[1] Criminal enterprises come from a variety of different ethnic backgrounds finding their origin in the UK, the most dominant of them still being the White British groups.
An inexpensive country where fraudulent visas and travel documents are easily available, and police corruption is rife, Thailand provides British expatriates involved in the counterfeit goods trade a criminal endeavor relatively free from risk.
[12] English and Scottish crime groups, as well as Irish gangs and Turkish Cypriot descent (such as the Arif family) find their origin in tough, impoverished white working class neighbourhoods.
With their gang, known as the Firm, the Kray twins were involved in murder, armed robbery, arson, protection rackets, gambling and assaults.
At their peak in the 1960s, they gained a certain measure of celebrity status by mixing with prominent members of London society, being photographed by David Bailey and interviewed on television.
Working-class neighbourhoods are often still home to family-based crime groups involved in drug trafficking, extortion, prostitution, armed robbery, contract killing, money laundering, counterfeiting and kidnapping.
Hunt has been described by Metropolitan Police sources as being "too big to bring down" and runs an extensive criminal empire that has so far evaded significant penetration from law enforcement.
[18] For a £1 million contract,[19] Hunt had summoned Yardie hitman Carl 'The Dread' Robinson[20] to a boat in Marbella and instructed him to kill the officers.
In the late 1970s, crime boss Tommy “Tacker” Comerford formed Britain’s first cartel, which would come to be known as the "Liverpool Mafia", a group of white, middle-aged former armed robbers who, using corrupt port officials and protected by corrupt police, smuggled major quantities of amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine, heroin and LSD through the Liverpool docks.
The Liverpool Mafia gained strength by brokering a strategic alliance with young black gangs following the 1981 Toxteth riots, and became the richest crime group in the United Kingdom.
The cartel protected its power base by forging close links to the IRA and, in particular, a contract-killing outfit called “The Cleaners”, a group of paramilitaries believed to be responsible for more than 20 drug-related assassinations around Liverpool.
Some of the most notable figures being Curtis Warren, John Haase, the Fitzgibbons, the Huyton Firm, the Clarkes and Colin “Smigger” Smith.
In 2002 a young man named Christopher “Buster” Brady from Liverpool city centre went to work for the gang in southern Spain.
The trafficking of cocaine and heroin to the British mainland as well as to countries like Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands is the main source of income for Scouse crime groups.
[30][25] The Liverpool gangs tend to be more entrepreneurial instead of territorial, where different factions will often choose to work together in several criminal activities, but will also come into conflict with each other when it comes to more localised control over organised crime.
[36] White British crime families operate in many other cities in the United Kingdom as well, other known centres being Newcastle upon Tyne, Nottingham and Manchester.