Notorious criminal Curtis ‘Cocky’ Warren has been arrested at the home he shares with a prison officer who was jailed for having an affair with him behind bars.
The Liverpool-born gangster who has served multiple jail sentences was arrested just before 6am today at the home of Stephanie Smithwhite, 42, in Boldon Colliery, South Tyneside.
He is being quizzed by police on suspicion of committing numerous breaches of a Serious Crime Prevention Order relating to the alleged unauthorised use of mobile phones, vehicles, bank accounts and travel.
The order came into force after his release from prison in November 2022 for drug trafficking offences.
Smithwhite was jailed for two years in February 2020 at Durham Crown Court after she admitted two counts of misconduct in a public office.
Curtis ‘Cocky’ Warren (pictured February 2020) has been arrested seven months after being released from prison for breaches of his Serious Crime Prevention Order
Warren was arrested at the home of Stephanie Smithwhite, 42, in South Tyneside
The first count related to her sexual relationship with Warren, 60, which is said to have lasted between June and December 2018 when he was serving time at top security HMP Frankland near Durham.
The second count related to her not reporting that she knew he had access to a smuggled phone which is understood to have been a tiny so-called ‘prison phone’ little bigger than a £2 coin.
Smithwhite denied cutting a hole in the trousers of her prison uniform for a sexual purpose, but the sentencing judge said it was hard to imagine why else it was there.
The court heard she ‘fell in love with the wrong man in the wrong situation’ and exchanged hundreds of sexually explicit love letters with the infamous drug baron.
At his request she sent him a picture of herself and admitted kissing him and performing sex acts in his cell, a prison kitchen and a laundry room.
In interview, Smithwhite admitted other sexual encounters.
MailOnline can reveal that Warren is thought to have moved in to Smithwhite’s semi-detached home in a residential street in in Boldon Colliery.
Warren was arrested in an operation involving Merseyside Police and the North East Regional Organised Crime Unit (NEROCU).
Breach of a serious crime prevention order is a criminal offence subject to a maximum sentence of five years, an unlimited fine, or both.
The Toxteth native who was once dubbed ‘Target One’ by Interpol had the order imposed when he was released from the maximum security HMP Whitemoor, in Cambridgeshire.
Officers from the NCA were seen battering through the door with a battering ram
An unknown man can be seen in the doorway after the door was smashed through
Smithwhite, who is from Boldon Colliery, South Tyneside, was found to have a tattoo of a rose with the name ‘Curtis’ next to it, which she said she had done in December 2018
He was made subject to a strict raft of restrictions including a ban from instant messaging apps WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, being in possession of more than £1,000 in cash, giving police a day’s notice if he wants to use a friend’s car and a ban on travel outside of England and Wales without giving seven days notice to police.
Alison Abbott, from the NCA’s Lifetime Management of Offenders Team, said today: ‘These court orders are vital tools for preventing and deterring future offending. Once criminals come onto our radar, they never leave, and the NCA will take action over breaches.’
Warren, who was nicknamed ‘Cocky’ for his disdain of authority, is thought to have been moved to HMP Whitemoor after his affair with Smithwhite was discovered.
Duram Crown Court heard when she was sentenced how she was found to have a tattoo of a rose with the name ‘Curtis’ next to it, which she said she had done in December 2018.
She was also found to be in possession of a Zanco ‘prison phone’ of the kind often smuggled into jails – though she denied she intended to take it in for Warren’s use.
The pair were rumbled when other members of staff at the prison became suspicious.
Smithwhite was subject to direct surveillance until December 13, 2018, when she was caught passing a note to the Warren, which he had attempted to eat.
The note was recovered and further searches were carried out including of her car where two mobile phones were found – one black and one white Samsung.
Smithwhite, who has a young grandson, was dismissed from her role and found work as a carer while on bail before she was jailed herself.
Judge Jonathan Carroll told her as he sentenced her that prisons were there to ensure the protection of society and victims of crime and they ‘are not easy places to manage.’
He added: ‘You knew who he was, what he had done. Perhaps it was his notoriety itself that attracted you to him.
‘It was equally clear that you were infatuated with him, demonstrated by your tattoo of his name on you.’
The judge added: ‘I accept there is no evidence that you did supply contraband or information but the degree of risk of compromise to prison security when you yourself had been compromised.
‘There could be no-one in Frankland prison, least of all an officer who would not know of his notoriety.’
The court also heard that a copy of ‘Cocky – The Rise and Fall of Curtis Warren’ – a book about the inmate, was found at Smithwhite’s home.
The prosecutor argued that it meant she was ‘clearly aware of his notoriety.’
On Wednesday a neighbour of Smithwhite, who asked not to be named, said she definitely recognised her from her picture in press reports about her affair behind bars.
She said she had no idea a man, let alone a big-time criminal, was there with her.
The neighbour said: ‘I don’t know her but I have seen her going in and out. She often goes out in the early evening wearing gym leggings.’
‘I have never seen a man there at all so this comes as a big shock. We have been here only two years and I think she’s been here for that time.’
The neighbour said she had seen two Range Rovers – one black and other white – with blacked out windows parked at the address and coming and going recently.
Most neighbours in the run-down street refused to speak about the occupants of the address raided at around 6am.
But the neighbour who recognised Smithwhite said her husband, who works shifts, was returning home shortly after 6am and saw the raid in progress.
‘He said the police were putting the door through and told me it looked like a raid was going on.’
When she headed off to work about two hours later she saw Smithwhite talking to another resident and later checked that it was the same woman featured in reports about her jailing.
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‘It is definitely her living there,’ she said.
Smithwhite was an officer at HMP Frankland, near Durham, where Warren was serving time.
She was jailed for two years in 2020 at Durham Crown Court for misconduct in public office.
Warren became an international drug trafficker worth tens of millions of pounds after being born in Toxteth and leaving school with no qualifications.
Officers then breached the door wearing protective clothing
Warren (right) could be seen being led away from the property and into a car
Warren is currently in police custody
He was sent to Borstal at 18 for attacking a police officer and being involved in a riot.
On his release, the 5ft 9in, barrel-chested fitness fanatic worked as a bouncer, and took steroids to bulk up, in an attempt to appear even more intimidating.
He was eager to exert a ruthless authority over the streets of Liverpool. He ‘taxed’ prostitutes and their punters in the city’s red light district by threatening them with blackmail if they did not meet his financial demands.
In 1983, he was jailed for five years for armed robbery. But for Warren, prison simply provided an entree into the real criminal underworld.
He made contacts who, on his release, helped him establish himself as a top player in a nationwide drug-dealing network.
He forged links with a Colombian drugs lord to guarantee the best supply of cocaine into the country, and came to realise that establishing links with international dealers was the way to move into the upper echelons of Britain’s drug hierarchy.
In 1992, he was among 28 people arrested on suspicion of masterminding a 1,000-kilo shipment of cocaine to the UK.
However, he was acquitted halfway through the trial when the judge ruled there was insufficient evidence against him.
It was said that when he walked free from court he taunted officers who had brought the prosecution by saying: ‘I’m off to spend my f*****g money,’ but Warren denies uttering those words. A few years later, he moved to Holland.
Around that time he was named as Interpol’s ‘Target One’ – a ranking that made him the most wanted international criminal. Consequently, Dutch police placed him under surveillance, tapped his phones and tailed him.
In 1997 he was jailed for 12 years following a Dutch police investigation that established he was importing cocaine and cannabis worth £125 million into Britain.
In the same year he made his appearance in The Sunday Times Rich List as a ‘property developer’ and by 2005 the newspaper estimated his wealth at around £76million.
He was also organising shipments of guns and hand grenades, tools of the gangland trade. In jail he established himself as a hard man when he beat a Turkish inmate to death. He was sentenced to a further four years for manslaughter.
It was after he was released in 2007 that he moved to Jersey. Two years later he was jailed there for 13 years for a plot to ship £1million of cannabis to the island.
The Jersey court drew on evidence from his life in Holland, and heard how Dutch police intercepts of phone calls show he had squirrelled away his money in investments.
Curtis Warren arriving to a hearing at the Royal Court in Jersey in October 2009
It is claimed by the National Crime Agency that he invested £4 million in a gold mining venture in Guyana, as well as more money in petrol stations, properties in numerous countries and a pallet business.
The judges were told: ‘The stark fact is that Warren had ways of laundering his assets in ways that are simply untraceable.’ In one recording he was heard to say that he used a ‘cheap’ money launderer who only charged one per cent commission.
It was said that on ten separate occasions between 1991 and 1996 he passed around £10 million through this contact, meaning he laundered a staggering £100 million. From this figure alone it was calculated that his assets, after inflation, were worth more than £170 million.
Warren was given a Serious Crime Prevention Order in October 2013 which banned him from owning more than one phone and he was forced to declare his movements and finances.
The following month at a three-week confiscation hearing at Jersey Crown Court, prosecutors claimed he had a £198million drugs fortune tied up around the world.
However he told The Guardian he was unable to pay such a ‘fantastic’ amount and said ‘there is no money’.
In December 2013 a court imposed a 10-year prison sentence after he did not pay up the £198million in the given 28 days.
While he was remand in La Moye prison in Jersey in 2007, Teresa Rodrigues, a former senior manager at La Moye who ran the drugs and alcohol counselling unit, confessed to an affair with the gangster.
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday in 2014 she claimed it lasted two years and only ended when he was convicted of drugs smuggling and transferred to a prison on the mainland.
Lisbon-born Ms Rodrigues said: ‘We had sex in his little cell most days.’
This morning Warren was arrested seven months after being released from prison in a dawn raid.
Footage shows officers battering through the door of the property before apprehending Warren in what appears to be a bedroom.
An officer can be heard informing Warren, 60, of the reasons for his arrest before he is led away and placed in a car.
He is currently being held in custody and questioned over alleged breaches of his order, which came into effect when he was released from prison in November after serving 14 years.
Officers from the agency carried out searches at the location in Boldon and another address in the Royal Albert Dock area of Liverpool.
Mobile devices, documents and a quantity of cash were seized, and they are now being examined by investigators, it confirmed.
On Warren’s arrest, Alison Abbott, from the NCA’s Lifetime Management of Offenders Team, said: ‘These court orders are vital tools for preventing and deterring future offending.
‘Once criminals come onto our radar, they never leave, and the NCA will take action over breaches.’
The gangster’s former barrister, Anthony Barraclough, told the Mirror: ‘I can confirm that he was arrested at 6am this morning. Any breaches will be minor transgressions.
‘These will be very fine interpretations of restrictions I anticipate. I imagine he was in Tyneside to visit friends.
‘He is allowed to travel and have mobile phones, bank accounts and up to £1,000 in cash. He can travel abroad if he gives seven days notice. If he is going to be away from home he needs permission and he has had permission.
‘I have not spoken to him yet as he is in custody.’
