Clerkenwell crime syndicate
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 Crown Prosecution Service lead team of detectives but additionally the full weight of the UK's top secret military intelligence and security service, MI5, in order to crack the Adams mafia-like organised crime cartel.
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.
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.
[12] 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."
Terence George Adams (born 18 October 1954 in London)[15] 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.
On 9 March 2003 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 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.
[20] In November 2017 a District Judge sitting in Weston-super-Mare ordered Terry Adams to pay the remaining amount within 30 days or return to prison for at least 2.5 years.
[25] 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.
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.
Adams, admitted shooting Paul Tiernan 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.
Police who searched Adams's flat in the days after the shooting found a handwritten note from Tiernan, which said 'I ain't no f****** grass' and urged his former friend to 'face me'.
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 Bailey.
[28][29] Saul "Solly" Nahome, shot dead outside his £300,000 home in Finchley, north London, 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 Garden, Clerkenwell, was recruited by the syndicate and is thought by police to have laundered the money through the jewellery business, a restaurant in Smithfield and a West End nightclub.
[30] The Adams family have long been connected to the Brink's-Mat robbery and other individuals who helped sell the stolen gold, including Kenneth Noye.
