Two jailed nine years each over four-tonne St Helens resin haul
Steven Rooney and Stephane Hassiakos were each jailed for nine years on 7 May 2004 over a four-tonne cannabis resin shipment tracked from Harwich to St Helens in May 2003, where it was shifted from a flower lorry into two vans. Four co-accused received lesser terms; the resin was valued at about £9 million on the street.
🇬🇧 St Helens, Merseyside · United Kingdom
·
Arrested
6
Cannabis
4 t
Prison
9 years (Rooney and Hassiakos; four co-accused got lesser terms)
On 23 May 2003 an articulated lorry driven by Konstantinos Sevastos arrived at Harwich by ferry from the Netherlands, ostensibly carrying flowers, and customs officers monitored its movements.[1]At St Helens the lorry was met by Brendan Robertson with a white box van, Brendan Clarke with a similar red-cab van and Stephane Hassiakos in a Ford Focus, and Steven Rooney directed the transfer of boxed resin from the lorry into the two vans at farm premises.[1]The vans together held four metric tonnes of cannabis resin, with a retail value of £3.6 million and a street value of about £9 million; phone records showed Rooney and Hassiakos in contact on 22 and 23 May and making calls to Spain.[1]
Police and Customs seized the load the same day, and six men appeared in court the following week on a £10.5 million haul, with one van then reported at 2.7 tonnes and the other at 800 kg; all were remanded in custody.[2]Rooney pleaded guilty on 22 March 2004 to being knowingly concerned in evading the import ban on cannabis resin, and each co-accused pleaded guilty on re-arraignment.[1]
On 7 May 2004 Rooney and Hassiakos were each sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment, with lesser sentences for the other co-accused.[1]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Arrested
6
Cannabis
4 t
Prison
9 years (Rooney and Hassiakos; four co-accused got lesser terms)
Contemporary trade-press account: 2.7 tonnes in one van and 800 kg in the other, worth £10.5 million, while the later judgment gives four metric tonnes; this report uses the court's figure.
The judgment records lesser sentences for the four other men without stating their terms.
Callum Roper, 22, of Holton Road, Barry, was jailed for 30 months at Cardiff Crown Court after admitting offences involving the supply of cannabis and magic mushrooms. He pleaded guilty to being concerned in the supply of both drugs between 3 December 2025 and 14 September 2026 and had been remanded in custody awaiting sentence.
Bolton Crown Court sentenced seven members of three linked drug gangs that trafficked cocaine and cannabis between Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent and North Wales. Five men received prison sentences of up to eleven and a half years, while two couriers received community orders and two leaders await later sentencing.
Daniel Thompson, 36, was found with 8,223.6 grams of cannabis resin, valued at up to £35,950, when officers searched a house on Moss Side Lane in Rixton in July 2023. Chester Crown Court gave him a nine-month prison sentence suspended for 12 months and 100 hours of unpaid work after he admitted possessing the resin with intent to supply and possessing cocaine.
Sentenced 1Cannabis 8.2236 kgPrison 9 months suspended for 12 months
Bradford Crown Court jailed Alfie Leahy, 21, for five years and Connor Broadbent, 26, for three years and four months over drugs found when police raided two homes in the Holmewood area at dawn on 17 July 2026. Cannabis was seized at a Grayswood Crescent address and cocaine, cash and jewellery at Dawson Street; police put the total street value of the drugs at more than £22,000.
Charged 2Prison 5 years (Leahy); 3 years and 4 months (Broadbent)
