When Craig Bennett was finally brought back from Spain last year, it marked another small victory against the kind of calculated criminality that leaves streets awash with drugs and weapons. Yesterday at Reading Crown Court the 41-year-old learned he would spend the next 14 years behind bars for running a conspiracy worth £3.75 million.
The National Crime Agency investigation began after Bennett was identified as a user of the encrypted communications platform EncroChat. Investigators recovered messages exchanged between March and June 2020 that laid bare his central role. He controlled the acquisition of significant quantities of cocaine, ketamine, cannabis and hashish. He brokered handovers between suppliers and clients. And he directed couriers to move both drugs and illicit cash on multiple occasions.
Bennett also moved two firearms, ammunition and a silencer. That detail raises the stakes. These were not abstract offences. The weapons carried lethal intent, the kind that turns local drug disputes into something far darker. The organised crime group he led supplied 91.8 kilograms of drugs with a street value of exactly that £3.75 million figure now attached to his name.
It is quite clear for each and every one of you your offending was so serious that only a custodial sentence is appropriate.
Her Honour Judge Drake delivered those words on 21 July as she sentenced the four men. Bennett received 14 years. Lucien Robinson got five. Gerald Tohill, convicted at trial in March 2026, was jailed for nine. Peter Robinson, 75, received a 12-month sentence suspended for 12 months back in June. The collective total came to 28 years. Sentences for Bennett and Lucien Robinson were reduced because they pleaded guilty late last year.
The arrests and extradition tell their own story of quiet persistence. Bennett was detained in Barcelona in July 2025 during a Policía Nacional operation supported by National Crime Agency international liaison officers. He was extradited to Britain the following month. His co-defendants Gerald Tohill and Lucien Robinson had collected and distributed the drugs and cash under his orders. Peter Robinson helped hide the proceeds.
What stands out is the evidence from EncroChat itself. Criminals who used that platform believed they were beyond the reach of the law. They were wrong. The platform was infiltrated by international law enforcement in 2020, and the resulting Operation Venetic has produced convictions up and down the country. This case forms part of that wider effort.
