Ryan Ludlow sentenced to 11 years in prison after he was caught last August with 30 kilograms cocaine Ray O'Donovan received four years at the same

Police are investigating if travellers at Crays Hill were involved in a plot to flood the streets with nearly £3million of cocaine.Ryan Ludlow, 26, was sentenced to 11 years in prison after he was caught last August with 30 kilograms of cocaine - worth £2.7million - in a car in a McDonald's car park in Harlow.Defending him at Basildon Crown Court on Wednesday, David Williams said he was talked into picking up the package by travellers at the Oak Lane site.Essex Police confirmed investigations are continuing. Helen Cook, Essex Police spokeswoman, said: "Enquiries are ongoing with regard to this case."Officers are looking at the implications of what may have gone on before the arrests and elsewhere."Because of this we cannot comment on any ongoing action at this time."The court was told Ludlow, of Clayburn Circle, Basildon, was seeing a girl from the site, but the travellers did not approve because he was not one of them and he agreed to do the job to "clear the debt".Ray O'Donovan, 27, from Wilsner, Pitsea, who was caught with him in the silver Ford Mondeo with 40 wraps of the drug, worth £10,000, received four years at the same hearing.The boarded up address in Mansfield
Judge Gareth Jones said he must have realised the job involved cocaine, because he admitted to seeing quantities of the drug when visiting the site.Officers from Essex Police's Serious and Organised Crime Directive were monitoring the vehicle before making the arrests.Why use UK gang's address? A LINK between travellers from Crays Hill and a business address run by a member of one of the UK's biggest international drug rings has been discovered. a number of travellers from the Oak Lane site have used the address, 138 Chesterfield Road North, Mansfield, to set up road surfacing businesses in France, register vehicles or give to police as an abode if questioned.The now boarded-up building was formerly antique importer and exporter Fair Deal Antiques, run by Arthur Dawes, 62, of Central Avenue, Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire, until 2005.Dawes was jailed for eight years in May 2005 for money laundering in connection with the drugs gang he was involved in.His son John, 39, of Tudor Street, Sutton-in-Ashfield, headed the gang.He got 24 years at the same trial.
Dawes junior was convicted for recruiting drug dealers and runners to buy and sell heroin and amphetamines, and also money laundering.The nine-week trial at Nottingham Crown Court heard the feared gang's reign of terror took place between 1997 and September 2003, moving more than £5m drugs money around the UK and abroad inside just one seven-month period.It is not know what, if any, connection the travellers had to Dawes, but many of them are known to trade in antiques and have long-standing links to Mansfield.Three of a kind this year latest convictions were the third in a series of cases involving large-scale dealing of cocaine connected to Crays Hill, since the beginning of the year.On January 25, Kevin McNess, 47, of Crays Hill Road, Crays Hill, was imprisoned for 26 years.He was convicted at Cardiff Crown Court of heading a gang which hid £4.5million of cocaine in lorry tyres to supply drugs to cities across the country.On February 22, Ronald Pyke, 56, of Coombe Rise, Stanford-le-Hope, pleaded guilty to being part of a conspiracy to supply the cocaine, after £700,000 worth of the drug was found at his home.He still awaits sentence with Robert Gregory, 56, of Oak Road, Crays Hill, who confessed to masterminding the supply of cocaine worth £500,000 across the Midlands last year, following his arrest at home in August.Kingston Crown Court was told surveillance of Gregory's home had been difficult, because it is directly opposite the entrance to the Oak Lane traveller site.