Clerkenwell crime syndicate
Encyclopedia
The Clerkenwell crime syndicate, most often known as the Adams Family or the A-team by the British press, is alleged to be one of the most powerful criminal organisations
in the United Kingdom
if not in fact the strongest. By the nature of their position reliable information about them that has not been distorted or exaggerated is hard to come by. But media reports have repeatedly linked them to around 25 murders and credited them with wealth of up to £200 million. Before two of the brothers were convicted in 1998 and 2007 respectively the failure of the police to secure convictions against them had led to a belief, amongst some, that they had utterly undermined the justice system so as 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.
Their position is now under threat: the gang's apparent 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 £800,000 of prosecution costs. Further difficulties arose in February 2010 when a man claiming to be Terry Adams' nephew was convicted in a case known as the jigsaw murder: it was claimed during the trial that he had disposed of four bodies for the Adamses. As he is 38 years old and has been sentenced to at least 36 years in prison it may be that there is little reason for him not to co-operate with the police in any further enquiries that they wish to make about the family.
The syndicate was formed in the 1980s by Terry Adams, with his brothers Tommy and Patrick Adams acting as financier and enforcer respectively. They come from a large Irish Catholic family. It expanded to include other members of the extended Adams clan and their close childhood friends. The gang's power base is the Clerkenwell
neighbourhood in Islington
. Terry Adams, until his admission of money laundering
in February 2007, lived in the Barnsbury
area of Islington.
The gang is said to be 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 (as would Sicilian mafiosi
hired out by Charles Sabini
and the Messina Brothers
only decades before). As well as 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 America
n drug cartels. Before the conviction of Terry Adams in 2007 the British media referred to the gang sparingly, considering their alleged influence, and normally described them as the A-team or the notorious Adams family from Islington.
Sean "Tommy" Adams gained high profile public attention again 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.
The nature of the criminal world means that it is sometimes difficult to assess the Adams' true strength. The BBC
has asserted that their influence decreased from 2000. Police officers speaking off the 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, MI5, in order to crack the Adams mafia-like organised crime cartel.
The degree to which the gang now operates as one is also unclear. 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.
The former Scottish
gangster Paul Ferris
asserts that none of the brothers is primus inter pares (first among equals or in sole charge). Terry has been described as having a refined and cultured manner and as a collector of antiques, wine, and cars (including custom-built Cadillacs and Bentley
s). The Evening Standard
reported in 2000 that he lived in a “Finchley
mansion”.
Terry Adams's 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. An organized crime investigation which like that of New York mafia Don John Gotti
in the 1980s had taken exactly seven years was finally amalgamated under the codename Operation Trinity
by Tony Blair's New Labour Government when electronic bugs were secretly hidden in the lounge, bedroom and loft of Adams’ Finchley mansion house. Terry Adams was heard making what later became chilling and violent testimony against certain individuals. Some of the recordings however made over a period of 18 months suggested that Adams had retired from front line involvement in crime in 1990. Police sources believed Adams knew he was being monitored and had "stage managed" many conversation for the benefit of his defense. For example he was caught on tape, in 1998, telling his adviser Solly Nahome that he did not want to be involved with a particular deal as it was illegal and he was now legitimate.
The Inland Revenue had their own suspicions and began asking Adams to explain how he had amassed his personal fortune and got his £2 million house and the valuable antiques he collected. 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.
When 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 May 18, 2007 he 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. A few days later on May 21, 2007 he was ordered to file reports setting out his income for the next ten years. Open case files remain untried on Operation Trinity
records and rumour still exists that several further prosecution 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 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1184807/Through-keyhole-lavish-1-6m-house-jailed-gangster-Terry-Adams.html. 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 on breach of parole http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3747541/Crook-Terry-Adams-is-back-in-prison.html .
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
.
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.
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
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
”.
and other individuals who helped sell the stolen gold, including Kenneth Noye
. Hatton Garden diamond merchant Solly Nahome was also linked with the Adams Family and his disappearance was said to have angered Patrick Adams. Nahome was shot dead outside his £300,000 Finchley home in 1998.
The three convicted murderers of Ben Kinsella
were also allegedly threatened by the Adams family.
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
if not in fact the strongest. By the nature of their position reliable information about them that has not been distorted or exaggerated is hard to come by. But media reports have repeatedly linked them to around 25 murders and credited them with wealth of up to £200 million. Before two of the brothers were convicted in 1998 and 2007 respectively the failure of the police to secure convictions against them had led to a belief, amongst some, that they had utterly undermined the justice system so as 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.
Their position is now under threat: the gang's apparent 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
Serious Organised Crime Agency
The Serious Organised Crime Agency is a non-departmental public body of the Government of the United Kingdom under Home Office sponsorship...
and police in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, 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 £800,000 of prosecution costs. Further difficulties arose in February 2010 when a man claiming to be Terry Adams' nephew was convicted in a case known as the jigsaw murder: it was claimed during the trial that he had disposed of four bodies for the Adamses. As he is 38 years old and has been sentenced to at least 36 years in prison it may be that there is little reason for him not to co-operate with the police in any further enquiries that they wish to make about the family.
The syndicate was formed in the 1980s by Terry Adams, with his brothers Tommy and Patrick Adams acting as financier and enforcer respectively. They come from a large Irish Catholic family. It expanded to include other members of the extended Adams clan and their close childhood friends. The gang's power base is the Clerkenwell
Clerkenwell
Clerkenwell is an area of central London in the London Borough of Islington. From 1900 to 1965 it was part of the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury. The well after which it was named was rediscovered in 1924. The watchmaking and watch repairing trades were once of great importance...
neighbourhood in Islington
Islington
Islington is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street...
. Terry Adams, until his admission of money laundering
Money laundering
Money laundering is the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication. Many regulatory and governmental authorities quote estimates each year for the amount...
in February 2007, lived in the Barnsbury
Barnsbury
Barnsbury is an area of north London in the London Borough of Islington, in the N1 postal districts.The name is a corruption of villa de Iseldon Berners , being so called after the Berners family: powerful medieval manorial lords who gained ownership of a large part of Islington after the Norman...
area of Islington.
The gang is said to be heavily involved in drug trafficking
Illegal drug trade
The illegal drug trade is a global black market, dedicated to cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of those substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs by drug prohibition laws.A UN report said the...
and extortion
Extortion
Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...
as well as the hijacking of gold bullion
Gold as an investment
Of all the precious metals, gold is the most popular as an investment. Investors generally buy gold as a hedge or harbor against economic, political, or social fiat currency crises...
shipments and security fraud. They have been linked to 25 gangland murders, using Afro-Caribbean
British African-Caribbean community
The British African Caribbean communities are residents of the United Kingdom who are of West Indian background and whose ancestors were primarily indigenous to Africa...
muscle as additional manpower to murder informants and rival criminals (as would Sicilian mafiosi
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
hired out by Charles Sabini
Charles Sabini
Charles Sabini commonly known as Darby Sabini, was a British criminal of mixed Italian and English parentage who, as leader of the Sabinis and 'king of the racecourse gangs', dominated the London underworld and racecourses throughout the south of England for much of the early twentieth century...
and the Messina Brothers
Messina Brothers
The Messina Brothers were a Maltese-based criminal organization which dominated London's underworld during the inter-war and post-WWII years.-Early life:...
only decades before). As well as developing alleged connections to Metropolitan Police
Metropolitan Police Service
The Metropolitan Police Service is the territorial police force responsible for Greater London, excluding the "square mile" of the City of London which is the responsibility of the City of London Police...
officials, they were also stated to have had a British Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
in their pocket at one point.
The shooting of the then 68 year old "Mad" Frankie Fraser
Frankie Fraser
Francis Davidson Fraser is a former British criminal and gang member who spent 42 years in prison for numerous violent offences.-Early life:...
, a former enforcer for The Richardson Gang
The Richardson Gang
The Richardson Gang was a 1960s group of criminals in South London, England. Less well remembered than their rivals the Krays, they nevertheless had a reputation at their peak as being some of London's most infamous and sadistic gangsters...
, 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 America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
n drug cartels. Before the conviction of Terry Adams in 2007 the British media referred to the gang sparingly, considering their alleged influence, and normally described them as the A-team or the notorious Adams family from Islington.
Sean "Tommy" Adams gained high profile public attention again during a trial in 2004, when he was described as having attended a meeting in 2002 at the request of the former football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
international Kenny Dalglish
Kenny Dalglish
Kenneth Mathieson "Kenny" Dalglish MBE is a Scottish former footballer and the current manager of Liverpool F.C.. In a 22-year playing career, he played for two club teams, Celtic and Liverpool, winning numerous honours with both. He is the most capped Scottish player, with 102 appearances, and...
. 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.
The nature of the criminal world means that it is sometimes difficult to assess the Adams' true strength. The BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
has asserted that their influence decreased from 2000. Police officers speaking off the 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, MI5, in order to crack the Adams mafia-like organised crime cartel.
The degree to which the gang now operates as one is also unclear. 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.
T. G. Adams
Terence George Adams (born 18 October 1954) admitted a single specimen money laundering offence on 7 February 2007 and was jailed for seven years; he was released on 24 June 2010. On 9 March 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 organized 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
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
gangster Paul Ferris
Paul John Ferris
For other persons named Paul Ferris, see Paul Ferris .Paul John Feris is a Scottish businessman, author and former gangster...
asserts that none of the brothers is primus inter pares (first among equals or in sole charge). Terry has been described as having a refined and cultured manner and as a collector of antiques, wine, and cars (including custom-built Cadillacs and Bentley
Bentley
Bentley Motors Limited is a British manufacturer of automobiles founded on 18 January 1919 by Walter Owen Bentley known as W.O. Bentley or just "W O". Bentley had been previously known for his range of rotary aero-engines in World War I, the most famous being the Bentley BR1 as used in later...
s). The Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
reported in 2000 that he lived in a “Finchley
Finchley
Finchley is a district in Barnet in north London, England. Finchley is on high ground, about north of Charing Cross. It formed an ancient parish in the county of Middlesex, becoming a municipal borough in 1933, and has formed part of Greater London since 1965...
mansion”.
Terry Adams's downfall came with the assistance of MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
and the Inland Revenue
Inland Revenue
The Inland Revenue was, until April 2005, a department of the British Government responsible for the collection of direct taxation, including income tax, national insurance contributions, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, corporation tax, petroleum revenue tax and stamp duty...
. MI5, in a unique inter-departmental collaboration the first of its kind after the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
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. An organized crime investigation which like that of New York mafia Don John Gotti
John Gotti
John Joseph Gotti, Jr was an American mobster who became the Boss of the Gambino crime family in New York City. Gotti grew up in poverty. He and his brothers turned to a life of crime at an early age...
in the 1980s had taken exactly seven years was finally amalgamated under the codename Operation Trinity
Operation Trinity
Operation Trinity may refer to:*Trinity * Operation Trinity Clerkenwell crime syndicate, First post cold war collaboration of Mi5 to investigate organised crime....
by Tony Blair's New Labour Government when electronic bugs were secretly hidden in the lounge, bedroom and loft of Adams’ Finchley mansion house. Terry Adams was heard making what later became chilling and violent testimony against certain individuals. Some of the recordings however made over a period of 18 months suggested that Adams had retired from front line involvement in crime in 1990. Police sources believed Adams knew he was being monitored and had "stage managed" many conversation for the benefit of his defense. For example he was caught on tape, in 1998, telling his adviser Solly Nahome that he did not want to be involved with a particular deal as it was illegal and he was now legitimate.
The Inland Revenue had their own suspicions and began asking Adams to explain how he had amassed his personal fortune and got his £2 million house and the valuable antiques he collected. 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.
When 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 May 18, 2007 he 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. A few days later on May 21, 2007 he was ordered to file reports setting out his income for the next ten years. Open case files remain untried on Operation Trinity
Operation Trinity
Operation Trinity may refer to:*Trinity * Operation Trinity Clerkenwell crime syndicate, First post cold war collaboration of Mi5 to investigate organised crime....
records and rumour still exists that several further prosecution 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 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1184807/Through-keyhole-lavish-1-6m-house-jailed-gangster-Terry-Adams.html. 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 on breach of parole http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3747541/Crook-Terry-Adams-is-back-in-prison.html .
Sean Adams
Sean "Tommy" Adams, born in 1958, 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
Kenneth Noye
Kenneth James Noye is a British criminal who was convicted of the 1996 murder of Stephen Cameron.Noye was involved in laundering the proceeds of the Brink's-MAT robbery in 1983–4. While he was being investigated for his part in the robbery, he stabbed to death police officer John Fordham who was...
.
Tommy Adams is suspected of establishing connections to other international criminal organisations including numerous Yardie
Yardie
Yardie is a term stemming from the slang name originally given to occupants of "government yards", social housing projects with very basic amenities, in Trenchtown, a neighborhood in West Kingston, Jamaica. Trenchtown was originally built as a housing project following devastation caused by...
gangs as well as gaining an $80 million credit line from Colombian
Colombian people
Colombian people are from a multiethnic Spanish speaking nation in South America called Colombia. Colombians are predominantly Roman Catholic and are a mixture of Europeans, Africans, and Amerindians.-Demography:...
drug cartels. In 1998, Adams was convicted of masterminding a £8 million hashish
Hashish
Hashish is a cannabis preparation composed of compressed stalked resin glands, called trichomes, collected from the unfertilized buds of the cannabis plant. It contains the same active ingredients but in higher concentrations than unsifted buds or leaves...
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 Adams, born in 1955, 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
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
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
Torremolinos
Torremolinos is a municipality on the Costa del Sol of the Mediterranean, immediately to the west of the city of Málaga, in the province of Málaga in the autonomous region of Andalusia in southern Spain...
”.
Other family members and associates
Not all members of the family are criminals; some, including the Adams' parents and several of their eight other siblings, are law-abiding.- Gilbert Wynter, a feared enforcer for the family, disappeared in 1998. Four years before, he was cleared of killing the former British high-jump champion Claude Moseley after a key prosecution witness refused to give evidence at the Old BaileyOld BaileyThe Central Criminal Court in England and Wales, commonly known as the Old Bailey from the street in which it stands, is a court building in central London, one of a number of buildings housing the Crown Court...
. Moseley worked as a drug dealer for the gang and was suspected of skimming money from his sales. Wynter disappeared in March 1998 and underworld sources say he was killed after double-crossing the family. Gang lore says his body was buried in concrete and is propping up the Millennium DomeMillennium DomeThe Millennium Dome, colloquially referred to simply as The Dome or even The O2 Arena, is the original name of a large dome-shaped building, originally used to house the Millennium Experience, a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millennium...
. Another account of his suspected death asserts that he was killed on the orders of noted London gangster Mickey GreenMickey GreenMickey Green is an English criminal, who has also held Irish nationality. A convicted armed robber he has allegedly been one of Britain's leading drug dealers for many years and is said to be worth at least £75 million....
.
- Saul “Solly” Nahome, shot dead outside his £300,000 home in Finchley, north LondonNorth LondonNorth London is the northern part of London, England. It is an imprecise description and the area it covers is defined differently for a range of purposes. Common to these definitions is that it includes districts located north of the River Thames and is used in comparison with South...
, in 1998 by an assassin who escaped on a motorcycle, was suspected of acting as a financial adviser to the family. Nahome, a diamond merchant in Hatton GardenHatton GardenHatton Garden is a street and area near Holborn in London, England. It is most famous for being London’s jewellery quarter and centre of the UK diamond trade, but the area is also now home to a diverse range of media and creative businesses....
, Clerkenwell, was recruited by the syndicate and is thought by police to have laundered the money through the jewellery business, a restaurant in SmithfieldSmithfield, LondonSmithfield is an area of the City of London, in the ward of Farringdon Without. It is located in the north-west part of the City, and is mostly known for its centuries-old meat market, today the last surviving historical wholesale market in Central London...
and a West EndWest End of LondonThe West End of London is an area of central London, containing many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buildings, and entertainment . Use of the term began in the early 19th century to describe fashionable areas to the west of Charing Cross...
nightclub. He is said to have secreted at least £25 million in offshore accounts. The secrets of the money's whereabouts may have died with him. He either died at the hands of the Adams' when they found out he had stolen money from them, or on the orders of Mickey Green according to gangland accounts. Nahome was known to police as complicit with the laundering of the proceeds of Brink's-MAT gold bullion theft.
- Robert Adams, (deceased) a relative of the family was imprisoned for his part in a huge attempted robbery at the Millennium Dome, London.
Connections to other gangsters
The Adams family have long been connected to the Brink's-MAT robberyBrink's-MAT robbery
The Brink's-MAT robbery occurred on 26 November 1983 when six robbers broke into the Brink's-MAT warehouse at Heathrow Airport, London. The robbers thought they were going to steal £3 million in cash; however, when they arrived, they found three tonnes of gold bullion...
and other individuals who helped sell the stolen gold, including Kenneth Noye
Kenneth Noye
Kenneth James Noye is a British criminal who was convicted of the 1996 murder of Stephen Cameron.Noye was involved in laundering the proceeds of the Brink's-MAT robbery in 1983–4. While he was being investigated for his part in the robbery, he stabbed to death police officer John Fordham who was...
. Hatton Garden diamond merchant Solly Nahome was also linked with the Adams Family and his disappearance was said to have angered Patrick Adams. Nahome was shot dead outside his £300,000 Finchley home in 1998.
The three convicted murderers of Ben Kinsella
Murder of Ben Kinsella
Ben Michael Kinsella was a 16-year-old English student at Holloway School. Kinsella was murdered by a gang of black men in Islington, London after an argument in which he was described as "blameless"...
were also allegedly threatened by the Adams family.