Today is the reward for months of painstaking detective work by our officers to unmask this organised crime group and bring the main players to justice.
"At the head of this network was Skillen, who controlled those around him and was the main man in terms of organising the collection and delivery of large amounts of drugs in both Manchester and the rest of the country.
"By taking him and his lieutenants out of the game, what this means for the law-abiding people of our communities is less drugs on their streets and we know that people are fed up of drug dealers thinking they can strut about acting as if they are above the law.
"The fact is that no-one is above the law and what today shows is that Greater Manchester Police's Drug Unit will use every available tool in our arsenal to expose these drug dealers for the criminals they are. Regardless of whether you are a user, a supplier or the head of a network, we will be watching you and you will be brought to justice.
"I also want to stress that we do not rest when drug dealers are locked up. Using Proceeds of Crime Act legislation, we will hit these criminals where it really hurts - their wallets, and do everything in our power to take the money and property they have earned dealing drugs and profiting from people's addictions off them. Our message is clear: if you deal drugs you will lose your freedom and your assets."
Wizzard Updates FAB’s Growing Wholesale Media Distribution Business - Investors Business Daily
PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Wizzard Media (NYSE Amex: WZE), the leading podcast network, today released the first of several informational business overviews regarding FAB. Over the next several weeks, Wizzard plans to issue additional overviews based on various FAB business segments including: wholesale media distribution, retail and franchise based distribution of media products as well as digital kiosk based distribution of media products.
FAB Wholesale Media Distribution Business
Founded in 2003, FAB is headquartered in Beijing and distributes over 150,000 media based products including copyrighted DVD’s, Blu-ray Discs, music CD’s, video games and downloadable digital content through three distribution channels – wholesale and retail, vending kiosks and internet stores.
FAB wholesale distribution business distributes media products to over 80 customers including Sohu (NASDAQ: SOHU), Dangdang (NYSE: Dangdang) and Century Outstanding Information Technology Company, a subsidiary of Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN). FAB’s wholesale business caters to three types of customers: large retail stores, FAB franchise stores and small wholesale/resellers. Customers place orders by telephone, through the internet or in-person and fulfillment is handled by FAB’s vehicle fleet or through direct warehouse access.
With over 100 suppliers and 80 wholesale customers, including the Government, the wholesale business segment is growing rapidly with FAB strongly positioned to be the leader in copyright protected material as the media entertainment industry continues to expand in China. Revenues for the wholesale business segment were $23.5m ’09, $31.9m ’10, $44.7m ’11 and $27m for the first six months of fiscal 2012.
Recently, the Chinese government announced initiatives for the protection of copyrighted content as both official policy and a strategic priority, and has publicly recognized FAB as an early anti-piracy champion.
The development of the digital media industry in China is now a national strategic initiative based on China’s official Eleventh Five-Year Plan passed by China’s National People’s Congress. Following sustained lobbying efforts by western media companies, China has begun to relax its longstanding limits on foreign media. For example, up to 20 blockbuster western movies can now be shown in Chinese theaters per year. The demand for viewing foreign DVD content on personal entertainment devices has burgeoned and with the government’s official crack-down on pirated content becoming official, FAB and the network of retailers it supplies have experienced substantial increases in demand.
Abandon online shopping cart, reap discount? - Reuters
NEW YORK |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Every few seconds, thousands of online shoppers do something they would probably never do in real life - they walk away from their shopping carts. Maybe the boss ambles by, or the price of shipping sends them packing to a bricks-and-mortar alternative.
Retailers are trying to combat such massive lost opportunity with emails - offering targeted marketing messages reminding customers that they left merchandise unpurchased. Some send one email, some send multiple. Some wait a few days, some send a note immediately. Some offer discount codes to lure shoppers back to their carts. And therein lies an opportunity for wafflers.
"Consumers are definitely wising up to the fact that retailers are doing this," says Carrie Gouldin, Web community manager at Thinkgeek.com.
She set up a system at her company, which sells geek chic merchandise such as the iCade (an iPad arcade cabinet), to send out one email reminder to customers who have opted in to email communications. The current offer is $10 off $50.
In the online retail space, abandonment rates of shopping carts hover around 65 percent, according to an analysis by Baymard Institute of 14 recent studies. While that seems like a really huge number, it's a smaller figure that's more startling - a recent study by Listrak shows that only 14.6 percent of the top 1,000 retailers are doing anything about customer flight.
Presumably, shoppers could abandon their carts intentionally, hoping for a discount email to follow shortly. The question Gouldin and her colleagues ask is: "Do we want to train customer to have this behavior or not?"
Thinkgeek's answer is decidedly yes.
Gouldin says that double the people open their abandoned cart emails than their regular newsletters and Thinkgeek get 10 times the revenue per customer.
"And the trade-off of offering a discount is worth it to us," Gouldin says.
Email marketer Listrak, which did the study on the top 1,000 retailers' responses to cart abandonment, says that other retailers who have tried campaigns also have had positive results. Listrak expects the number of retailers who follow up with consumers to grow exponentially, starting with the top retailers and then moving down the chain (see link.reuters.com/hux58s).
"The top retailers are all doing it," says Megan Ouellet, director of marketing for Listrak, citing retailers such as Land's End, Best Buy, Home Depot and Zappos.
"It's the mid-market retailers that aren't as progressive. Sometimes it's a resource issue."
There is no service yet tracking discounts for abandoned carts. The closest thing is an online gallery that Listrak put together of 20 top campaigns, but since offers change so often, it's not reliable for consumers.
Trial and error might work, however. Shopping expert Julia Scott, who runs the blog Bargainbabe.com, has had email pop into her in-box after she has abandoned carts, but not many discounts.
"I know a lot of retailers don't do this," Scott says. "They will email me and say hey, you left some stuff in your cart, but they don't offer anything, which is a lost opportunity. Even a small coupon or free shipping would tip me over the edge."
The staff at dealnews.com, which aggregates shopping offers, see an increasing number of offers appearing in their in-boxes. Since the team tests 300 or so offers daily - all the way to the last stage of purchase - they abandon carts all day long.
"I've noticed recently that more stores have begun emailing me about an abandoned' shopping cart, although usually to just ask if I had "trouble checking out," says dealnews features director Lindsay Sakraida. "The more clever retailers will offer enticement in their email, to make you reconsider the purchase."
Lest consumers try to game the system too much, some companies have built-in restrictions. Thinkgeek, for example, generates a unique code for each email that can only be used once. Other companies, says Listrak, track consumers who have received discounts before and do not send them any more offers. And others simply change their offers so often that it's impossible for the consumer to predict what they'll get.
Despite the risk of proliferating coupon codes, expect more retailers to jump into the fray simply because it works. For browsers looking at clothing and other impulse items, Sakraida thinks a discount could make all the difference.
"An email that reminds you and sweetens the deal with an additional discount could likely be enough to convince on-the-fence shoppers to pull the trigger on a purchase," she adds.
(Follow us @ReutersMoney or here; Editing by Andre Grenon)
New York Shopping Takes Center Stage in the 2012 Tour NYC Tour Season - YAHOO!
Uncle Sam's New York brings New York shopping to NYC visitors with innovative The New York Shopping Tours.
New York, NY (PRWEB) June 07, 2012
Uncle Sam's New York Tours has brought the New York Shopping Industry to the front of the line when it comes to tours for NYC visitors. The New York Shopping Tours industry has been a growing industry, but until this year, no major tour company had launched a series of New York Shopping Tours.The Fifth Avenue Shopping tour takes NYC visitors through the finest brands in fashion on a guided tour of the fashion industry, while also providing guests the ability to shop at some of the top stores in the world's best shopping district. Led by Stylist and fashion expert Janet Racy, the Fifth Avenue Shopping Tour has given visitors a great option for quickly understanding and making the right decisions when it comes to shopping in NYC.
"Guests many times have a hard time understanding where to even begin, when it comes to shopping for the right outfit," says tour leader and professional stylist, Janet Racy, "And on this tour I give them the inside scoop on how to do it and save a ton of money. More importantly, we get together and have a lot of fun!"
Janet Racy has also been instrumental in developing the New York Toy Story Tour that gives guests an inside look at the toy industry in New York City, through visiting the top toy stores in NYC. From the Disney Store, to Dylan's Candy Bar, and FAO Schwarz, this tour connects parents with their children through the shared experience of shopping. Many parents have reported waves of nostalgia on the tour because it has been so many years since they saw some of the toys that they used to play with as children.
New York pulsates by day and sizzles at night. Our totally engaging tours capture the very essence of it!
Samuel Cook
Uncle Sam's New York Tours
917.319.2229
Email Information
'Shopping Sheet' Will Help Parents Estimate College Costs - consumer affairs.com
In an effort to create a wider level of transparency, officials are creating a college "shopping sheet" that will allow parents and students to have an easier time navigating through school costs and financial aid information.
Vice President Joe Biden recently met with 10 college presidents from around the U.S., and all agreed to provide students with the shopping sheet in each financial aid packet that students receive.
The new initiative was first discussed back in January of 2012, as both the Education Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suggested it be mandatory for schools to provide a cost sheet with its school information.
Congress has yet to make the shopping sheet an official regulation for schools to follow, but some college presidents said they would provide the sheet, and not wait for the official congressional ruling.
Early adopters
Representing 1.4 million students, some of the college presidents that attendend this week's meeting were from state schools in Maryland, Texas, New York, and Massachusetts. The school presidents said they would have the shopping sheet available for the 2013-2014 school year.
"This is just part of a larger strategy, but we are very excited about being an early adopter," said Nancy Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York System.
The shopping sheet will theoretically make the entire process of college shopping easier, as it will contain the yearly price for classes, and what monies the student is responsible for after receiving scholarships or grants.
The sheet will also list information on the school's financial aid programs, and federal loans. There will even be info on the school's rate of successful graduates, and how many students defaulted on their student loan programs.
According to the Institute of Education Sciences, 66 percent of all undergraduate students received financial aid in a study that was conducted in 2008, and it's likely that even more students use financial assistance in today's challenging economic times.
The main problem however, is that many families cannot navigate through the complex financial information and successfully apply them to tuition costs. The shopping sheet, U.S. officials say, will change the entire process of selecting a school by making informational sheets more user friendly.
"These aren’t standards," said Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education. "This is basic transparency."
Catherine Hill, President of of Vassar College said the cost sheet will make it "representative and clear" for students to compare their financial aid awards to other student awards across the U.S.-- This is helpful Hill says because students will be able to see how their financial aid awards compared to the national average of student awards.
In the past, schools have tried using a similar cost sheet, but Hill says a regulation set by Congress would bring about some needed uniformity to such information. Hill also said using this new shopping sheet shouldn't contradict any informational sheet that schools already use.
"It won’t be inconsistent with anything else we do," she said. "We send them in the direction of more information if they want more information. I liked the idea of a summary sheet, in fact."
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