MEMBERS of a Black Country gang who were part of a large scale operation to smuggle cannabis and mobile phones into prisons across the Midlands have been jailed for more than 37 years.

Birmingham Crown Court was told the offences were committed between July 2015 and May this year and involved remote controlled drones, equipped with a fishing line and hooks, being flown to cell windows where inmates - in contact with the pilot - used tools to retrieve smuggled items.

The group of 11 men and women, aged between 19 and 51, and from areas including Brierley Hill, Tividale, Tipton and Walsall, were made up of serving prisoners in various jails and their accomplices on the outside.

The gang wrapped the items together in packages, sometimes concealing them in drink bottles, before throwing them into the prison grounds or flying them in using drones.

The drones would either deposit the packages in the prison grounds to be picked up by inmates, or they were flown to a specific cell window for an inmate to pull the package in using a broom handle with a hook attached to it.

They used mobile phones to contact each other when drop offs were made. A number of the packages were intercepted by officers and a police investigation was launched.

Using data from mobile phones and drones, the prosecution was able to identify the defendants as the perpetrators of the offences.

The recovered drugs were found to have an estimated value in prison of up to £370,000. However, there were multiple drone flights that were not intercepted so the true value of the drugs alone, based on an average delivery, is estimated to be up to £1.2 million.

Craig Hickinbottom, 35, described as a ‘leading’ player in the plot, was jailed for seven years and two months.

Hickinbottom, who was a prisoner at HMP Featherstone in Staffordshire, and later HMP Hewell in Redditch, organised deliveries to both jails during the conspiracy.

Drone pilot Mervyn Foster, 36, of High Street, Tipton, received a sentence of six years and eight months for his part in the conspiracy.

Hickinbottom’s 32-year-old partner, Lisa Hodgetts, from Tividale, admitted money laundering and was given a 16-month suspended prison term.

Also receiving sentences were: John Quinn, 35, of Swancroft Road, Tipton, who was jailed for four years, John Hickinbottom, Craig's brother, jailed for four years and eight months, Terry Leach, 19, of Wednesbury Oak Road, Tipton, for a two-year suspended jail sentence, while Ashley Rollinson, 21, of Waiver Road, Brierley Hill, was jailed for 11 months.

Meanwhile, Yvonne Hay, 41, and her boyfriend, Francis Ward, of Bloxwich Road, Walsall, were both jailed for two years and four months for their part.

Sentencing, Judge Roderick Henderson said: “Prisons are difficult enough places to run - they contain people who are dangerous and vulnerable.

“Supplying things into prison that should not be there - drugs, phones, tools and the like - threatens proper management and creates real risks of violence and loss of control and discipline.

“To do that is desperately serious.”