THE ADAMS FAMILY

There’s a TV special on the Adams Family that I took part in. Go to TV Catch up, Channel 5, in the search engine put ‘UK Narcos’  and then click on ‘episode 2’.  I’d fast forward through the 6 adverts that are at the start to the actual program.  Enjoy!! Or click through here…  

sorry C5 have deleted it now but the promo is here…. I’m the one in the check shirt and glasses..

-London Crime an in-depth look at the big robberies, the gangs and the geezers in the UK from 1930s – present day, all the facts and figures plus the aftermaths paperback £7.99 ebook £2.99, read more about it here, https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08429CBT5/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0

Like to read a fast paced Detective book? download one of mine click here… https://www.amazon.co.uk/B.L.-Faulkner/e/B00ND8R6OO

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UPDATE  Feb 5th 2019

And for a few brief hours on Tuesday, it seemed that four members of the Clerkenwell syndicate would be behind bars together for the first time after Terry Adams, its former head, was told he was going to prison. Adams was jailed for 12 months at Westminster magistrates’ court for his “willful refusal” to pay nearly £50,000 in court costs, despite telling a district judge he was unemployed and sharing a one-bedroom council flat in Bloomsbury with his wife, Ruth, a former EastEnders actress. He said that he could only afford to pay what he owed at a rate of £15 a week, with his solicitor saying that he was a victim of a witch-hunt and adding: “You can’t get blood out of a stone.” The sentence meant Adams would be locked up along with his brothers. Patrick “Patsy” Adams is already serving nine years for shooting an associate he labelled a “grass”, while older brother Thomas “Tommy” Adams is doing seven years for money laundering. Michael “Micky” Adams was jailed last summer for 38 months for cheating his way out of £300,000 in tax. But only hours after saying he was living on handouts, 64-year-old Terry Adams was on his way home yesterday after paying the £46,258 costs.

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THE ADAMS FAMILY

He’s the godfather behind a £200m business built on murder, drugs and money laundering. Now Terry Adams is finally behind bars. But how did he become Britain’s most feared gangland boss? And why did it take more than three decades to bring him down?

“Everybody stood up when he walked in. He looked like a star,” recalls David McKenzie, a London financier. “He was immaculately dressed in a long black coat and white frilly shirt. He was totally in command.” Indeed, the middle-aged man described by McKenzie as looking like “a cross between Liberace and Peter Stringfellow”, was entitled to have an air of authority. He was the head of an international business empire worth an estimated £200m. Its employees were, by the very nature of that empire, few in number and unswervingly loyal. The man’s home, where McKenzie was introduced to him, is a discreetly guarded but substantial north London mansion, tastefully decorated and filled with antique furniture and expensive objets d’art. He is a well-mannered man of cultured tastes, with a liking for good wine and custom- built cars. He was once so wealthy that he considered putting in a bid for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. But this is no ordinary captain of industry. His name is Terry Adams and he was – and possibly still is – the head of Britain’s most enterprising (and most feared) organised criminal gang – the Adams family, otherwise known as the A-Team, or the Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate. Their “business” began with petty extortion from market traders, moved into armed robbery and finally blossomed into drug trafficking, all backed up by a willingness that led to their rumoured involvement in up to 30 gangland killings. Their ability to evade justice gave them an air of invincibility, fuelling the belief that they had detectives, lawyers and prosecutors on their payroll – and that even jurors were not immune from their menaces. Anyone considered an informer against them or a threat to the family was ruthlessly targeted. “A formidable and feared organisation steeped in the highest levels of criminal activity,” one Old Bailey trial was told. Or, as one gangland expert put it yesterday, they “made the Krays look like clowns”.

Adams, 52, found himself in a rather different environment from his north London manor – across the Thames, inside the high-security Belmarsh Prison, awaiting sentencing for money laundering. He could receive up to 14 years in prison but is almost certain to be sentenced to less – and with automatic parole and time off for good behaviour, Adams may well be free again long before he turns 60.

And while Adams’ guilty plea to money laundering (thus avoiding a lengthy trial) was hailed by police and the Crown Prosecution Service as the climax of a long-sought, hard-fought quest for justice, the man himself will see it very differently. “I think Terry Adams will view this as something of a victory, he will consider that, after all the efforts that the police have made to get him over the years, he has done rather well out of this.”

It is certainly not the first time that encounters with the judicial process have worked out to the advantage of Terry Adams, and other members of the Adams family and their associates. One of Terry’s brothers, Tommy, was cleared in 1985 of involvement with the laundering of the £26m Brinks Mat haul, while Gilbert Wynter, one of the family’s “enforcers”, was tried in 1994 for the murder of Claude Moseley, a former athlete turned drug dealer, only to be acquitted after the main prosecution witness mysteriously refused to testify.

Then there was the case involving the aforementioned Mr McKenzie. A Mayfair-based financier, McKenzie was asked in the late 1990s by the Adams family to launder large amounts of drug money on their behalf. However, his investments were less than wise and around £1.5m was lost. McKenzie was duly invited to Adams’ mansion in Mill Hill, north London. He was left in no doubt that the money had to be recouped.

A few days later, when the cash was not forthcoming, McKenzie claimed that he was summoned to another meeting, at the Islington home of John Potter, Adams’ brother-in-law. Here, an Old Bailey jury was later told, one Christopher McCormack, a close associate of the third brother, Patsy, set about Mr McKenzie. As well as being kicked and beaten, sustaining three broken ribs, he was carved up with a Stanley knife to the point where just fragments of skin were keeping his nose and left ear attached to his face. Two tendons on his left wrist were severed, permanently affecting the use of his hand.

When Potter gave evidence during the trial, he accepted that McKenzie had been injured at his home, but maintained that the attacker was a total stranger. He was cleared of committing acts intended to pervert the course of justice.

When McCormack gave evidence, he admitted meeting McKenzie three times to recover the debt “for my old mate Patsy”, but claimed that the presence of McKenzie’s blood on his jacket must have come from an earlier meeting, when he had broken up a fight between the financier and another man. McCormack was cleared, thanking the jury profusely and offering to buy them a drink “over the pub”. One male juror apparently winked at McCormack and raised his hand in greeting, an incident that was never explained. While these jury acquittals have to be taken at face value, many police officers involved in the investigations expressed incredulity at the decisions.

Belief that the Adams brothers were attempting to interfere directly with the judicial process was confirmed not long afterwards, when Mark Herbert, a clerk with the Crown Prosecution Service, was convicting of selling the Adams family, through an intermediary, the names of 33 informants in return for £500. Adams was subsequently acquitted of charges of importing cannabis worth £25m. Admitting that he knew he was signing the informants’ death warrants, Herbert said: “They will send them flowers, but not possibly for their birthdays.” Victor Temple, QC, prosecuting at his trial, told the Old Bailey that this was an organisation that was “no stranger to the imposition of serious violence against those who might seek to challenge them – and few could afford to trifle with their wishes.”

So how did this extraordinarily arrogant and powerful crime organisation begin? The three best-known Adams brothers come from an otherwise law-abiding and respectable working-class Irish Catholic family, in one of the less salubrious parts of Islington, north London. Terry was the eldest of 11 children born to truck driver George Adams and his wife, Florence, but it was his younger brothers, Patrick, otherwise known as Patsy, born in 1955, and Sean, otherwise known as Tommy, born in 1958, with whom he became most closely associated.

The three brothers began their criminal careers by extorting money from traders and stallholders at street markets close to their home in the Clerkenwell area, before moving on to armed robberies. Patsy found himself serving seven years in jail in the 1970s for armed robbery offences.

By now, Terry Adams had emerged as the brains of the operation, chairing their meetings in a businesslike fashion, with financial matters dealt with by Tommy, and the “muscle” supplied by Patsy.

But in the mid-1980s there was a seismic shift in London’s criminal culture, led by the Adams family. As Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad became more adapt at tracking down armed robbers, and the amount of cash in transit diminished in favour of electronic money transfers, the so-called “pavement artists” moved into a new and infinitely more lucrative field: drug trafficking.

This was a trade fuelled by the demand for cocaine and cannabis during the 1980s, and ecstasy during the 1990s. And it was a trade hitherto largely (although not exclusively) the preserve of amateurish and often ideologically-motivated hedonists of the Howard Marks variety. These small-time amateurs and part-timers now found themselves usurped by ruthless career criminals who were more than willing to use violence at the drop of a hat.

The vast profits generated by drug trafficking also required new ways of laundering the money. Criminal gangs like the Adams brothers needed to find themselves corrupt financiers, accountants, lawyers and other professionals to help them “wash” their cash to a squeaky-clean white and then invest it in property and other legitimate businesses.

The Adams family are said to have laundered their money through the jewellery quarter of Hatton Garden, using a diamond merchant by the name of Solly Nahome, through a restaurant in Smithfield and also a West End nightclub.

But as their power grew, so did their arrogance and violence. Patsy Adams began to develop a reputation as one of the most violent figures in the underworld, pioneering the use of high-speed motorcycle hit-men to carry out assassinations. An accountant, Terry Gooderham, said to have crossed the brothers by creaming off £250,000 of drug money, was found dead, alongside his girlfriend, in Epping Forest in 1989, a double “hit” attributed to the Adams empire.

One rival Irish family, the Reillys, attempted to challenge the Adams’ dominance of their Islington stronghold. In response, Patsy Adams is said to have gone into a pub controlled by the Reillys and allowed one of his associates to insult a member of the rival family. The Reillys, greatly offended, went away to arm themselves and returned to the pub, only to find an ambush awaiting them. Their BMW was fired on repeatedly by members of the Adams gang. No one was killed, but the incident, with echoes of 1930s Chicago, sent out a message – both to the Reillys and anyone else who needed to know – that the Adams gang was prepared to go all the way to preserve its territory.

And it was a territory that rapidly expanded, breaking the unwritten rule that gangs were allowed unimpeded control over their own “manors” – as the Krays once held sway over east London and the Richardson gang ruled the tract of London south of the Thames. “What distinguished the Adamses from other London gangs, is that they moved into areas that were way beyond the normal territorial ambitions of gangs. They ended up owning practically a whole west London street of bars, which they need for drug trafficking. And their operations spread to places like Lincolnshire and across to Spain.”

And their reputation went before them as they reached the peak of their powers in the 1990s. Clarkson added: “They created fear just through their name, and undoubtedly a lot of violence was carried out on their behalf. I heard about a guy who owned a bar in west London and some of their people came in one night and simply demanded the keys. He handed them over and got out fast.” They were also willing to take on some of the older remaining members of the gangland community. In August 1991, “Mad” Frankie Fraser, once a member of the Richardson gang, was shot in the head and almost killed outside a nightclub in Clerkenwell, in an attack attributed to the Adams gang. As the drug trafficking continued, they built up links with Yardie groups and the Colombian cocaine cartels, with Tommy reportedly negotiating an $80m credit agreement from his Latin American associates.

Throughout the Nineties, they seemed untouchable – immune from the law despite the best efforts of dozens of different inquiries, led by Scotland Yard, HM Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue. Cases against them or their henchmen, like McCormack, either never got off the ground or somehow collapsed. Rumours about the gang having senior detectives in their pay, and their determination to “get” jurors were rife. The brothers carried on their business separate from normal society – they had no bank accounts, virtually no tax records and may not even directly own the homes they live in.

Then, in the late 1990s, things began to go awry. In 1998, Tommy Adams was convicted of organising an £8m hashish smuggling operation, and was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. When a judge ordered that he surrender some of his profits or face a further five years, his wife turned up twice to the court, carrying £500,000 in cash inside a briefcase on each occasion.

In the autumn, Nahome, who was effectively their principal financial officer, was shot dead outside his north London mansion – in the same street as Terry Adams’ home – in a classic underworld motorcycle hit of the type often attributed to the Adamses themselves. And Wynter, the man who was cleared of murdering Moseley, disappeared suddenly. It was later reported that Nahome and Wynter had died at the orders of another London gangland boss, who believed they had double-crossed him in a cannabis deal. They truth may never be known. But, from about this time, Patsy Adams began spending more time in his Spanish villa.

Terry Adams must have regretted the light that was trained on his activities by the McCormack trial. He carried on as normal, although he is believed to have made strenuous efforts to move as much of the business as possible into legitimate areas, such as property investment. This was hampered by the family’s lack of involvement with any legitimate financial institutions or mechanisms – a problem which is said to have scuppered his plans to buy Tottenham Hotspur, which might have required some financial disclosures.

By the late 1990s, a new means arose to tackle the nation’s biggest drug dealers. MI5, no longer focused on investigating Irish terrorism and Communist subversion, was charged with helping tackle the massive drug importation problem. Its officers are said to have bugged Adams’ homes and cars and followed him closely over a period of several years, working in tandem with both the newly created National Crime Squad and the National Criminal Intelligence Agency, as well as the Inland Revenue.

Adams, who was almost certainly aware that he was being followed, is at this point thought to have been forced to invent spurious companies and organisations to account for his wealth, claiming at various points to have been employed as a jewellery designer and a public relations executive.

Eventually, in May 2003, Adams, a man, let us not forget, with a spotless record, was arrested and charged him with money laundering, tax evasion and handling stolen goods. His wife, Ruth, was charged with similar offences. Since then, while free on a bail of more than £1m, he has fought a lengthy game to delay his day in court, sacking his legal team twice, ordering the transcription of thousands of hours of taped conversations and once claiming that his IQ was too low to understand the charges.

In the end, he did what many do – a deal, culminating in Tuesday’s brief court appearance, at which he surrendered himself to prison officers. In return for admitting one charge of conspiring to hide £1m, the remaining charges against him and his wife, who has been seriously ill with a stomach complaint, have been allowed to “lie on the file” or, in other words, have been effectively dropped. When it comes to sentencing on 9 March, the judge will undoubtedly be reminded many times by Adams’ barristers about the extent of his helpfulness and co-operation, as well as his previously unblemished record. He will have made careful plans for the next few years, including an inevitable appeal.

“He did what it is a matter of honour for people like him to do, which is to protect their families and particularly their wives from criminal prosecution,”

So, does his demise mean that the Adams family are no longer a force to be reckoned with? “While they were certainly once the most feared family in the history of British crime, I think their influence is much less than it was, particularly since they have begun to legitimise much of their business,”

A prominent expert on the British gangland and author of several books on the subject was less forthcoming. After pointing out that the Adamses were more feared than the Krays ever were, he added: “Look, I’d prefer not to have my name used if you don’t mind. You see, I don’t think they have been diminished at all…”

 

July 1st 2018 Update

the youngest of the brothers of the Adams crime family has been jailed in the last of the Organised Crime Command’s prosecutions intended to dismantle the Clerkenwell family. Micky Adams and his 3 brothers were brought to justice after a five year investigation into the family’s finances. He was sentenced at Croydon Court to 38 months after admitting filing false tax returns after detectives exposed over £560,000 he had hidden from the tax man.

He and his brothers Tommy, Terry and Patsy led the gang known as the A Team that was linked to dozens of murders and controlled much of the UK drugs market and has a reputation for money laundering going back as far as Brinks Mat. In the words of Mick Gallagher the head of the Yard’s Organised Crime Command , ‘This family was considered to be untouchable, I am not drawing a comparison with the US Elliot Ness prosecution but this case shows the  importance of investigations around criminal finances.’

Micky Adams sent his 4 children to private schools, had luxury cars and spent his summers in Portugal with his family. He was getting through a minimum £48,000 a year but told HMR he was getting as little as £18,607.  He submitted seven false self-assessment tax forms between 2006-2013. He hid money by moving it around and using other people’s accounts. Last December His brother Terry, the leader of the family suddenly managed to find £727,000 to pay off the remaining amount on a proceeds of crime  order for a million pounds after swearing for years that he was penniless and relied on handouts from friends. However surveillance by HMRC  showed him dining at top restaurants, attending the opera and signing up for expensive Spa memberships. Tommy Adams another brother 57, was jailed  for 7 years in 2017 after being convicted of money laundering nearly £250,000 and the last brother Patsy 61, was jailed for 9 years for GBH in 2016 for shooting a former friend in the chest after suspecting him of being an informant.

Of course, jailing these members of the family still leaves others and ‘freinds’ who no doubt will keep the ‘business’ running.

December 8th 2017 update

I am reliably informed that the £700,000 Terry Adams was ordered to pay under the ‘proceeds of crime’ laws has been paid in full.

Nov 3rd 2017 update

A member of the notorious Adams family, who hired a taxi firm to collect £250,000 worth of debts from gangsters in Manchester, has been jailed for seven years, it can be revealed.

Undercover police bugged popular cafe Andrew’s in Holborn, central London to catch Thomas ‘Tommy’ Adams, 59, discussing his criminal enterprise.

Couriers were watched by police exchanging an M&S bag containing thousands of pounds in cash at Euston Station owed to Adams.

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Jurors found the convicted drug smuggler (pictured outside court) guilty of two counts of conspiracy to transfer criminal property

He had helped run the ‘Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate’ with brother Terry, 62, and Patsy, 61, becoming one of the most powerful crime gangs in London in recent years.

They have been linked to over 25 murders while turning over millions in the drugs trade, through security fraud and hijacking gold bullion shipments.

Officers were investigating his money laundering operation, through which he collected cash owed to him for ‘criminal activity’ between 2012 and 2014.

Jurors found the convicted drug smuggler guilty of two counts of conspiracy to transfer criminal property and one count of conspiracy to conceal criminal property after a trial in August.

His sentencing can now be reported after reporting restrictions were finally lifted today after a second trial involving Adams was abandoned due to his poor health.

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Tommy Adams, a member of the notorious crime family, has been jailed for seven years

He had collapsed outside the Princess Alice Pub opposite Woolwich Crown Court, after a suspected heart attack, as jurors deliberated.

Defending Adams, James Wood QC, said: ‘While the jury was out in August, Mr Adams was in the pub, outside he collapsed, on the pavement.

‘An ambulance was called and for the next five days he was in hospital until he went to Pentonville after sentencing.’

Jurors had heard how Adams shipped nearly a quarter of a million pounds using runners to move the dirty money from Manchester to London.

Since 2000, the Adams family’s influence has been declining, but Tommy carved out a niche from his money laundering enterprise.

Co-defendant Christos Nicholas, 52, was caught with £99,000 as he drove through north London in convoy with Elias Antoniou, 53, on 10 October 2013.

Nicholas was convicted of transferring criminal property and jailed for two-and-a-half years, while Antoniou was given two years for the same crime

Robert Winstanley, 77, was stopped with £10,000 cash wrapped in tin foil at Euston Station, central London, on 22 May 2013, and was Oakmere, Cheshire, was also convicted of transferring criminal property and handed a three-year term.

Adams spent the money on extravagant purchases including a £32,000 car for his daughter Terri, 35.

Other defendants include:

• His ‘fixer’, Haralambos Antoniades, 48, who was jailed for 63 months for two counts of conspiracy to transfer criminal property and one of conspiracy to conceal criminal property.
• Steve Mardon, 58, who runs Camden Cab Company, received the same length of sentence for the same indictments.
• Martin Dowd, 49, who planned a series of ‘cash runs’ from Manchester to pay off his debts to Adams, was also given five-and-a-half years.
• Richard Jones, 68, from Macclesfield, was convicted of transferring criminal property. He was handed a two-year prison term, suspended for two years.
• The gang had laughed and joked during their two month trial, sometimes play-sparring with each other in the dock.

Tommy Adams’ daughter Terri, and son Shaun, 32, were due to appear alongside him in his latest trial but Shaun admitted transferring criminal property today.

Terri Adams denied fraud by false representation and transferring criminal property and the charges were ordered to lie on the file.

Jailing the gang for a total of more than 30 years, Judge Alice Robinson said: ‘You have all been convicted of money laundering offences which took place in 2013 and 2014 involving the transfer and concealment of large sums of cash.

‘Although not found until the search of Mardon’s home in February 2013, the Crown’s case was evidenced by and neatly encapsulated in a ledger.

‘The evidence demonstrated significant planning, contrivance and subterfuge.’

The indictment detailed a series of offences involving £237,030 – but prosecutors claimed the charges ‘do not tell the full story about what was going on’.

Detectives compiled surveillance evidence including telephone data, covert recordings, and ledgers recording the criminal transactions.

Adams was recorded chatting about the plot after officers bugged Andrew’s Restaurant, a cafe in Grays Inn Road.

Another £25,000 was seized from Antoniou’s safe deposit box in Metro Bank on 25 February 2014.

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Adams collapsed in a pub opposite Woolwich Crown Court, after a suspected heart attack, as jurors deliberated on his case

The following day officers discovered £133,000 in cash in a safe at Mardon’s house in Clerkenwell – two further searches revealed a further £24,500 of alleged dirty money at the five-bedroom terraced house.

‘Those cash seizures do not tell the full story about what was going on,’ said Mr Brompton.

He told jurors the cash runs ‘were just two of many such runs’ that took place in 2013.

Tommy Adams has a string of previous convictions, most of which date back to the 1970s, before he was jailed for seven-and-a-half years for masterminding a huge drugs smuggling operation.

He was also ordered to repay £1million as a result of his part in the £7million cannabis importation plot.

UPDATE Nov 3rd 2017 different report

A notorious gangster who arranged taxis to ferry cash from his crime empire has been jailed for money laundering.

Tommy Adams, the youngest of three brothers who headed the infamous Adams family, was caught after police bugged a cafe where he discussed his crimes with associates.

The cash was driven or brought by train to London from Manchester, where other villains owed money to Adams – the brother of Terry and Patrick Adams, who have both been jailed for other matters.

Undercover police watched couriers exchanging thousands of pounds in a Marks and Spencer plastic bag on the busy concourse of Euston station.

Adams was said to have spent some of the cash on a new car for his daughter.

He was jailed for seven years in August after a trial which can only be reported now after a second trial he faced was scrapped because of his ill health, and reporting restrictions were lifted.

Adams, 59, suffered a heart attack outside a pub as he waited for the jury’s verdict in the first trial.

He was convicted after jurors heard how he had almost £250,000 cash brought from Manchester to London – money owed to him by fellow gangsters.

Police secretly recorded Adams discussing the plot at a cafe opposite the headquarters of Independent Television News in central London.

The Adams family – known to detectives as the A-Team – have been the target of several police operations over many years, suspected of involvement in various major crimes.

Terry, the oldest of the brothers, was jailed in 2007 for seven years for tax evasion. He was ordered to pay back £700,000 under proceeds of crime laws.

Earlier this year it was revealed that the 63-year-old was the godfather and adviser of playboy businessman James Stunt, recently divorced from Petra Ecclestone, daughter of Formula 1 racing boss Bernie Ecclestone.

Patric Adams had been jailed previously for grievous bodily harm, shooting a former associate in a car after claiming he was attacked first and acted in self defence. His victim refused to give evidence.

He had been on the run with his wife Constance in Amsterdam before he was captured and extradited. She was cleared of all charges.

As she jailed Tommy Adams in August, Judge Alice Robinson told him and his co-defendants: “The evidence demonstrated significant planning, contrivance and subterfuge.”

Seven others were given jail sentences, including taxi firm boss Steven Mardon, 58, described as Adams’ bookkeeper, and Antoniades Haralambos, 48, who the prosecutor said was his fixer.

In total, they were given 33 years in prison, with one sentence suspended.

In a separate case, Tommy Adams’ son Shaun admitted using a forged pay slip to get a £231,000 mortgage to buy the lease on a pub. He was jailed for six months, suspended for a year.

Another man, Lukas Menicou, admitted transferring criminal property, paying £150,000 into a bank account, as part of a building development. He got 10 months in prison, suspended for a year.

 

The Police Comments….

As Judge Keith Raynor sentenced Shaun Adams he praised the work of the Met and Crown Prosecution Service in bringing about the convictions.

Det Insp Jo Van der Waag of the Met’s serious and organised crime command, said: “The instigator of this criminal enterprise is Thomas Adams, a man who appeared to have access to considerable amounts of capital, despite no identifiable or legitimate means of support, and no financial footprint in the UK.

“Adams appeared to have a ghost-like existence, concealing the true ownership of his properties and other assets, all done with the distinct purpose of avoiding detection from law enforcement authorities.”

Det Ch Supt Mick Gallagher, head of the command, added that the sentencing was the culmination of several years’ work and paid tribute to his detectives, saying they had worked tirelessly.

He said: “Thomas Adams is responsible for a large-scale criminal business, laundering the profits from crime.

“For too long organised gangs have used advances in technology to hide their criminal gains and this operation and others like it are the Met’s response.

“Any criminal gang operating in London needs to know that we will tackle them head on and hit them where it hurts the most.”

Who was Basil??

After the Hatton Garden heist it has emerged that the whole thing was financed by ‘a London gang’… the only gang capable of the finance is allegedly the Adams family who had warned the Hatton Team off a few years earlier when they had originally sought finance for the robbery.  Now they, if it was them, put in their own man on the team to keep an eye on it, that was ‘Basil’ the man the rest of the team didn’t know and who always wore a ginger wig and disguise. He was the man who had the keys to the Hatton Garden building. When the team entered the vault Basil went straight away to one box and took it out of the building with him, unopened. That was all he took although he plundered the jewellery the others had taken at a later meeting a few weeks after. So what was in that one box? Rumour has it that the only way Palmer could keep safe in the UK was because he had some major evidence on a major gang and their murders and their involvement in the Brinks Mat heist in which Palmer was a major fence. If anything was to happen to him his partner was to hand that evidence to the Police.  Apparently, that evidence was in a box in the Hatton Garden Vault.  Draw your own conclusions.

see also the Brinks-Mat section .

THE ADAMS FAMILY HISTORY

HE words were gruff and chilling. “I mean it. You’ve got to liven him up. Put the fear of God into him, mate, so he knows it’s only down to you that he’s walking about and breathing fresh air.”

“I’ll open him up,” came the menacing response, “like a bag of crisps.”

The exchange could have come straight out of British gangster film Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels but is, in fact, a conversation taped by MI5 at the North London home of Terry Adams, one of Britain’s most notorious gangsters and head of this country’s foremost crime clan, the Adams family.

And the threats were gruesomely real. Dubbed the British Godfather, Adams was until this week in Spring Hill Open Prison in Buckinghamshire but on Wednesday he walked free after serving just half of a seven-year sentence for money laundering.

According to the prosecution at his 2007 trial, the relatively minor charge did not reflect the crimes for which he is notorious but for which the police could find insufficient evidence. Eyewitnesses are thought to be too scared to come forward and, like America’s Al Capone, Adams was jailed not for bloody crimes but for financial misdemeanours.

Even his release resembled a scene from a Coppola classic, with the gangster being picked up at the prison gates by a glamorous brunette in a black Range Rover and two powerfully built men in a red Porsche. He would have been whisked back to his £2million home in Barnet, North London, where during his arrest police had found art and antiques valued at £500,000 and £50,000 in notes stuffed in an attic shoe box.

That amount would have been like petty cash to the criminal who is the head of the family. Known as the A Team, Terry, 55, and his brothers Patrick, 54, known as Patsy, and Tommy, 52, are thought to have built up an estimated £200million fortune through a vast racketeering and drug trafficking empire which has been linked to 25 murders.

The family’s chief enforcer, who was apparently deemed to have got out of control and needed to be done away with, was allegedly cast in concrete in the foundations of the Millennium Dome. “Even the Krays sound like a pair of lovable rogues compared to Terry,” a police source has been quoted as saying. “So far, no one has ratted on him or his family because they know life wouldn’t be worth living.”

It is said the Adams family make the Krays “look like minnows” and unlike Ronnie and Reggie, who became celebrities on London’s nightclub scene, the Adams family have prided themselves on being invisible and allowing their name to be whispered and feared.

As Terry’s prosecution stated at his trial, the mobster came “with a pedigree as one of a family whose name had a currency all of its own in the underworld”. It is believed the Adams family moniker became so notorious that they even rented it out, allowing other gangs to say they were working for them to bolster their criminal reputation.

There was a cost of £250,000 per operation and one condition: pay within one week or else. No one would want to be in the position of crossing the A Team or owing them money. In another of MI5’s taped conversations, Terry describes how he “sorted out” one financial dispute: “A hundred grand it was, Dan, or 80 grand, and I went crack. On my baby’s life, Dan, his kneecap came right out there. All white Dan, all bone and white.”

The Adamses’ criminal activity appears to stretch back several decades. Part of a large Irish Catholic family of 11 children, the brothers were brought up in the Sixties in the Barnsbury area of Islington when it was a tough neighbourhood rather than the gentrified North London enclave it is today.

Terry, Patsy and Tommy are the oldest of the Adams boys and, after leaving school at 15, they apparently served a criminal apprenticeship with local hard men. They then allegedly ran protection rackets in the markets before moving into armed robbery and making Hatton Garden, London’s gem quarter, their base.

One of the jewellery dealers, Solly Nahome, was appointed their financial adviser and this “little fella” is thought to have laundered the millions which began to flood in as the brothers moved into the drugs trade. In September 1998,

Solly was shot dead outside his home in Finchley, North London, his murder apparently angering the family. By the early Nineties, the Adams brothers were said to be in charge of most of the cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine coming into the capital and their reputation for intimidation was established.

They saw off such rivals as the Islington-based Reillys – another Irish Catholic criminal family. It is believed they were also responsible for the incident in 1991 when another gangland veteran, “Mad” Frankie Fraser, was shot in the head outside a London club.

He was lucky to survive. Another alleged victim, a Mayfair businessman, was left so injured after being given a “kicking” that his nose and ear were left hanging by slivers. The mafia-style gang owned clubs and discos in North London, were silent partners in West End and Soho clubs and allegedly commissioned armed robberies from which they took a cut.

The family accrued such a vast fortune that Terry and his wife Ruth enjoyed a lavish lifestyle: flying first class, staying at exclusive hotels and educating their cherished daughter privately. Terry was so wealthy that he was reportedly able to retire from the “hands-on” side of the business at 35.

More recently, he has apparently wanted to appear “legit”. (In 1998 he even told his mum Flo: “Everything I do Mum, right, I do straight.”)

IT Is said Terry has millions stashed in offshore accounts. His advisers set up two companies to create the impression that he had a modest legal income while Terry adopted an almost genteel persona, buying clothes in expensive fabrics and indulging his love of art and antiques.

Terry’s brothers seem less concerned with respectability. Tommy would apparently finalise drug deals from the back of his personal black cab while Patsy based himself in the Costa del Sol, long considered a bolthole for UK criminals.

For a long time the gang seemed supremely untouchable but before Terry was charged with money laundering, Tommy and Patsy had served time. After being acquitted of handling the proceeds of the 1983 Brinks Mat robbery, Tommy was jailed in 1998 for seven-and-a-half years for smuggling £2million-worth of cannabis.

Police had bugged his black cab and caught him boasting. Patsy was jailed for armed robbery in the Seventies and both brothers are now thought to be living in Spain. But it had been almost impossible to pin anything directly on Terry before his 2007 conviction for money laundering, despite an unprecedented 10-year joint operation between the police and MI5 which saw his home phone tapped.

He garnered a reputation for being like Teflon – no allegation would stick. While the tapes have provided a fascinating illumination of the gangster’s life it is thought that Terry knew he was being monitored. In a recorded conversation with Flo, he told her: “They’ve got listening devices in this house. Me and Ruth have a right giggle with them, you understand,” to which Flo replies: “Ain’t it terrible though, Tel… that you’re on tape.”

Now Adams is once again a free man he is likely to be followed closely by the authorities. Whether he’ll ever be prosecuted for the more violent crimes attributed to him remains to be seen.

The Clerkenwell crime syndicate, also known as the Adams Family or the A-team, is an English criminal organisation, allegedly one of the most powerful in the UK. Media reports have linked the Adams family to around 25 murders and credited them with wealth of up to £200 million.

BACKGROUND

During the 1980s Terence “Terry” George Adams formed a syndicate with his brothers Thomas “Tommy” Sean Adams and Patrick “Patsy” Daniel John Adams as its financier and enforcer respectively. The brothers were born to Irish parents, part of a large family of 11 children who grew up in Barnsbury, Islington.

The syndicate was based in Clerkenwell while Terry Adams, until his admission of money laundering in 2007, had lived in Barnsbury. The syndicate expanded over years to include other members of the Adams’ Irish family and close childhood friends.

The gang is allegedly heavily involved in drug trafficking and extortion as well as the hijacking of gold bullion shipments and security fraud. They have been linked to 25 gangland murders, using Afro-Caribbean muscle as additional manpower to murder informants and rival criminals. In addition to developing alleged connections to Metropolitan Police officials, they were also stated to have had a British Conservative MP in their pocket at one point.

The shooting of the then 68-year-old “Mad” Frankie Fraser, a former enforcer for The Richardson Gang, in July 1991 was said to have been ordered by the Adams family — though Fraser said he had been targeted by rogue police. The family is believed to have connections with various criminal organisations, specifically with South American Drug Cartels.

Their influence decreased from 2000 onwards. Police officers, speaking off-record to British newspapers, have said that the family has been credited with acts that they simply did not carry out and judging by the number of alleged key gang members killed or imprisoned below this might well be true, however the Metropolitan Police took the Adams crimes so seriously they considered the need to involve not only a hand-picked CPS lead team of detectives but the country’s highest level security service, , in order to crack the Adams mafia-like organised crime cartel.

Tommy Adams was imprisoned for his involvement in money laundering and a drugs plot that was described as not having been sanctioned by his brothers. During an 18-month bugging operation by MI5, Terry Adams was recorded speaking about his brother in very strident terms and suggesting that, in 1998 at least, relations between them were kept to a minimum. It has been stated that they have a criminal fortune of up to £200 million.

Before Tommy and Terry Adams were convicted in 1998 and 2007 respectively, the failure of the police to secure convictions against them had led to a belief that they had undermined the justice system to become untouchables. Police, Crown Prosecution Service staff and jurors were said to have been bribed and intimidated leading to not-guilty verdicts against members of the gang that were said to be wrong.

The gang’s alleged leader, Terry Adams, has been serving a prison sentence since February 2007, and two of his brothers are under surveillance by the Serious Organised Crime Agency and police in Spain, making other criminals reluctant to do business with them. It has been said that Terry Adams faces severe financial difficulties having been ordered, in May 2007, to repay £4.7 million in legal aid and pay prosecution costs of £800,000.

Sean “Tommy” Adams gained high profile public attention during a trial in 2004, when he was described as having attended a meeting in 2002 at the request of the former Football international Kenny Dalglish. Dalglish was a major shareholder in Wilmslow based sports agency Pro Active, a leading sports management firm headed up by local Wilmslow businessman Paul Stretford. Dalglish was reported to have hired Adams during a protracted deal to secure Pro Active’s exclusive management rights to Manchester United and England football striker Wayne Rooney in circumstances where another company claimed to represent Rooney.

In February 2010 a 38-year-old man, claiming to be Terry Adams’ nephew, was convicted in a case known as the jigsaw murder: the trial revealed that he had disposed of four bodies for the Adamses, which sentenced him to at least 36 years in prison.

In 2014, Sean “Tommy” Adams and 13 other people believed to be affiliated with the Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate were arrested in a police operation codenamed “Octopod.” Designer watches, six shotguns and large sums of cash were found in other addresses across the city, with a concentration in north London. The arrests were linked to a conspiracy to assault, money laundering, fraud and revenue offences. At the time, in December 2014, of the death of a bankrupt businessman Scot Young, who had been involved in 2013 in a high profile divorce case, media reports that flagged Young’s involvement with Patrick Adams asserted that Tommy Adams and Michael Adams faced no charges after their arrest earlier in 2014.

PERSONNEL AND MEMBERS

TERRY ADAMS

Terence George Adams (born 18 October 1954 in London) was described as having more recently “adopted an almost genteel persona, buying clothes in expensive fabrics and indulging his love of art and antiques” to appear legitimate.

His downfall came with the assistance of MI5 and the Inland Revenue. MI5, in a unique inter-departmental collaboration the first of its kind after the Cold War ended, played a leading part in the electronic war against organised crime—and turned its sights on Adams’s international criminal cartel. Police and MI5 set up a secret squad to dismantle the Adams organisation, directed from an anonymous Hertfordshire address inside a secret bunker sitting somewhere on the busy Hoddesdon commuter belt into London. Some of the recordings made over a period of 18 months suggested that Adams had retired from front line involvement in crime in 1990.

Police sources believe Adams knew he was being monitored and had “stage managed” many conversations for the benefit of his defence. He, for example, was allegedly caught on tape, in 1998, telling his adviser Solly Nahome that he did not want to be involved with a particular illegal deal, which would affect his legitimate business. The Inland Revenue was suspicious enough to ask Adams to explain how he had amassed his personal fortune including his £2 million house and his collection of valuable antiques. Adams invented a range of unlikely occupations, including jeweller and public relations executive. Transcripts of the surveillance and investigations into several front companies Adams set up proved he was lying.

He was arrested in April 2003 detectives found art and antiques valued at £500,000, £59,000 in cash and jewellery worth more than £40,000 in his home. On 9 March 2014 at a hearing at the Old Bailey, Andrew Mitchell QC summed up the prosecution’s case in saying, “It is suggested that Terry Adams was one of the country’s most feared and revered organised criminals. He comes with a pedigree, as one of a family whose name had a currency all of its own in the underworld. A hallmark of his career was the ability to keep his evidential distance from any of the violence and other crime from which he undoubtedly profited.” The former Scottish gangster Paul Ferris asserted that none of the brothers isprimus inter pares (first among equals or in sole charge).

On May 18, 2007 Adams was ordered to pay £4.8 million in legal fees to three law firms who had initially represented him under the UK’s free legal aid scheme. He was also required to pay £800,000 in prosecution costs.

He admitted a single specimen money-laundering offence on 7 February 2007, and was jailed for seven years; he was released on 24 June 2010, but was recalled to prison in August 2011 for breaching his licence. Also, on 21 May in 2007, he was ordered to file reports of his income for the next ten years. Open case files remain untried on Operation Trinity records and rumour still exists that several further prosecutions may eventually come to trial.

In May, 2009 media reports suggested that his £1.6 million house was for sale as a result of the fees and costs arising from his 2007 conviction. He was released from prison on June 24, 2010.

In August 2011 he appeared before City of London Magistrates court charged with 8 breaches of his Financial Reporting Order imposed upon him in 2007 . It is believed he has been recalled to prison for breach of parole.

In July 2014 Adams appeared before a High Court Judge in London where he claimed that he was penniless and living in a one bedroom apartment. Adams was ordered to pay £650,000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

TOMMY ADAMS

Thomas Sean Adams (born in 1958 in London) is allegedly financier for his brothers Terry and Patrick. A married father of four, he still has a home near the family’s traditional Islington base, but is now living in Spain.

Tommy Adams was charged with involvement in the handling of Brink’s-MAT gold bullion but in 1985 was cleared of involvement in the laundering of the proceeds during a high profile Old Bailey trial with co defendant Kenneth Noye. Serving life for murder at present.

Tommy Adams is suspected of establishing connections to other international criminal organisations including numerous Yardie gangs as well as gaining an $80 million credit line from Colombian drug cartels. In 1998, Adams was convicted of masterminding a £8 million hashish smuggling operation into Britain for which he was jailed for seven years. At trial he was also ordered to pay an unprecedented £6 million criminal assets embargo, or face an additional five years’ imprisonment on top of his seven-year term. On appeal the criminal assets embargo was later reduced by appeal judges to £1M largely due to the CPS not having sufficient material evidence, bank accounts or traceable assets to locate and verify Adams’ criminal wealth. Tommy Adams’ wife, Androulla, paid his £1M criminal assets embargo in cash just two days before the CPS deadline.

PATSY ADAMS

Patrick Daniel John Adams (born 2 February 1956 in London) is regarded as one of the most violent organised crime figures in Great Britain. He gained an early reputation in London’s underworld by using high-speed motorcycles in gangland murders and was a suspect in at least 25 organised crime related deaths over a three-year period. He was sentenced to seven years in prison in the 1970s for an armed robbery.

Although subordinate to Terry Adams, Patrick — sometimes known as Patsy — has participated in individual criminal activities. Most notably he is suspected of the 1991 murder attempt on Frankie Fraser; also, according to one account, he assaulted Fraser’s son David Fraser with a knife, cutting off part of his ear during a drug deal. During the late 1990s, he was reported to spend much of his time in Spain. The Independent Newspaper stated in 2001 that he was “living in exile in Spain in a walled villa bristling with security cameras a few miles south of Torremolinos”. Patrick Adams and his wife were wanted in connection with an attempted murder in Smithfield meat market in central London on December 22, 2013, and were arrested in Amsterdam on 7 August 2015.

TERRY ADAMS: THE LAST BRITISH GANGSTER AND THE ‘GOODFELLAS’ TAPES 

For ten years police and MI5 mounted an unprecedented joint operation to nail Terry Adams for serious crime.

But Adams, then 52, knew he was being bugged and he and his wife Ruth mocked the police by faking the sounds of passionate sex for the microphones.

The massive investigation into a man believed to be involved in 23 murders could only scrape together enough evidence to put him on trial for laundering his own wages.

During the operation his bent accountant Solly Nahome was murdered in a drive-by shooting and, according to gangland legend, his top hitman Gilbert Wynter became part of the foundations of the O2 Arena.

No-one has ever been charged.

After he was arrested ‘The Guv’nor’ was able to delay his case for three years and do a deal with the police that would keep his wife Ruth Adams, then 46, out of jail.

He even managed to force prosecutors to accept he had not been involved in serious crime since 1993.

For a man who was treated like a god in jail, his effective sentence of three-and-a-half years was ‘a right result’ and Adams had once again proved himself the master criminal worthy of his infamous name.

THE ‘A-TEAM ‘

Together with younger brothers Pat and Tommy, Terry Adams headed the north London family known as the ‘A Team’ who were once described as ‘worse than the Krays.’

The Irish Catholic brothers forged their criminal careers extorting classmates money at school in Islington,north London and made millions from the drugs trade in the 1980s.

They ran pubs across London, a West End club, a trendy restaurant in Smithfield, a Hatton Garden jewellery shop and made at least £200million.

The Adams family also traded in extreme violence and were responsible for torturing a Mayfair based businessman so badly his nose and ear were left hanging by a sliver of skin.

Notorious hard man ‘Mad’ Frankie Frazer was lucky to survive when he was shot in the head by an Adams associate in August 1991.

Another victim included former British high-jump champion Claude Moseley who worked as one of their drug dealers.

Moseley, who had been skimming money, had a samurai sword plunged so deeply into his back by Wynter it almost cut him in two.

Wynter was tried at the Old Bailey for murder but walked free after the main prosecution witness mysteriously refused to give evidence.

The family had the muscle to pay a spy within the CPS who was later jailed for passing on secrets to another family associate.

RUSSIAN MAFIA

They had links to Colombian cocaine cartels, the Russian mafia and tried to buy Tottenham Hotspur FC.

The Adams name was so feared they franchised it out to allow lesser criminals to claim they worked for the brothers – for a generous fee.

Tommy was jailed for seven and half years in 1998 after he admitted an £8 million cannabis smuggling plot.

But Terry has been so skilful at avoiding the police his last conviction was for a firearms offence in 1992 and he retired from the ‘sharp end’ of the business shortly afterwards.

Prosecutor Andrew Mitchell, QC, told the Old Bailey: ‘He comes with a pedigree as one of a family whose name had a currency all of its own in the underworld.

‘A hallmark of his career was his ability to keep his evidential distance from any of the violence and other crime from which he undoubtedly profited.

‘By the early 1990s he had been so successful he was able to retire, content that the wealth and status he had accumulatedby the age of 35 – an age when most people’s legitimate careers have ten years to go before taking off -would allow him and his family to live in the manner to which they were accustomed for the rest of their lives.

‘It was a prosperous life and included flying first class around the world staying in the most exclusive hotels on the chic Italian Riviera, indulging in a passion for expensive watches and jewellery motorbikes and private education.

THE NEED FOR MONEY

‘Whenever the need arose for money cash appeared.’

Police found £60,000 in a shoe box when they raided his mansion in Dukes Avenue, Finchley, north London, but for Adams it was ‘loose change.’

The bulk of his fortune had been salted away by Nahome who is thought to have secreted £25 million in offshore accounts and property purchases.

Nahome was the husband of Adams’s co-defendant Joanna Barnes, who took over his affairs when he was shot dead.

They set up sham companies to provide bogus employment for Adams giving him the title of ‘PR consultant’ or ‘jewellery designer.’

The Adams home was bugged when he ordered a Sky satellite dish and within days surveillance teams were logging a list of visitors which became a ‘Who’s Who’ of British crime.

There were enforcers such as Christopher McCormack, Simon Wooder and Paul Tiernan, together with international professional money launderers like Parvezi Ullah and Mooshe Almog, the Old Bailey heard.

The transcripts of their conversations read like clips from the ‘Goodfellas’ film script and full extracts can be seen below.

Faced with the evidence of the tapes,  Adams, who last lived in a gated mansion property in Arkley near Barnet, was forced to admit money laundering.

HOME STUFFED WITH ANTIQUES

At his home he had antiques worth £500,000 including 19th century Meissen figures, a Tiffany silver cup, a Chinese lacquered Davenport, a Queen Anne gilt mirror, Picasso still life linocuts, and Henry Moore etchings.

His known property portfolio was valued at £1.24 million in 2000 and has probably quadrupled in value since then.

Terry and Ruth Adams spent £222,000 renovating their home in Barnet – the security system alone cost £12,000.

He also owns a fabulous villa in Cyprus complete with a luxury yacht.

But the prosecution were only able to trace assets of £1,110,743 which had come from the proceeds of crime and will attempt to claw back just £750,000.

Barnes was ordered to pay a total of £10,000 for forging her dead husband’s signature in Adams documents.

She was fined £5,000 with another £5,000 costs.

WILL TERRY SETTLE THE BILL?

Asked outside court if Terry might help settle the bill she replied sarcastically: ‘Do you think so?’

But Adams might be a bit short of cash himself –  he was ordered to pay a legal bill of £4.7 million.

He was released in 2010 – and greeted at the prison gate by a glamourous brunette driving a £60,000 Range Rover.

In May of 2011 police appealed for new witnesses to the murders of Nahome and Wynter.

Detectives believe the killing are linked and that both men may have double-crossed the ‘A’ Team.

They hoped that gang ‘loyalties may have changed’ and someone might have the courage to testify against Adams.

They were wrong. No significant witnesses came forward.

Police recorded hundreds of hours of conversations at Adams’ home during the operation. They provided little significant evidence, but the transcripts read like a script from a gangster film and they became known as ‘The Goodfellas Tapes.‘

TRANSCRIPTS OF THE ‘GOODFELLAS’ TAPES RECORDED AT THE ADAMS HOME IN DUKES AVENUE, FINCHLEY, NORTH LONDON IN 1997.

ADAMS ON…INFORMERS

Terry Adams is watching ‘Blind Date’  on television with his brother Danny and Paul Tiernan when he suddenly starts ranting about a family associate.

ADAMS: Paul, all I’m saying to you mate, we’re all straight. What we’ve done in our past is now straight – alright.

Paul TIERNAN: It’s history, fucking hell.

ADAMS: Listen, when you’ve got a so-called brother having it with fucking cracky informers, smack dealers, smack heads that have got to do with fucking old bill – they’re putting the smack out to these people who talk.

TIERNAN: It’s shit.

ADAMS: Who gets us put into the newspapers? Right, he’s trying to get us all done so he can have his freedom. Worse than a grass, because he’s had it with a grass.

TIERNAN: I don’t see the problem for…

ADAMS: We all sit round and say anyone who has had it with a grass…We’ve got to play fucking detectives. It’s right Dan, it’s right. Right is right. Anyone who has it with a grass is a grass, on my daughter’s life Dan,when he comes out I’m gonna say that to him before I’ll do what I’ll do. I know what I’m gonna do. Dan, on my baby’s life I’m gonna butt him. I gonna go to him, I know what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna smash him in the face with an iron bar. I’m gonna go up to him on my baby’s life. I’m gonna do him an iron bar. let God know that Dan. l’m gonna go up to him, say to him…

Danny ADAMS: What are you on mate? (He laughs) You are mad.

ADAMS: Dan,I’m gonna go to up to him and say to him on his doorstep Dan. I’ll do it on the pavement. I’m just gonna say, I’ll do it in front of him.I’ll do it in front of his kids. I’m gonna do it Dan, Dan, wherever I get him. If I have my mood Dan, I’ll do him with an iron bar.I’m gonna go to him: ”I’m the cunt, I’m the cunt.” I am gonna fucking have him. If he goes down Dan I’m gonna put my foot there. You won’t be with me.(He becomes animated) I’m gonna do them Dan, I know that, I am gonna fucking do it.

Danny ADAMS: Tel, I will be there mate.

ADAMS: Me and Bobby Warren was in a car once right Dan. There was a geezer that was lying to us Dan, right, on my baby’s life. Dan, I’ve got something about me when things happen. When I hit someone I do them damage. And I went to the geezer. Stealing 100 grand it was Dan, or eighty grand, and I went ‘crack.’ On my baby’s life Dan, his kneecap come right out there.

Danny ADAMS: (laughs)

ADAMS: All white Dan, all bone and…on my baby’s life every time I do damage Dan.If I have a fight I cut them with my knuckles.

ADAMS ON…THE TAXMAN

ADAMS: What they done here, sending more tax bills, why they doing it to me, I’ve already sorted all this out.

Tony GOLDSBOROUGH: Yeah, but you have to pay them every fucking year.

ADAMS: I know, I paid ’em.

GOLDSBOROUGH: What for, this year, last year?

ADAMS: They want £43,000.

GOLDSBOROUGH: Fucking Aida.

ADAMS: And this is for the year 96 – already been paid, paid that 96.What they doing? They’re giving me that money back, they giving me that one, you know.

GOLDSBOROUGH: I hope they have for your sake.

ADAMS: They have.

GOLDSBOROUGH:I hope you’re right (He reads the letter from the taxman)

‘Confirms that no adjustment is payable, the amount shows opposite, please arrange for payment.’ No, you got, Tel – Tax year 89/90.

ADAMS: 89/90?

GOLDSBOROUGH: That’s what it says on there.

ADAMS: Paid it. Paid 91, 90/91, paid it, so what they going on about, these boys. See they’re knocking ’em down all the time. I had about six, seven of these Tone.

GOLDSBOROUGH: Right.

ADAMS: They’re knocking em down bit by bit, they’re just giving me a hard time because of who I am Tone.

GOLDSBOROUGH: Better get them to your accountant.

ADAMS ON…HIS MOTHER

(Flo Adams offers TERRY a hot drink)

TERRY ADAMS: Mum, I don’t drink tea.

FLO: Oh sorry. What do you reckon you are getting on now, everything alright?

ADAMS: Who?

FLO: Better now?

ADAMS: Who with? I ‘ve got some news to tell you Mum. Everything I do Mum, right, I do straight.

FLO: Yes.

ADAMS: Right, they’ve got listening devices in this house, I know that, right.

FLO: I don’t believe that.

ADAMS: Yeah, they’ve got listening devices in this house. Me and Ruth have a right giggle with them right, you understand.

FLO: Yes

ADAMS: We have a right thing, you know, like, er…

FLO: Yeah, I know what you mean.

ADAMS: Dennis has had conversations with me people, things like that.. Cause they do. We give ’em things to talk about.

FLO: Yeah. Ain’t it terrible though Tel.

ADAMS:  Er….

FLO: That’ you’re on tape.

ADAMS ON…JEWS: (to Solly Nahome) See these people are Jews, Sol. They can’t help fucking taking. I’m right off the Jewish people, Sol I am. I really am Sol. And they’re gonna get three large for fucking nothing.

ADAMS ON…HIS CAREER AS A ‘CONSULTANT.’

‘I can consult about anything, I can consult about anything you want me to,what do you want me to consult you about?  Consult me about property, I can consult about gold, I can consult about stocks and shares…they’re my firms -consultancy, so if you ever need any thing done consultancy, always throw a bit of work my way.’

UPDATE DECEMBER 2016

Patrick Adams has been jailed for nine years for shooting an associate he believed was a ‘grass’.

Patrick ‘Patsy’ Adams, 60, one of the Adams family, shot motorist Paul Tiernan in the chest in Islington, north London, in December 2013 with a .45 calibre gun.

Adams, believed to be second in command in the infamous crime family, admitted shooting his victim after being found hiding in Holland.

But he was cleared of attempted murder after the victim refused to cooperate with police because he believed ‘loyalty is everything’ and said that being called a ‘grass’ hurt more than being shot.

Tiernan has even reportedly said that he didn’t believe Adams fired the bullet – but the crime boss admitted causing grievous bodily harm with intent at Woolwich Crown Court this week and was sentenced to nine years today.

Police who searched Adams’s flat in the days after the shooting found a handwritten note from Mr Tiernan, 54, which said ‘I ain’t no f****** grass’ and urged his former friend to ‘face me’.

After the shooting Adams later fled abroad with his wife Constance, 56, before the pair were extradited from the Netherlands on a European arrest warrant last October. Mrs Adams did not face any charges.

CCTV showed Adams (top in black jacket and hat) running from the scene of the shooting

Adams, wearing a light grey jumper and glasses, nodded towards his family in the public gallery before he was jailed.

Sentencing him, Judge Christopher Kinch said: ‘It was Patrick Adams who chose to make use of the loaded firearm when it was in his hands.

‘That was a momentous decision. You are a man who has had some experience with firearms and have some understanding of their power.You took steps to dispose of evidence in this case, including the weapon.

‘You also made sustained efforts to evade arrest, leaving the country and seeking refuge in the Netherlands.’

Police admit that they have been unable to work out what the row between Adams and Tiernan was about, with Tiernan refusing to cooperate with the investigation.

Met Detective Inspector Glenn Butler from the Trident and Area Crime Command, said: Adams was extradited back to the UK to face charges in connection with this incident, having attempted to evade justice. Today, he has been jailed for his crime.

Patrick Adams, pictured  in the 1990s, is the brother of gangster Terry Adams top above

‘It was clear both men knew each other but the exact nature of the dispute has never been established. Adams stated that during the fight with the victim, he took the victim’s gun and shot him acting in self defence but by pleading guilty today it is clear he has accepted his criminal actions.

‘This case demonstrates the Metropolitan Police will pursue those who use firearms and ensure they face the legal consequences.’

HOW ADAMS FAMILY ARE LINKED TO MURDERS, DRUG DEALS AND ROBBERY

Linked to at least 25 murders, extortion rackets, drug dealing and armed robberies, the group is said to be headed by Terry, who prefers to be known as Terrence.

He is the eldest of 11 children born to Irish-Catholic parents in Islington, north London, in the 1950s and 1960s.

The brothers are said to have graduated from petty theft to extortion from market traders to armed robbery.

The gang was linked to the shooting of the Krays’ notorious chief henchman, Mad Frankie Fraser.

Wensley Clarkson, author of a book on Britain’s gangs, said: ‘The Adamses are probably the last of the old-school British crime families.

‘They’re a bit like the Sopranos – they made their money and then sent their children to private schools, bought art, invested in legal businesses.

‘Terry, in particular, is very bright. In another era, another world, he could have been head of a major international corporation, and that’s how these people see themselves, in a way.’

Other siblings have not been connected with the crimes of their brothers.

Prosecutor Crispin Aylett QC said the defendant and the victim were long-time associates but Adams had turned on an associate he believed had betrayed him.

He said: ‘The prosecution suggest from the circumstances of the shooting in broad daylight and at close range, that what happened would seem to have been personal.

‘They had known one another for many years. The prosecution suggest they had much in common.

‘They were men of a similar age, they knew a number of the same people, they share a reluctance to cooperate with police and live by the same code, one in which loyalty is everything and either snitching or grassing is contemptible.’

The court heard the defendant and his wife Constance Adams, 56, had been spotted on CCTV walking in the area near to their flat in Percival Street, Finsbury, north London, at around 9.30am that day.

As they walked in St Johns Street, in Clerkenwell, Mr Tiernan beckoned Adams towards his car, a dark-coloured BMW, where the defendant claimed he could see the victim had a gun.

‘Adams ran to the car and reached into the open window,’ Mr Aylett said, outlining the defence’s version of events.

‘Although Mr Tiernan had a gun in his hand he had not shot him. This allowed Patrick Adams to grab hold of the gun. Fearing for his safety and that of his wife, he shot Paul Tiernan.’

Mr Tiernan, who refused to cooperate with police, was shot in the chest and was later found by officers lying on his back in the road.

Meanwhile, Adams returned home to pick up his car and then drove to the Regent’s Canal, where the gun had been thrown into the water.

The incident happened in St Johns Street, London, where the victim was found in the road

The victim, who was 51 at the time, spent a month in hospital after suffering complications linked with anabolic steroid withdrawal, the court heard. He is now thought to have made a full recovery.

Mr Aylett said that, days after the shooting, police found a handwritten note, which had been written by Mr Tiernan and was addressed to Adams, during a search of his London flat.

Charges against Adams’ wife Constance were dropped

Reading it to the court, Mr Aylett said: ‘Pat, I ain’t no f****** grass. G (which may be a reference to Mr Adams’ son George) could have stopped all this b******s by telling the truth.

‘I’ve always been there for both of you but no-one is ever there for me. We are men. Face me. The truth will hurt.’

The court heard that, on the evening of the shooting, two women were seen on CCTV entering Harold Laski House, where the defendant lived, and emerging half an hour later with suitcases.

Mr Aylett said the women were thought to be Adams’ daughters and the evidence indicated that the defendant and his wife were not intending to return home and instead fled abroad.

They were later found to be in Amsterdam in April 2014 and were extradited in October last year from the Netherlands on a European arrest warrant sought by the Metropolitan Police during the investigation.

Adams had previously denied a charge of attempted murder and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) offered no evidence on that count.

Patrick Adams was arrested in Amsterdam after the shooting and extradited to Britain

A third charge of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life would lie on file, Mr Aylett said.

Mrs Adams, who also denied the same charges, was discharged as the CPS offered no evidence against her.

Six dock officers flanked Adams, who wore glasses and a navy blue jumper, and his wife as they appeared in court.

The career criminal, who was first convicted at the age of 12, is the younger brother of Terry Adams, the ‘retired’ head of the north London gang.

FEB 26TH 2014 THE POLICE RAIDS

Hundreds of police officers swooped on addresses across London and the Home Counties yesterday in an operation aimed at smashing one of Britain’s most notorious crime gangs.

Senior members of the Adams syndicate were among 15 people arrested as officers dressed in riot gear descended on 25 properties.

Almost £300,000 in cash, designer watches, a handgun, shotguns and other weapons were recovered after years of painstaking investigation.

Police, dressed in full assault gear, prepare to raid an address in north London, one of the 22 houses raided that are thought to be hubs for the notorious London criminal gang

Raided: 22 homes serving as bases for an ‘established and high profile’ criminal gang in north London

Several business addresses were also raided, including solicitors, accountants and property consultants suspected of laundering money.

At one safety deposit box in Central London police officers discovered £25,000 and a stash of expensive watches. In another property, a hidden safe held £100,000.

Scotland Yard is desperate to land a decisive blow on the Adams syndicate, which has influence worldwide and has a reputation for extreme violence. It has been connected to at least 25 murders.

Police suspect members of drug trafficking, extortion and hijacking but in recent years they have moved into white-collar and high-tech crime, including mortgage fraud.

A specialist police team, codenamed Operation Octopod, has been carrying out surveillance.

A man is arrested and led of of one of the raided addresses

Detectives believe they have amassed evidence of conspiracy to assault, money laundering, fraud and revenue offences.

The raids were carried out under Proceeds of Crime Act legislation, which investigators hope could help finally smash the gang.

One of the properties raided was the £2.5million Clerkenwell mansion owned by Tommy Adams, 55, and his wife Androulla, 54.

Tommy, who once led the syndicate with his brothers Terry and Patrick, was jailed for seven and half years in 1998 after admitting his role in an £8million cannabis smuggling plot.

Neighbours knew him as a ‘businessman with a mysterious past’. One said: ‘Tommy is a man that no one would ever ask him anything about what he did.’

Terry, 59, who was not arrested yesterday, has already served a seven-year sentence for money laundering. He was sent back to prison shortly after his release for failing to declare an expensive ‘post-prison makeover’ arranged by his wife at a luxury Hertfordshire hotel.

There is evidence that members of the Adams family have escaped prosecution by infiltrating the police and Crown Prosecution Service. Most of the 200 officers involved in yesterday’s operation were not told the identities of the targets over fears that the information could be leaked.

At one garden flat in Highgate, North London, police seized a 24-year-old man believed to be a key figure in the group.

Officers broke through his front door – protected by an iron grille – using a steel battering ram just before 6am.

Det Chief Supt Tom Manson, of the Met, said the operation aimed to ‘dismantle’ the gang. ‘This gang has believed they were untouchable but we are determined to prove they are not,’ he said.

‘The links between this gang and serious and violent crime are well documented, as is their strong influence across London, and, we believe, connections to criminals across Britain and Europe.’

The family crime business, known to many as the ‘A Team’, was also suspected of links to the Russian mafia and the powerful Columbian cocaine cartels.

Solicitors, accountants and investment advisers with links to the notorious gang were ordered to hand over documents under the proceeds of crime act, so they could be examined by financial investigators.

One of the suspected gang members is taken in by police, led out of the house in north London. The raids were the result of months of planning and building evidence against the suspected criminal gang

A man is led out of a north London home in Clerkenwell by police. In addition to arrests, police confiscated £300,000 of cash and luxury items, and a series of guns

Some of the solicitors and financial advisors were also taken in for questioning on suspicion that they helped to run the finances of the gang as mortgage brokers and property developers.

The massive hit against the gang was launched after detectives apparently uncovered evidence of crimes including conspiracy to assault, money laundering, fraud and revenue offences.

The money confiscated totalled around £275,000 in cash, collected in safes and safety deposit boxes, in addition to luxury items like Rolexes, and computers and phones, which were used for financial correspondence.

Scotland Yard said at one property they found a safe £100,000 ‘tucked inside’.

The operation was part of a Scotland Yard case against the gang, which has taken months of detectives following money trails to link the properties with the gang’s criminal gains.

While Scotland Yard did not name the criminal ring, which is also known as the A Team, they did call it ‘one of the UK’s longest established and high profile organised crime gangs’.

Detective Chief Superintendent Tom Manson of the MPS Specialist, Organised and Economic Crime Command, said: ‘We believe we have arrested members of the most long established and high profile crime gang in London.

Tommy Adams, (pictured in an older handout for a previous conviction) patriarch and financier of the Adams gang – Described in court as a ‘notorious gangster’, is also believed to have been arrested as a part of targeted raids on a criminal gang

‘This was a painstaking investigation and a discreet operation run by specialist officers until today when the combined resources of the Met were deployed on the arrest phase of the operation.

‘The links between this gang and serious and violent crime are well documented as is their strong influence across London, and, we believe, connections to criminals across Britain and Europe.

‘We believe they are responsible for a multi-million pound criminal business; laundering the profits from crime and using this money to commit other money-spinning offences.

‘This is cash which can be used to fund further crime and provide luxurious lifestyles.

‘For too long organised gangs have used advances in technology that have allowed them to hide their criminal gains and some even believe they can escape justice by bribing those who enforce the law.

‘This operation and others like it are the Met’s response.

‘Any criminal gang operating in London needs to know that we will tackle them head on and hit them where it hurts most, by seizing their cash and assets.’

The list of people arrested during the raids, where they were arrested, and their charges is as follows:

• [A] 55 year old man – Islington – Suspicion of money laundering
• 54 year old female – Islington – Fraud
• 44 year old man – Waltham Forest – Suspicion of Money Laundering, Conspiracy to assault
• 50 year old man – Islington – Conspiracy to assault, suspicion of money laundering
• 55 year old man – Haringey – Conspiracy to assault, suspicion of money laundering
• 49 year old man – Haringey – Suspicion of Money Laundering, Fraud
• 51 year old man – Barnet – Suspicion of Money Laundering, Fraud
• 21 year old man – Waltham Forest – Suspicion of Money Laundering, Fraud
• 22 year old man – Waltham Forest – Suspicion of Money Laundering, Fraud
• 58 year old man – Camden – Suspicion of Money Laundering, Fraud
• 40 year old man – Kilburn – Suspicion of Money Laundering, Fraud
• 24 year old man – Camden – Suspicion of Money Laundering, Criminal Damage
• 56 year old man – Herts – Suspicion of Money Laundering
• 61 year old man – Kent – Suspicion of Money Laundering
• 57 year old man – Herts – Money Laundering

All are being held at a central London police station while searches continue.

Since 2012, the Metropolitan Police Service has restrained, forfeited and confiscated over £62million in criminal cash and assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act of 2002.