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."
COLUMN: Shopping at Walmart is voting for poor working conditions - Oklahoma Daily
On May 22, the Norman City Council voted to grant Walmart’s request to re-zone a five-acre plot of land on 36th Avenue and Rock Creek Road in preparation for a Walmart neighborhood market grocery store.
Residents of the surrounding area protested the vote, claiming that Walmart does not engage in ethical business practices. Opposing voices also noted that another Walmart is located just two miles south of the planned location.
Protests against Walmart are certainly nothing new; Walmart is a lightning rod for collective anger against globalization, wage deflation and concerns over worker’s health and safety.
By singling out Walmart stores, protestors reveal much more about their own ignorance, laziness and hypocrisy than anything else.
Walmart is certainly a huge player in global markets and is a huge importer of goods from lesser-developed countries through its supplier network. The effect of this amount of capital influx into countries around the world has led to large amounts of job creation in many countries.
It is very easy for middle-aged suburbanites to become upset over working conditions that they have zero direct experience with, but many of the workers themselves do not feel the same way.
When a Mongolian student at a U.S. workshop on globalization heard U.S. college students denounce sweatshops, he shouted: “Please give us your sweatshops.”
Moreover, these practices are not unique to Walmart. Thinking that shopping at Target or JCPenny somehow helps the problem is ridiculous. How many anti-globalization protests on campus have we seen using poster board and markers bought from these same stores? Walmart is simply an easy target for those who do not want to change their own lifestyle to reflect their so-called “beliefs.”
The one justified criticism coming out the anti-Walmart crowd is over domestic labor concerns. Many critics and watchdog organizations for paying low wages, not provided benefits and unpaid overtime have cited Walmart.
Another huge issue with Walmart wages is that those wages force many employees to take advantage of state aid. These wages also are in line with federal minimum wage.
Walmart is certainly a mixed bag when it comes to domestic labor concerns. It employs and trains huge numbers of workers, both skilled and unskilled. It also takes full advantage of those workers in depressing wages and fighting labor unions. In this way, Walmart carries with it substantially more baggage than a regional grocery store.
It is important to remember that Walmart must be compared to other retailers. Unskilled workers at other grocery stores and retail outlets make only marginally better wages with very similar working conditions. In other words, a checker at Walmart is not particularly different than a checker at Homeland.
Again, because of its size and national scope, Walmart becomes a focus for a large campaign that should be directed toward national labor standards and governmental oversight. If the minimum wage were raised, all companies, not just Walmart, would comply.
Possibly one of the most dangerous aspects of Walmart protests is that they detract attention from these larger issues that are systemic to many companies in the United States. By focusing so heavily on one retailer, we ignore the larger problem of national worker’s rights.
The most incredible aspect of the Walmart issue is, to me, the extreme simplicity of the solution. DO NOT SHOP THERE. The small groups of people who decide to protest store opening are completely ignorant to the fact that they are in the extreme minority.
Every day, millions of shoppers decide, of their own free will, to shop at a Walmart store. Denying these individuals this ability based on the concerns of a small group of people would be ridiculous.
I do not shop at Walmart if I can help it. I simply don’t like to. On the rare occasion that I need tent stakes and a gallon of lemonade at 2 a.m., guess where I go. To deny the ability of the American consumer to destroy a store with their pocketbooks is idiocy.
When is the last time you shopped at a Woolworth’s? People didn’t like the store, so they did not shop there. As if by magic, Woolworth’s is gone.
Anger over Walmart is just another example of those privileged enough to have the luxury to shop elsewhere, attempting to act as the conscience of the rest of society.
Mark Brockway is a political science senior.
Poll: Do you shop at Walmart, despite its unethical practices?
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.
YOUR MONEY-Abandon online shopping cart, reap discount? - Reuters UK
NEW YORK, June 6 |
NEW YORK, June 6 (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)
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