#355. Liverpool’s Drug Lord: 19 Years Behind Bars Smuggling Millions - John Burton

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3:13Try Quo for free. Plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to Quo.com slash tech. That's Q-U-O dot com slash tech. Everyone wanted to be me mate and started getting a bit more respect because they knew I was capable of doing something. If you give me a gun, I'd f***ed out at someone, it wouldn't bother me.

3:32John Burton: How did you end up getting banged up for 19 years? I was involved in drugs importation. It was ecstasy, cocaine, weed. When you were at your peak, how much were you earning? Just under 200 grand a week. Then obviously I had sunbed shops, I had cars, watchers, nightclub I had, I had Dave Courtney up, Royce Shaw, Joey Pyle. They were all my mates like in the 90s. My life was all about like being heavy, hench, have a fight. My nickname was Juice Bomb John, that's what my mates called me because I was putting that much gear in me. I was working at the time with a Scottish guy, but I knew something weren't right about him.

4:05And yeah, he was up to something, ended up being age and provocateur, but that's when we got nicked. Like I was in the front of the Echo I was this multi-million pound bloody cigarette importer They put you as the kingpin? Yeah, yeah, they asked me as the drug lord He went and raided me house I'll never forget my son's face And all them police coming with guns They went and arrested all my family the next day And charged them all with money laundering Crime doesn't pay You know, there's three ways you're going to come out in life in crime Dead, prison or very fucking lucky

4:41John Burton: Hey guys, we've been running this podcast now for five and a half years. We've had some most amazing business guests on here. Simon Squibb, Daniel Priestley, Barry Hearn. The list just goes on and on from billionaires to people who have built brands. If you want to come on the podcast and talk about your business and sit here with me in the studio and tell your story, go check out dodgewoodall.com forward slash guest and check out the three minute video. We've also left the link below as well. John, welcome to the show, mate. Thanks, mate. Nice to meet you, Dodge. Yeah, mate, this is good. We've been talking for a while.

5:11John Burton: Yeah, we have, yeah. Let's roll all the way back. How did you end up getting banged up for 19 years? So there's a little story on that. What happens is I got two sentences. I got a 14 and I got a 5. So I'll tell you about what happens is I was involved in drugs importation and supplying different parts of the country and stuff. and then I got arrested in February 2011 goes into the police station had me in the cells all night and I've come out in the morning go to the sergeant's desk how are you feeling John I'm of sound any suicidal thoughts I went no no just talking I went I've seen a load of names behind them and I've gone hey Sarge what's all them names there behind you my dad, my girlfriend your cousins your family what's all them in oh yeah they're all in the cells around the corner I went I said hang on a minute what are they in the cells for I went they've had nothing to do with my life he said well they're all in the cells I went right I said go and get your arresting officers get me solicitor in I said let's get this done straight away and then what happens is I went through all the evidence they had on me and to be honest Dodge when they come for you they've got they've got their evidence they need 80 % of that evidence I was banged to write to I couldn't really get out of it the other 20 % I knew they couldn't have me on it I said I'll tell you what I'll do with you I said I'll plead today to that 80 % I said I had nothing to do with the 20 % I'll plead to that 80 % as long as you get them out and you do not charge them with anything so the solicitor the investigating officers we went through all the day all everything come to the decision yeah okay we'll charge you with the 80 % of them and we'll let your family out today when it's okay sound.

7:02So, get charged, get sent to prison.

7:08John Burton: What did you get sent to prison for? Supplier of class A, class B. So, obviously, there was ecstasy. There was, well, not so much ecstasy, MDMA, cocaine, weed, probably been doing amphetamine. I think anything you can get your hands on apart from smack and crack. Yeah. I'd been dealing in for years anyway. So all they really got me with was 240 kilo of weed and a little bit of Charlie, what they seen on phone evidence. Yeah. I was onto them. I always remember the day I just had a ton of weed and I had some other white bits inside my stash. And I always picked the wagons up myself. Hold on, hold on.

7:55John Burton: A ton of weed? Yeah. And what was the equivalent for on a pound note back then, roughly? I think like the weed we were doing then was Rocky. So it was your nine bars. So probably getting them home, you're probably getting a grand 1 ,100 kud on them back at home. But was cocaine later? Well, cocaine to me, I'd say late 80s, early 90s. It was in our country in the early 80s, but you know yourself, it was more city boys. Yeah, city boys. Yeah, because they could afford, you know, they could afford to sort of pay like 100 quid a gram, especially 85, 86, you know, 100 quid's a lot of money. But then when cocaine started coming over, people understood that you could start mixing it.

8:39So like if we had three kilos of cocaine, we'd take nine ounces out of each and we've just created ourself another kilo by putting nine ounces of, well, you'd hardly use, the majority would be benzocaine. Sometimes if they hadn't been mixed, you could use lysacaine. But if you use lidocaine with benzocaine and cocaine, it'll go like a mushy yellow. Okay. And then it needs to be dried out and stuff again. Okay. So we just stuck with the nine ounces out, nine ounces in,

9:06John Burton: but we were creating ourself an extra kilo per three. Yeah. So it was, you know yourself in that world, it's about maximizing your profits. You know, so to us, we started making them, but we also started making, I'll tell you the story. So I was in jail in 2004 for cigarettes. and I ended up getting a college course doing welding. So hold on, let's break this down for people who don't know it there. Yeah. You're importing fags from Spain to England? No, from the Far East. From the Far East? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, and how are you importing them? Wagons and trailers. So I think every wagon probably had between 30 and 32 ,000 sleeves.

9:44A wagon is in a truck? Yeah, a 40-foot trailer, yeah. 40-foot, okay. So I'll go back to the early, late 90s. Yeah. And started working with the cigarettes. Started seeing the profit in it. Started seeing the jail sentence, which was shit. Yeah. But for ecstasy and drugs, they were going higher and higher. So we ended up getting into the ciggies. And basically we were getting 30, 32 ,000 sleeves in per day. Now the first one I ever got in. So one sleeve is how many packs of fags? Well, one sleeve is 200.

10:16John Burton: You know the sleeves are like 200. Yeah, so how many packs is that? That would have been about 10 packs per sleeve. No, per sleeve you have 200. so you know when you get like a sleeve of cigarettes there's 200 ciggies in each container, in each wagon we'd have 30 to 32 ,000 of them we'd have them in cover so we'd have them in 3 piece suites, we'd have them in water boilers, we'd have them in boilers refrigeration wall with all the cork everything in so we had them every cover we could think of we put them in. And give me an example just there bringing the fags in, what it would be from China Well listen, it was more like and then what were you flipping Turkeyways them ones yeah yeah now we were working with duty frees at that time so all the siggies weren't fake they were duty frees so Regal King size number one Super King blue Super King black Benson and Edges we couldn't sell up north we had to send down south Marlborough we had to send down south Silk Cut so all the main brands of them we were sort of working with I was working at the time with a Scottish guy turned out to be a wrong and in the end but I knew something weren't right about him and then one day we'd been working for him we were only getting like a grand to help him turn the wagons over but every day he was robbing them and I went you can't keep robbing people he meant fuck them they won't know I went well if they find out it's on you it's not on us we're just doing the count and giving him the count and then he asked me then to go to the airport to pick two of the people up from the far east and these were seriously fucking hip big people and I mean like israelian and turkish and i'm talking like top of the tree over there and i went and met them it took them to the hotel this guy didn't turn up so i ended up having to give them 50 grand looked after them sent them home everything was fine about a week later i get a phone call from abroad and they said look we want you to come and come over and have a meet with us i went what for he said well we want to talk to you about obviously what's been going on i was a bit like my mate said look they're going to iron you out he said you got I said but if they don't iron me out then they're going to give me an opportunity that I think it's too hard to miss and he went Bertie he went I'm fucking telling you now don't go and I went you know what I got on with the guys when they were there I thought if they want to iron me out they can but I thought I got on with them well enough to go over and have a conversation because this other Scottish rat was up to something and yeah he was up to something ended up being agent provocateur but I'll get to that in the end.

12:49So it goes over on my own. To where? Turkey.

12:54John Burton: Yeah. So it goes over on my own to Istanbul. Gets picked up at the airport. There was a code name. Got picked up by driving through Istanbul. I'll never forget this because it was in the back of a Mercedes limo. And you know, like when you stop at lights over there, all the young kids start getting on and washing the windows. This fella couldn't speak a word of English, but he's wound the windows down and just clattered one of these kids and I've gone, yeah, mate, you can't fucking do that. And he's just turned around and went, shh, with a little evil eyes. And I thought, fuck this. But I said to me, mate, I went, look, I'm taking my contract phone with me, which was a knock here at the time.

13:30I said, if I feel unsafe for anything, I'm going to ring you. Don't talk on it. Just let the phone carry on. So I've got a signal and I've got a destination of what's going to happen to where I'm going to happen. He couldn't speak English anyway, so I was like, fuck this, this is going off here. and then we've got over the river gone towards the mountains and then we've gone into where these people live now and I seen this fucking house and the armed guards and stuff at the front I knew they were proper serious people yeah and I've gone in there now the little guy I'm not going to name him but the little guy he was only five foot he was a force to be reckoned with this man I didn't know at the time but his wife spoke proper English and he was little bit English you get me but he was Israeli and I've ended up getting there and I was thinking how was this going to react so I've got in and the both of them come running over and hugged me and stuff and I really felt comfortable about it but I already had my mate on the phone call and I had my phone in my pocket just live if you get me just so I had a place where I was or a destination got on with them really well and we got ready took us out to into Istanbul to this big restaurant beautiful gorgeous restaurant on the river us in a Mercedes and there was an X5 in front and an X5 behind with people and we've gone to this restaurant that's when I realised how serious this guy was we've walked in the restaurant and the fucking whole restaurant stopped and stood up and I've looked at his missus and I've gone who the fuck is he I'll tell you later so we've gone in we've sat down and I think this was at the time when like Turkish plays there was a few take us i remember one of them hack and secure i was a great player yeah yeah i remember him yeah well he was in there he come over and they were all sitting and they were all passing envelopes and stuff and i i said to his missus i went fuck me i said what am i getting myself into she went look he really likes you he said so he said you just play the game right he said you you you'll have him and he'll have you i went all right so we had a meal and stuff goes back to the house gets me head down about half seven in the morning my door gets launched open gets all my kit he went right out move now quick puts me in the back of an x5 takes me to the intercontinental hotel in istanbul spoke to the manager come out and see me and said john i went yeah he went right presidential suite anything you want you can have he said just get up there now gets up there i was there three days yeah no one being in touch with me yeah i was thinking what the fuck's going on here best thing about that i was there and i was at the top floor galatasaray and fenerbahce were playing but watching them fight in the park yeah i could just see everything i was sitting there like a little fucking kid with sweet goat get in there because they all have like the drums and all that then they'll come in they'll have a clash

16:17John Burton: I'd love to go to that game I'll tell you what I'd love to go to that game get it that's why Fenerbahce yeah yeah but this was outside this was in a park right in front of the hotel where they were coming in clashing coming back the bands were having a little bop then they were coming in yeah it was just mayhem but it was good to see and then he came over then he come over with a Turkish head on show and we agreed like how to start doing the cigarettes for them and then what they said to me is, get these first 10 out the way. He said, man, what we'll do is we'll set you up, whatever you make now, put your money in and then we'll put you as a partnership in it.

16:52Which was good for us, you know what I mean? Because we would just tear our scouts as just making money here and there, but we knew this was a stepping stone in it.

17:01John Burton: How old roughly would you have been then? In my 20s. 20s, okay. Yeah, probably about 28, 29 at the time. Okay. So we're going probably 1998, 1999. and then he arranged everything and then on the way we were getting off he took me into the Cartier shop and I was just looking I didn't know what he was doing but he bought me and my missus at the time a watch each and then he gave me 10 grand to go home with and I went what's that for? He said that's a thank you for coming he said but I've got a good feeling about you John and I think we can make quite a lot of money so goes home and stuff a few days later gets a phone call right there's a load in barnsley i went fucking barnsley what the fuck are you doing there yeah so i've ended up i've shot up to barnsley i've brought me my best mate with me and they've gone up there and we had i think we counted about 31 000 sleeves on it and i had two customers they come up the two of them bought them straight away empty a day and then went to the hotel now we've been bearing in mind this is the first time i've got near 400 grand in cash and i've had to fucking counter yeah well obviously you don't realize how fucking long of course especially when you're using your hands yeah mate now i think it took me about five or six hours to just because all my money was always tens fifties fives twenties all headed up all in grand wrapped up yeah with a band a band and another band yeah but when i had to take that money to the exchange all the time it was never ever wrong it was always bang on the money in the exchange people just loved what we were doing so does all that paid everyone i need to pay and then i was left with a bag of cash so i phoned them i went right i've done all them ones what do you want me to do with this he went whatever's left there is yours and i went you what he went whatever's left there yours now there's probably about 50 55 65 grand or something there every day we were like fucking hell yeah you know you're just like you've gone from like getting a grand just for organizing people too.

19:00Yeah. And then I realized how much this other rat was fucking making. Do you know what I mean? And I thought, you twat, we were doing all your work. And basically you were taking, you were robbing them and you were also earning money on it. They knew he was robbing them. Yeah. Because when they do a count, if they put 31 ,000 sleeves across, they know what that count is. They're not stupid. But every day, every time he was taking like 500, 600 sleeves of ciggies, but still a lot of money. He was doing it daily. So does all that, pays it, goes back. He went, right, you've got one a day now for the next month.

19:36So we had Monday to Friday. We had one consignment every day coming in. To different parts of the UK or to up north? No, just to up north. So wherever they were getting them into Felixstowe or the docks, they were getting them out of there and then they were just moving them to us from there. They all have friendly drivers and stuff. And then we started smashing the fucking ass out of it. We had slaughters everywhere. I had Scotland Box. they had Newcastle slaughters at warehouses where you just stash it yeah yeah where you could just go in and say look there's a couple of grand let me do an unload today and let me get get off and then I'd go back in a couple of months I'd try and change them you know frequently yeah and got my own little team around us got going we were smashing one a day obviously hence we went and bought money machines yeah after that episode in Barnsley yeah yeah yeah first thing we'd done was been buying money machines so at the time we had we used to have like four women.

20:29We'd have them in shorts and bra tops. So they couldn't stash? Yeah, yeah. We knew money was going missing here and there. We caught one or two of them out, which we weren't really asked about, but we'd said to them, look, you didn't need to do that. If you're fucking short of money, we'll give you that. Because you're getting people coming with like 100 grand, 150 grand, you know, you'd have two or three customers would come and basically buy the lot or you'd have one customer would come and just buy the whole 32 ,000 sleeves of it. And if you're talking between 18 and 20 quid purse leave so do your maths it was quite a lot of money and we were smashing the arse out of it going great

21:03John Burton: how long were you smashing it for? well we got about six months out of it but I'll get to that story in a minute because once I'd done a couple of months we agreed to pay them more money than what they wanted just so we could start our own our own little journey with them and start making some really good money and we I'd gone back over to see them abroad and they sat me down they went right we're going to do this this and this this money you've put in put a bit more in and then we're going to split this three ways with the three of us so me and my boys we're going to end up coming out of it pretty well so we had 26 wagons they all had 32 ,000 sleeves in and then you had four containers that were in Felixstowe docks they all had 90 ,000 sleeves in so I think all in all there's probably around 1.2 million sleeves of cigarettes now if you added them out at 20 pounds a sleeve then you're coming up with quite a lot lot of money and him we got the first one in and that batch coming in then what we're talking about then is that coming in one hit over a month yeah so one would be coming one a day okay so the first one turns up fucking benson and edges so we couldn't sell benson and edges up north no one were interested in benson and edges but everyone in london was all over benson and edges and malbury yeah so what we done is we took a little hit on it give it to one of our pals down there and let him sell that.

22:23The next one coming was fucking Marlborough. The next one coming was still cut. Then it was fucking Benson and we were like, for fuck's sake. But we were still earning. Yeah. And then the fifth one coming, it was Regal King size. Smashed that out. And then the sixth one coming, that's when we got nicked. No. Yeah, we got nicked on the sixth one because something flagged with the freight company. Yeah.

22:45John Burton: Too often. Yeah, it was something to do with the Scottish guy, but we didn't know at the time. And then we all got arrested. where were you that day when you got arrested David Lloyd whereabouts Kirby Kirby just outside Liverpool I'll never forget it I was sitting there having my breakfast I'd just been on the phone to Turkey and I'd just been on my other phone to my pals around the corner who received the loads so I'd just phone them on my little Percy one my Basher one and said right it's Landers everything's good we're on and then just as I'd put the phone down I've seen these four fellas walking towards me now I'm eating a breakfast here I'm bearing in mind I was probably 16, 16 stone odds at the time, pretty fucking big.

23:25And they've covered me phones. And he's run HMP Customs. First thing I thought, he's got the fucking phone I really need. So as he stepped back, I've gone, boosh, and pulled the phones out of him. I went and asked about my Percy one. I dropped that. But I had like, I don't remember the Nokia's that used to turn around, like the silver one. I had one of them. I needed the SIM out of it.

23:47John Burton: Yeah. so I smashed him grabbed that out of the phone I run to the back of David Lloyd kicked the doors up smashed everywhere people having breakfast coming out of the gym just sitting everywhere and I'm getting chased through the gym by these four fellas so I'm taking my sim out outside and they're by me I went look the first one near me I want to fucking knock you clean out I just needed my sim got the sim out Eddie and through the phone you're fucking right I did yeah what can they do you know they're not going to get an R here but the only thing I thought bury it or swallow it you know what I mean so snapped it swallowed it and then the police come for me then and the cop had come over to me and went look are you going to make this hard for us I went to be honest mate I'm not arsed about you I'm not going with these fucking dickheads and he went to be honest we fucking ate them anyway he went come out didn't even handcuff me walked me straight out of the gym and took me to a copy lane police station they went and raided me house nicked all the lads who were there went and raided all theirs and then basically that was December 2000 yeah and then they put it piece by piece together so all these wagons that were like abroad or on the way with like water boilers silk reels cover any cover that they knew what was us they tracked everything how long do you reckon they were following you for?

25:03I really think it started the day I went to the airport well I know the day I went to the airport right okay because the day I went to the airport and I'll name this fucker his name was Jerry Houston he was a Scottish fella and he lived in Sandbach. Is he still about today? Not that I know of. Someone said he died a long time ago, you know what I mean? And he died with a limp. So I don't know whatever went on with him, but that's him. But he just didn't do it to me. So we're all in court and he kept saying, I can't go to jail. There's no way I'm going to jail. And I kept getting this fucking weird feeling.

25:38And I said to my solicitors, I went, get in that fucking court. I said, and PII him. So PII is like a public protection, inquiry type of thing where if we've got a grass in the case they've got to let us know so he goes back the next day in court he'd been released with all charges now bearing in mind there was 172 calls between him and the freight company and him and Turkey putting the phones down I had two calls to the freight company so everything was pointing at him and then when he's come back out he said look what can we do to find out we can now go in and ask for all the other cigarette cases he's been involved in.

26:18So goes in, ask, comes out with a fucking list like that. He'd done it to every single person. He was a fella from... Pardon? Undercover. So what he was, no, he was agent provocateur. So what he was doing was working. He was grafting his ciggies, but he was putting people in along the way to the customs. So the customs basically would let him work, earn his money, as long as he put all us in on the way so they get a big charge. And that's the game he was playing in. Anyway, he walked because we pleaded guilty because, look, we were all fucking banged to rights. If we'd have pleaded not guilty, we'd have walked.

26:50Yeah. But you look at the sentence, you think, you know what?

26:53John Burton: Four years? Fuck it. Is that what it was, was it? Yeah, yeah. Wow. So I ended up for that. So you must have known. Obviously, you must have known. Even if we get caught, it's only going to be a small one. It was only white collar. Yeah, okay. You know what I mean? And that time, there was no proceeds to crime. Yeah. It was confiscation. And then we ended up going to court. He walked out. We found out what he'd been in. but there was a guy who used to say he was really close to a guy from Bolivia called George fucking lovely old man and I reckon George was in his 70s he'd done that to George as well so George was on his way somewhere with money and he said look I'm stuck on the motorway can you go and pick these up from the airport and can you just look after them with the money so he dumped it in what he'd done to me and then basically it was later on we found out but when we were in court anyway we had there was 26 wagons that they knew was come over.

27:4316 of them were still in Europe and there was four containers that were on Felix Doe docks. When we were getting, we got sentenced that ended up with six years. You got a six, did you? Yeah, down to four because we pleaded guilty. They put you as six as the ringleader or not? Yeah, yeah. They did, okay. I think every case I've been involved in I've been the head of the organised crime group. Okay. I've never been one to be a middleman person. I've always gone to my source and try and get it myself. And then they gave me six, dropped it to the four but we got nicked in december 2000 and you they dropped his fault because you pleaded guilty yeah you get 32 discount yeah but it took them three and a half years to sentence us because of all the shit what was going on with him that we brought up and stuff but we'd already pleaded guilty which i think was a bit of a mistake yeah but you know we we thought get a lesser sentence we're all nicked we're fucked anyway especially the lads they were all hands on yeah you know so they all got like loaders and stuff like that and then I got a significant role in it and then the judge said he said look Mr.

28:43Burton he said but while you've been on bail for three and a half years he said I respect that you've never been in trouble since he went so what I'm going to do is knock six months off the floor for being for good behaviour while you're being on aim and he said now you're eligible for a tag yeah I thought brilliant fuck it and then a couple of months later it goes back for me confiscation order and I was in there they were tallying everything up and he said right Mr. Burton we believe leave that you've evaded tax by 14 million pounds so you find today is 14 million pounds and i've gone to the judge i knew what i was doing i went i said i don't understand that judge he went what you mean i've evaded duty he said well mr burton he says when your consignments come in through the waters into the uk he said that means you've evaded tax paying tax on on them cigarettes i went yeah i said they understand that bit is it a tax or the vat it's a tax well tax on that it's It's tax evasion, but it's that, isn't it?

29:37Okay, yeah, yeah. And so I said, I understand that bit. He said, well, what don't you understand, Mr. Burton? I said, the 16 consignments that were still in Europe, I said, they never entered English waters. And I went, how can you do me for them? And he went, actually, Mr. Burton, you've actually got a point there. Looked at the prosecutor. He was fucking beaming beetroot. And he went, could you take them 16 consignments off Mr. Burton's proceeds of crime, please? So straight away, it went down to like, probably about two million quid. then obviously I had sunbed shops I had cars watchers nightclub I had lap dancing club I just tried to try and legitimise yourself but it's really hard to do it especially when you've got a fucking lap dancing club Thursday, Friday, Saturday with 35 fucking birds on there it's fucking it's hard isn't it and then all your mates are like Saturday nights lads coming over you but do you know what I've got to admit we had an absolute fucking scream in that place and then I had like I had Dave Courtney up, Roy Shaw, Joey Pyle.

30:38They were all my mates in the 90s, you know what I mean? So they used to come up and we'd have a fucking scream up there. And then, look, I went to jail. I was angry going to jail. Angry towards who? The Scottish fella? Well, angry towards the Scottish fella, but I was quite happy with the end result for him anyway. But they took a lot of my properties. Now, I remember, I'll tell you this story because it can happen. And the night before I got arrested, my mate come to my house with 135 grand. And I said, what the fuck are you doing bringing that here? He went, John, I'm going away in the morning.

31:15He went, the only place I've got to do it now is drop it. So I went, all right, I said, drop it. And I have fitted wardrobes, but just to the sides of it, there was a little compartment like that that just used to go up. And it used to just fit money, you know what? So I'm sitting in the cell thinking. and I said to my solicitor I went look I've got a load of fucking dough in the house he went fuck off I went yeah he said it's stashed I went it is but I said if you'd look around the fucking corner you'd see it blatantly so then they'd done all the searches come back and they showed us what they found and I'm looking at my brief going

31:48John Burton: yeah yeah I'm looking at my brief going I'm thinking if they fucking slotted it yeah you know what I mean but he went that's all we got he said so what they done is went through everything and obviously because we got sorted like in the station we'd end up getting jail anyway but I spoke to me bird with my wife at the time I said go upstairs I said and look at the wardrobe see if my she knew when I said see if my t-shirts are there to put into the prison and she come back she went yeah all your t-shirts are all there she went what I'll do I'll fold them up and I'll get them sent to you I mean and yeah it's still there and I was like fucking hell yeah because they took everything you know what I mean but you know while you're in prison it fucking costs you a lot of money I mean like you've got family out there, visits coming in, you know, it still costs you a lot of money while you're in.

32:36And I come out then probably, I had money left, but not as much as I'd wanted. And I put a lot of my money into all them wagons to capitalise on a bigger...

32:45John Burton: So what's the knock-on effect then? The knock-on effect, you put the money in the wagons. What are the people who you'll do that money to? No, no, it was a partnership between the three years. The Turkish. Yeah. Did you have a conversation with the Turkish lot, Sal? I've just been nicked. Nothing gets back to them. Well, I got them out the country. Yeah, okay. So I got them out the country and stopped them going to jail. Yeah, okay. And they respected that. But they knew then where everything come from. Yeah. And it all boiled down to them, basically. Yeah. They were like fine and they always respected me for like getting them away from it and not getting jailed in this country.

33:19Because if they'd have got jailed in here, they'd have got fucked here. Yeah. So we ended up getting them out, getting them away. And then just, and do you know what? I've never, I've never spoke to them. What since? Yeah, I've never spoke to them. Would you? I don't think they'll be alive. No, okay. You know what I mean? Because I think in the 2000, I think the little fella was probably 60 at that time. You know what I mean? He had a son and stuff, but I get a letter to say, we can't thank you enough for what you've done. And we understand that you're away and anything you need, you only need to ask shit, but what you've done for us, we'd never be able to repay you back and a big thank you type of thing.

33:59It's like now I've got one of them, weird memories. I've still got their phone numbers in my head. I know they wouldn't be working now, but from like 20 odd years ago, I could still remember them, them numbers straight through. And then it goes to jail. I was angry that they took property, sunbed shops, like sunbed shops were earning us a fucking fortune at the time as well. And they took everything. So when you go to prison, like I was in the front of the Echoes, this multi million pound bloody cigarette importer. And everyone, like I walked into jail and everyone was like, yeah, John, they all want to be your mate but then you meet certain people in jail who are pretty big hitters who are in long sentences who always want you to work doing stuff and I thought you know what I'm going to come out get myself a fucking right few quid together and then get out of the game it's not as easy as that so it comes out in 2005 how long did you actually do

34:49John Burton: in the end? I only done 17 and a half months and then I done I think it was 4 or 6 months on tag I can't really remember and were you straight when you were in there you go I've got a straight back I'm going to go straight back at it again. I had no choice. No choice. Yeah, because I put all my money into like clubs, shops, businesses I thought that would turn everything around and get me a bit straight, you know what I mean? But they knocked me down, put me back to like square five, not square one. Yeah. Because I still had a bit of dough to come out to and a few things that I had. Did you have the 135 to come out to?

35:21I had a bit more than that. Yeah, yeah. But that's just what was in the house in the night time. And that was only because my mate was going on holiday. Yeah. And I said, I never have anything in my house. But he said, John, I've got nowhere to go. Lovely little stash place though, isn't it? To be honest, yeah. Do you know what? It was just like one of them where if you had five grand, you just put it there.

35:39John Burton: Yeah. But it was just the exact width. You could pile it up. Yeah, yeah. And you could just pile it right up. And that's what it was. And then I come out. I'd met a few people in jail then. And he said, look, do you fancy getting into this, this, and this? And we ended up getting into a few bits. And we ended up starting to send in a few bits home. What sort of bits? um weed yeah okay so we had four four runs on the go uh i was working with the lad in um the west midlands um john anslow yeah john escaped from a prison man in 2000 and well it was 2012 because i got cataid over it so in 2000 i'd gone away in 211 yeah the end of 211 john escaped out of a prison van in Reddage.

36:27Now, John's one of the best loyalist people you meet, but he's a fucking maniac. And... Still with us today? Yeah, he's still with us. He's not long got out, John. Okay. So he ends up getting out. He ends up going to Northern Cyprus. Now, he was in Northern Cyprus on the QT for a bit. And then one day he's walking home after about 14, 15 months. He said, a fucking tranny van pulled up doors open five or six fellas with balaclavas and guns knocked him out thrown him in the van he thought he was getting robbed John yeah yeah he took him over the border it was fucking police yeah yeah yeah so they're trying to do a BBC documentary on it now about what happened to him but like

37:08John Burton: so he was in Cyprus but the British old bill went into Northern Cyprus went to bring him back yeah they brought him they went yeah they took him from Northern Cyprus took him over the border and arrested him wow and he thought he was getting fucking ironed out and killed by gangsters it was plod all the way along yeah but he was like there was two scouts lads Kirk Bradley and Tony Downs they had escaped six months previous from Strangeways but the two escapes were done very very similarly I got the fucking blame for them I'm bearing in mind I was in jail I had nothing to do with it at all but I got the blame for them and then what they done they come to me in Walton and put me in the block in the seg put me in stripes and put me in the fucking dungeon freezing cold I had no telly I had a nightlight at a wind-up radio, reading fucking Marty in a cold book, so my head was going fucking west anyway.

37:57And they were just, I was there on a potential cat, eh? So the Home Office had to make a decision. They usually do that in 72 hours. My fucking luck, I was stuck in that cell for near three weeks. But it stunk as shit. There was shit all over the walls. There was dirty protests going on in cells downstairs. Okay. Do you know what I mean?

38:17John Burton: So let's just roll back a little bit. You don't, I want to get my head straight here. You got done with the ciggy. Yeah. And then when you come out, how long were you at it before you got nicked again? Six years. So you were at it for six years, just on the weed? Just on the weed and the coke and bits of MDMA. Okay. But the days when I was saying to you, we had like weed coming in, tonne. We had a tonne. My mate down there had a tonne. Yeah. But we'd had four goals before that, where we were having a bit in which was going good. And then all of a sudden, four containers on the run, all with two to four tonne of weed in, all went down.

38:50Okay. So something weren't right.

38:52John Burton: What's that feeling like when you know something's going down? Because you're on the dog head. Has it got through? Has it got through? You're everything sweet. You've got your money done. All of a sudden, four's gone down. And you think, oh, well. Well, it can put you in debt and it can start you back to square one. But also, it can put you in, yeah. You know, it can cause you a lot of troubles. But obviously, we knew what we were doing. You know, it was our bits. It was more my partners than mine. But I was just growing again. Yeah. And then the four of them went down. And then there's a story to this, right?

39:20so I fucks off over to Spain and spoke to the lads who's done the transport and I'm on the phone in the cafe while I'm talking to him next minute this Welsh guy comes in who I knew I went alright I'll be with you in a minute I didn't realise it was him who was selling the fucking weed to my mate right okay I knew the weeds were shit yeah so what it was done he was giving us it had Brabus on it I'll never forget it it had Brabus on it and it fucking stunk yeah it was like diesel weed you know like you get weed that's like diesel in yeah and the smell so what that sly little fucker was doing was buying it for 125 or 100 pounds under euro a key yeah and selling it to my mate in the midlands for four 450 okay but my mate in the midlands never ever knew i knew him and then when i'm come off the phone i've said to dicky who was who was the transport guy i went where's this fucking sit he went that wasn't walked in before i I went, fuck off.

40:16I went, that Welsh kid? He went, yeah. I went, I fucking know him. I went, that Ouija or Binds, does it have Brabison? And he went, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got in my car, flew straight down. He just took what he could and gone. Off-skies. Yeah, so what he was doing, he was, and then it was him phoning the authorities and saying, I've got information on. Because once he's got the paperwork, he's got the paperwork to say, look, it's been nicked. All right, brilliant. we can't do nothing in a party. But when he's doing what he's doing, so no one's seen him, he went missing like, but no one's ever seen him since.

40:51So what was he whacking the diesel in for? It wasn't. No, it wasn't. He was buying shit weed off people. Okay. So what he was doing was buying shit cheap weed and selling it to my mate. So my mate probably bought eight to ten ton of that over a period of a few months. But every one of them went down and it all went down because he was fucking letting, yeah. So basically he knew what he was doing and he was phoning the authorities, getting the things lifted and then he'd show paperwork then to say, look, the customs have got it. You know what I mean? So it put me and my mate in a bit of shit but we managed just to get out of it and then we went back to square one again.

41:27I always say in that game, the bigger you grow on it, the fucking harder you fall. Like I only started off doing little bags of weed. Then it started coming with trips and I would think trips in our days were like micro dots and stuff like that and then strawberries come and Windsor Pains you know like your blotted paper and then obviously your disco biscuits like I remember going to Quadrant Park when I was a kid I always remember going to a club when I was 17, 18 and the last 20 minutes the music had slowed down and you'd go and find a fucking ugly bird

41:58John Burton: 10 to 2 I don't know they were more like fucking 5 to 6 no no I'm saying 10 to 2 before the club closes yeah yeah yeah but then you go in and these were like you say there's a 2 o 'clock there's a 5 o 'clock there's a 9 o 'clock and then depending on how fucking bad you was you'd be there. And then I went to Quadrum Park and then that's where my life changed. Okay. Because I had my first disco biscuit. I think it was probably about 1989. I had the fucking best night of my life. But the rave years just started and they were great and that's where my life took a turn. Now, why did I start getting into criminality?

42:32I moved when I was seven in between Everton and Liverpool's ground. Are you a red or a blue? Blue. Okay. So I literally, two minutes to Anfield, two minutes to Goodison and I lived right facing Stanley Park where in them days the away support walk past us that way from Everton and the away support walk past us so every week we had a tear up so when you get to like 13, 14, 15 your hooligans like 1985, 86 we would have tear ups that end of the estate for Liverpool this end of the estate for Everton but like when I grew up there I was probably the dark dark skin kid on the estate so I got racially abused I got bullied I got chased everywhere you went like if we were fighting with different areas it'd be coughing for him the little packy kids at the front and I'm looking around thinking Erwin he meant me my two brothers were white I didn't look like me I thought I was adopted growing up I always did because my brothers were white and just didn't look like me and I always remember the big lads calling me over saying look John you're going to have to do something about that so I'd done something about it I'm not proud of what I'd done but put someone in a little bit of a serious state with something and then from the day after that everyone wanted to be my mate and I started getting a bit more respect because they knew I was capable of doing something if you give me a gun I'd fucking shot at someone it wouldn't bother me because it terrorised me that much I had to do something about it and then I started getting my old mates and that's what turned me into a criminal world because I was just a normal kid but after that I got the respect I got people wanting to hang around with me and then I started working with the big lads now bearing in mind 82, 83 in Liverpool I'd say 75 to 80 % of my mates were on heroin.

44:16This drug come into our estate, we only smoke weed at the time, Rocky. I had my first joint when I was about 11 and we were smoking weed, doing little robberies in factories and stuff just to get money and buy weed and stuff. But people then started taking heroin. Now that changed the culture then. Because if you lived on our estate, you would never grass on anyone. You would never mug at any old person and you would never rob anyone's house. but as soon as these these yeah yeah changes everything doesn't it yeah you know if you remember in them days you probably had a lechie meter that you used to put money in yeah and you had a telly that you'd get off like radio rentals with money in the back of it they were all fucking going anyone would rob an house just to get to the telly and to the lechie meter because they knew they was cashed here for smack and that's what changed the perception on there and like our estate was like Beirut and it was sad to see because you had so many really nice people it was just normal people who went on that male and female ended up fuck within three months yeah and they were all like why didn't you ever go on and i said because i've seen the state what it did to people and to be honest everyone scared me a joint was all right but adam was hard and then you had men men and women who were getting with each other on gear having kids their kids grew up with their mom and dads off their heads most of the time and these poor kids became problems when they were older.

45:38They just thought that was normality. But I always say, like, every five or ten years, you're going to get a new breed of criminal. You know, from where we were in the 70s and 80s to where people are now, they don't give a fuck. You know, and you see it out there now, you think, that wouldn't happen in our day. Like, if we were on a wing in the 80s or 90s and someone come in for beating fuck out of the missus, they wouldn't come on our wing. They'd go on a protection wing. You go in them now, they're everywhere. You know, it's like a normal thing now,

46:06John Burton: With the weed, did you get nicked? When I was a kid? With the Siggy's, you got nicked? Yeah. Well, the weed's... And afterwards, how long did you get? So I got a 14 and a five-year sentence, which was 19. This is what we started talking about to the front. So I got 14 years for the weed and the cocaine for supplying the UK. So the Siggy's was before that? Yeah, Siggy's got sentenced in 2004. Yeah. And then when did you get nicked for the weed? 2011 2011 what did you get for that so I got for the first one I got 14 years but because of me family were arrested I pleaded guilty in the police station I got 33 % discount on that now bearing in mind I'm in the CATA unit when I get sentenced so I'd been in stripes me and I didn't have no clothes to go to court and so I ended up borrowing clothes to go to court and that was too tight for me I looked like the fucking Hulk in there but I thought I had to put like a shirt on and stuff and when he lowered it from 14 to 9.5, I knew I didn't have to stay on the Cat A unit then.

47:10Yeah, okay. So I get rushed back in the Cat A bus to Strangeways. Takes me on the wing and the officers will call me and the governor went, right, look, you're under 10 years sentence. We're going to move you off the Cat A unit. You don't need to be on it. He said, you've been brilliant on here, John. He said, you've done everything right, he said, and just, we're going to get you off. Where were you when you got nicked? On. For the weed. For the weed. Where did I get nicked on the weed? I was in my house. Yeah. Yeah, they busted me three times, by the way. First time, they couldn't get me. Second time, they couldn't get me.

47:44The third time, they had all the evidence and got me. But I'll never forget my son's face when all them police come in with guns. He was 13, 14 at the time. And worse for him, like, they took his Nintendo, his PlayStation, his phone.

47:59John Burton: He was in the house at the time. Yeah, he lived with me, my son. Did they raid you early doors? yeah they raised me early towards and who's there you just me and my girlfriend at the time i'm uh yeah yeah i'll never forget his face yeah listen taking that's not a nice opportunity that must have been i'm glad my daughter weren't there because of the fucking terror of hide okay where how old was she she'd been our ben was 14 she would probably be about seven so she was i'm glad she went there to be honest then obviously i've gone in i've got 14 years down to nine and a half. When they raided you, how many coppers were there?

48:36Were they all armed? About 30. Not all of them armed, no. It was a certain amount of time. And what did they

48:42John Burton: put you as? They put you as a kingpin? Yeah, yeah. They asked me as the drug lord. So I had me as a drug lord. Of Liverpool? Yeah, well, of where I was doing. I never really shat on my own doorstep, if you get me. You know what I mean? I tried to keep my, all my bits were out of town. Like the odd few bits I'd have like little bits of Charlie or MDMA or tablets or little bits of weed in and around Liverpool, but the majority of my stuff was out of town. So what did they nick you on then? So conspiracy supply, class A and class B. Okay. We were 14 years for that. Goes back to the cat A uni. Tells me we're going to get me off.

49:18The police have been in touch with him and said keep him on the uni. And he went no we're not keeping him on. He's got under 10 years. We don't need to keep him on. They went and arrested all my family the next day and charged them all with money laundering. So then these are all looking at charges again where I'd agreed to plead to 80 % if they got suspended if they got let out and they got let out and then they charged them all so they got let out

49:39John Burton: and then they went back and nicked them again charged them yeah the day after I got sentenced they weren't happy with me getting more than 10 years do you know what I mean so they went back then arrested me cousins me dad a few of my family and charged them all with money laundering so then what I what did they get well when we went to court again they kept coming in saying and the prosecution said, would you plead to this? Would you plead? I went, no, look. I said, I'll tell you what I'll do with you. Get me a plea that gets all of these people in the dock with me, a suspended sentence so they don't go to jail.

50:11And I went, I'll sign it. I said, but I'm a fucking sign and nothing else until this is done. And then they come back with another deal. I went, no. And just as the judge was calling us back to court, I goes up in the lift, comes out the lift, the prosecutor was there with a deal on the table and it was like, take all these charges for money laundering and we'll let your family off with a suspended sentence. I went, you know what? Happy with that. I signed it, yeah. Well done. And then it goes in. It was quarter past three in the afternoon. Now, bearing in mind, I've got a grass who was in the case sitting behind me.

50:41I've got my dad there. Who's the grass? Some old fella who we used to go to the gym with. And the only reason he got nicked is he got me a car. Now, I bought a flat off him in Spain because I seen him in the gym crying one day. And I said, what's up? He said, I'm going to lose my house. everything now i'd had a house in florida that had sold and had a bit of money in my cousin's bank account and ended up giving i think i give him 77 grand i said look pay your pay your mortgage off sort the flat out i'll use the flat and when we sell it we'll split the profit and get my money back yeah and he was a really good guy but then he started doing moving all weed and mines and weed and containers and stuff for us as well then when he gets nicked everyone turned then started of blaming me but they all didn't know what he was doing he'd come the victim then saying I never done this so when could someone come in why did you do that to him I went hang on a minute I said do you know he'd been moving tons of weed and every bit all around the fucking no we never I went he fucking did so they all went back and kicked off at him but he went back voluntarily into the police station and told them where he got the money from for the flat and he never said nothing he wouldn't have got him so I ended up getting my family nicked then you know what I mean so he was there but he was probably 60 odd year old man and we go back into court.

51:57John Burton: That's 77G. Did you put your name to that? Well, it comes from one of my family's accounts. Yeah, so who got arrested. But him going into the police station made them aware of where it come from and then she got arrested for it. So we're fucked here as well. But these are all sitting in the dock and I said blatantly to the prosecution, any deal you get me that gets these out with a suspended sentence, I'll have because these shouldn't go to jail for what I've been involved in. well the judge come back in at quarter past three fucking hit the roof didn't he he went you've been doing bloody deals behind my back he went fuck it he's meant 20 past three remand the lot of them i'll deal with them tomorrow so i've got my dad there i've got this air fella who sort of grasped up and then i've got me my cousin she had kids so all the commotions kicked off she ended up getting out and then me my dad and this other geezer ended up getting put down in the cells now the first I was going through my head as I'm going to slam your fucking head in when I get down here.

52:55But he was crying his fucking eyes out. He was old, man. I couldn't hit him. I just said to him, see what you've done and what you've created. I know but such a person told me to come in. These are one of the people I knew. Said, go and grass him up and sent him into the station. So, gets to him.

53:11John Burton: What's it like being a nick? Having your old man with you? Well, I'll get to that now. So, I get to Old Course. It was probably six o 'clock, half six. they wouldn't accept me Walton wouldn't accept me because I got cat aid from there and all course didn't want to accept me because I was so high risk so it turns out about half nine he gets us off the bus and he brings us in and you know the worst thing is just watching your dad get fucking strip searched and stuff and it fucking wounds with me and like I got my dad like I knew people in there anyway so I got the grass sorted out I got him in a cell on his own I haven't got no animosity towards him you know what I mean he was just one of them he was just one of them people who was old and shit himself got inboxed and got me and my dad put in a cell on our own and my half fellow was sound he was you know they took me fucking pen how can I do me crossword like my dad always does crosswords you know in the papers I went fucking hell dad do you really think I want to talk about fucking doing crosswords he went I know but while I'm sitting here I might as well fucking do and I'm going no and he took his leather belt off and coming in so he gets out like I woke up in the morning and thought, am I dreaming here?

54:20And then, you know, when you look on the bottom bunk, I've seen my dad

54:23John Burton: and I've gone fucking hell no. Has he ever been banged up before? No. No. My dad's worked all his life. Yeah, okay. He only retired from... Was he angry towards you? No, he was all right. But he was like, it pissed him off. Yeah. But I'm his son. Yeah, okay. You know what I mean? And, you know, I never ever mentored him to get involved in anything. Do you know the main thing my dad got arrested for? Go on. Do you know when I got out of prison, I couldn't get a bank account because of being Nick for tax evasion and stuff. My dad gave me his credit card and said, just use that and pay it monthly.

54:53That's what he got Nick for. Yeah, he got Nick for money laundering for that. And they fucking stripped him.

54:58John Burton: Just facilitating. Yeah, just giving me a card because I couldn't get a bank account. Now, if my son come to me now and said, dad, I can't get a bank account, I'll go with that lad, use that and just pay me money. I wouldn't think I was doing anything wrong, but they had it down as money laundering because I was paying two or three grand cash a month to cover the credit card bills yet, which I look at it now and think, yeah, it was wrong, but it never entered me yet that it would come out like that. Goes to court, they all works. I took five because I said to the prosecution the jail should come on me.

55:28So I got another five years. So the 14 and the five got me to 19. But with a 33 % discount, took me to 12 years. So that meant to save six in and six out on license. Now I come out of the Catae uni. He sent me to HMP Garth.

55:44John Burton: Where's that? Leyland. Okay. High security Cat B. And then I'm in there and then it gets me recategorisation. I wanted to go to a Cat C like near a home. They come in, you can't. I went, why? They went, they're moving you out of town. I went, what do you mean? They said they want you moved out of every year, prison in the Northwest. I went, for what reason? They said, you've got too much influence on the drug culture in the North of England, prison officers and cons. And I went, what the fuck do you mean? She went, well, this is the intelligence we've got and we can't put you here. Now, bearing in mind, there was a riot on the wing one day and there was a woman and a fellow screw stands up next to each other.

56:27And this kid went to twat her with a fucking table leg. And I've grabbed her and put her behind me. And he went, are you fucking keeping them? I went, look, you ain't hitting no woman in front of me, mate. I went, there's a fucking fella there going to town. And I said, but you ain't fucking hitting her. He screws your minds and screws. I went, I'm not minds and screws. I went, it's a fucking woman. And she was all right, the woman. She never, ever forgot that. And when it comes to categorization, she come to me. She said, look, told me everything. I said, how do you fancy Oakwood? I went, okay.

56:55Brand new jail. showers in your pads underfloor eating nice little telly nice and clean nice and fresh you know what fuck it I'll go best move I made I goes to this prison it was only open six months seven months it was fucking fantastic but just like where you've been in like Walton or Strangeways you had to share shower cubicles with people and you know you couldn't have a shower in your pad these were brand spanking new with showers in so it was the fucking bollocks and I was made up there it was only just over an hour away from home and then started to get my head together in there. And one day, every night, I phoned my mate.

57:33I said, some Scottish fella owed me 48 grand. And I said, do us a favour, go and put that cunt to kip and get my money off him. That to me means knock him out, put him asleep. It doesn't mean fucking kill him. You know, but put some on a kip. To me, that's like knock them out, get my money. Two days later, now I was the reception. So I used to go down to reception in the afternoon. you see all the prisoners coming in from all other jails they'd all be in the holding rooms I'd go in and talk to them and say you know if you're there when addicts or drug addicts wanted to go on the drug wing or a drug free wing I'd put them if you come in dodging I was talking to you I said you know what dodging sound you lads I'll get you with us I'll put you on our wing and then you had like lads coming on who wanted to go to other wings so and then NCA come in now NCA had not long started operating they come in with the lanyards now when NCA come in NCA National Crime Agency so it was soccer but then National Crime Agency took her over in about 2014, 2013 or something.

58:29So these two, NCA have walked in and I've gone to the lads and they were about 18 and I went, oh, what are you using in shit to see you boys? I went to fucking ACN and he said, these are fucking, these are heavy people, these mate. I went to, and the doors opened. He went, John Bate? And I went, yeah. He went, can we have a word with you? I went, have a word with me for what? He said, can you come and have a word? I went, look mate, no disrespect. I went, but I ain't going in no fucking room with you. I said, whatever you've got to say to me, you can fucking say it here in front of everyone. He said, right, I've got an Osmond warning.

58:59I went, what's that? He went, it's a threat on a life. I went, my life? He went, no. He said, someone out there. I went, what's that got to do with me?

59:05John Burton: Oh, no, because you said go to keep. Yeah, he said, I said, what's that got to do with me? He went, you give the order from your cell tonight to go on your mobile phone. I went, oh, fuck off, mate. I went, I'm not signing, I'm not on fuck off. I said, if you're not arresting me, I went, fuck off. So, all commotion and that, I get to tuck back to my cell. comes out of my cell gets me mate said go and get me fucking dog out gets it out snapped it dodged and never used the phone ever again in my life in prison and I went fuck this I'm done and that was the day I saw to see a change in how I was going in life and I just thought I don't want this fucking life no more and then it's come to recategorisation again and what I've always done in prison is I've always helped people if you can't read or write I've helped you read and I've helped you sort your letters out stop bullying going on in our wings stop spice going on on our wings because that's a fucking naughty little drug what actually is spice it's a synthetic drug but from what I gather it's made with like components that do car alloys and do you ever remember when your car trim used to go grey and you get that stuff called back to black yeah that's what they reckon is in it with car alloy cleaner as well now when it first come out I'll be honest with you I smoked spice when it first come out because everyone thought it was like weed yeah but where I used to have a puller to and put it down I was fine but then I seen people just fucking falling over all the time and I thought it's not good this is that what you see you know when people standing up they're like bent over 90 degrees and walking around like a zombie yeah yeah yeah it's fucking horrendous but you had like lads in jail and it was funny at the time but when you look back at it now it's not because you get people in jail who've got no money who'll go around picking stumps up these fuckers were putting spice in the stumps and throwing them out so the lads were someone had a go yeah but then the falling over on the yard.

1:00:51Now, all right, at that time, you know, it was funny, but when you look back at it now, you think that's a fucking shitty trick to do to people. I've seen people getting put in dryers, spinning round, just so they can have a joint of spice. Yeah, okay. You know, it's a drug that gets you, grips you, and puts you in a fucking serious, serious place. But it's like now, it's everywhere. The fucking prisons are right for it, but they can't really detect it.

1:01:14John Burton: So what did you do? You did six years on that lot? Yeah, I'd done six years on that, yeah. And then when you come out, how old were you roughly? Well, I went to, from there, I tried to get to Kircham and Thorncross, which were two cats, the open estates. And Dietz said, no, you said anywhere south of where you are. So I ended up going, I got two choices, Ford or HMP Stamford Hill and the Isle of Sheppey. So I ended up going to the Isle of Sheppey, which worked out better for me because that was the start of my rehabilitation. Now, for me, watching my children and my family travel from Liverpool to the Isle of Sheppie would take them between six and eight hours getting there.

1:01:51And then they sit on me knee for an hour or two. And then they'd have to travel back. I mean, fucking, it was killing me kids. And I just thought, am I fucking doing it no more? And then I come up with an idea about helping people rehabilitate with an app. So if you wanted a doctor, a dentist, an optician, training, education, and employment, I'd build this app when I was coming out.

1:02:11John Burton: And I always remember - When did you come out? I got out in February 2017. and 17 17 and what were you like when you come out you're going I've got to go straight well I couldn't or were you going I'm back at it again no no I knew I was going straight I'm not putting my kids and that through that again so since 2017 you've been straight as a die yeah I've been straight as a die yeah and be honest with you Dodge I won't go right or left for anyone and when I was coming out of there like I'll tell you what happened I wanted to build this app but I had to get the approval of the governors and stuff and there was a new governor starting never met him didn't know who he was so I was on these billets where you have your own key for your pad and I've walked in and Keith, one of the officers in there said, Keith, can I get my key mate?

1:02:49He went, yeah, go ahead, Scouse. And then I've heard, Scouse, you sound like a fucking Jedi. And I've turned around, Jedi's from Birkenhead over the water by us and the plazzy Scousers where we call them from the dark side, hence where they get Jedi. So this, I've turned around, there's a baldy fella with like a tweed jacket and a pair of jumbo cords on and I've turned around and I went, fucking hell mate, you all want to give shit out. You look like a fucking Jedi, you scruff. And started having banter with him. off Baldy and he was having banter with me and I've gone after about four or five minutes of banter I went anyway Baldy who the fuck are you on my wing he went I'm glad you said that John he said my name's Jim Padley I'm the new number one governor in the prison I've gone oh fucking hell I went look I said look Mr P he went John he said I'm from Manchester he went to love a little bit of banter he said but could I be honest with you I went yeah he said you fucking scared the life out of me like i was probably 17 odd stone down in in stanford hill and i was strong i was banging out about 200 key in bench pressing yeah and 200 yeah yeah after like my certificate a certificate from kirch me go for 210 yeah in a bench pressing got four out but i was strong i was still taking juice yeah my life was all about like being heavy fucking hench have a fight if anyone owes you money it's better going in 16 17 stone or fucking 10 stone where because you're not getting your

1:04:09John Burton: money and it was always like that and then how much were you using that peak steroids yeah um probably about probably about six or eight mil a week okay but i was using like testosterone yeah one rip um you get your wind stroll for strip i never really done htc which was a hormone replacement therapy which would have put everything back in like my testosterone now is at critical low so I have to have like all my testosterone replacement therapy now later on in life but my nickname was Juice Bomb John that's what we mates call me because I was putting that much fucking gear in me I went like my other mates who were competing they were doing like 20 fucking mil a week I didn't want to do competing but I just wanted to be fucking yeah yeah what were you using as well were you banging the gear as well banging cocaine as well everything every weekend like and you had the clubs and you were yeah yeah every weekend like I went so much I didn't really I didn't really like cocaine you know what I mean because it's one of them drugs that either you like it or you don't I was always like ecstasy or a bit of MDMA and then in the night time when you're getting sorted to the end you'd have a line just to cool yourself down and ease up you know what I mean but we've gone out on a Saturday and ended up in Spain and woke up on a fucking Friday thinking how the fuck have we got here but we've done loads of being to Tenerife Courtney a few times we've had some crazy times with him How would you explain John in his 30s?

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1:07:59Moneymaker. Okay. Yeah. Head down, moneymaker. Wanted to get my kids and my life away from how I grew up. Yeah. I was angry. I was an angry kid growing up because of racially abusing. Yeah. Like my family, once started with my dad, my mom's family, I've now found that we've got Pakistani heritage. Now, my mum's second name was Sultan. Yeah. Now, I've done a DNA test. I've always been British and proud. I haven't got a fucking ounce of British blood in me.

1:08:26John Burton: Yeah. I've got a 51 % Irish, Scottish, and Welsh, 44 % Middle Eastern, and 5 % African. Yeah. But we lived in Liverpool, docks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, people integrated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, obviously, I've got Muslim family now. Yeah. Who I go to see in Bradford and in Oldringham. And I found, like, my great-granddad, basically he was originally from India. Yeah. But then he had five children to my nan, my great grandmother Florence, who lived in India at the time. And then when the Sikhs and the Hindus were fighting with the Muslims, she got moved back to Liverpool. But my great granddad was a seaman and he used to earn a lot of fucking money with what he was doing.

1:09:06I've got checks on my phone there from November 1945 for like 2 ,500 pounds every two weeks. Now that's a fucking lot of money. Yeah. But I've found all this, out later in life and I've understood now I got all the call them names when I was a kid because yeah I've got that blood in me and I'm proud of it you know only for my great granddad's I wouldn't be here today you know so he went through fucking hell in by the way by being with a white woman they didn't want him to have a white woman over there and they kept her in one side while he lived in his village but to me it's just it's heritage and I've found a lot out about it.

1:09:40What's the most expensive thing you've ever bought? Fucking hell probably fucking house yeah I think I probably pay I bought I'll be honest with you Dodds it was probably the fucking worst move I ever done I went and bought a big farm I think I paid about 620 630 grand for it but if you had that down here it's probably worth about 4 million quid yeah and I had a big farm I had in the middle of a field nowhere around for me it was the wrong time to be there I was 30 I was involved in the ciggies and earning you could go into BMW then with 40, 50 grand and you could go and buy a car yeah, yeah, yeah

1:10:20John Burton: I think all they take the most they take cash now is like about 3 grand or something well it's down to 300 quid now yeah I think car showrooms can do about 2 grand now 2 free grand they do I think it might have gone down to a grand I'm not too sure but they start just making everything harder for us and easier for them where you can't go spending cash no more when you when you're at your peak how much were you earning a week would you say at peak depends what you mean like earning like profit yeah profit money through your hands is going to be massive but actually at the end of the day you have a divvy up and go out of your days that's mine yeah you could you could probably say you could probably say about well over just under 200 grand a week but 200 grand a week it's like worth six of us yeah that would go to London and spend 80 grand you have a divvy up over two yeah yeah I had a few of my mates and stuff but you know also So we were going to London and we were having a party there for the weekend.

1:11:16It was probably costing us the best part of 30 grand. Like we were scousers who grew up on council estates where when we were getting money, yeah, but we were buying watches, fucking cars. This is what everybody does. And then before you know it, your neighbors see it, the police see it, and everyone else sees it around you. The best way to be in life if you're in that game is drive a fucking Fiesta and just keep hidden. You know what I mean? Where everyone wants to better themselves, but then you see a difference in like, like kids when they used to come up to me I remember Wayne Rooney Wayne Rooney sat in my car in Finnegan's a little bar that my mate had up in on East Lanks Road I think Wayne was about 15 and I was talking to him outside and he said I said I'll have one of these when I'm older I said you'll have a lot more than fucking this because I had an X5 with all the tellies and all that and I had Wayne in there I was talking to him and like to me being someone like where kids want to look up to you like that I'd have what you've got I don't see that good no more where years ago it didn't really fucking ask me because I want to be like him he's got this, this, this and this and I want that well I wouldn't tell any kid to fucking go and do that now because there's a better better way in life going straight especially in this day and age there's a better way in life going straight than there is going left or right because criminal activity won't last you know crime doesn't pay because it might pay in the short run you know there's three ways you're going to come out in life in crime dead prison are very fucking lucky and it's very lucky if you've got in and got out or you're a fucking grass they're the only ways you're going to come out of that life and the bigger you grow like I was saying before the harder you fall you sell small amounts of weed you get a shitty jail probably no pocket get a big amount of weed you're starting to get jail small pocket start getting into importation your fucking life's getting took away from you

1:13:07John Burton: what do they nick you for then did they find a load of gear on that big sentence at the end what did they find? So I was saying before I'd had a ton dropped and I'd picked the van up went to my stash put the ton in there but while I was doing it my uncle turned up and I went what are you doing? He went to come to give you an hand so I've got gloves on you can see playing simply he picks boxes up with his fingers I went drop that fucking box and I went if you're going to carry anything get your fucking gloves on and I said I'll tell you what there's a key of weed go and take that to care before me to me mate he's waiting so I've loads of everything 45 minutes later to me mate phoned me where is he when he fucking left ages ago he's not here I went okay so I've jumped in me car went and followed his route nowhere to be seen so then I've come behind copy lane police station I've looked in the compound there's his van so I've gone shit phoned me mate and my mate turns up in a little Citroen Blingo full of fucking paint and buckets and everything and I think we've managed to get, we had about 20 odd Kia White and we put about 700 and odd Kia Weed in it.

1:14:17Fucks off to a stash. Probably between that journey of two hours on our way back to where the stash was. And when you get a gut feeling, I've said to my mate, I went, pull up around the corner and there was a cricket ground by where my stash was. So jumped over the wall, straight over to where my stash was. And as I've looked through the fence like that, there's an unmarked copper there in a car. and another one there. But I thought, you know what? There's 240 Kia weed there. It's fucking four years. I'm happy with that. But better still, I'd pay someone to take it. Because I didn't know they had the evidence on me.

1:14:51So my uncle was arrested. This is my mum's brother. My mum died in 1996 at the age of 43. I was only 24 at the time, or 25. I had two younger brothers and my dad, and it fucking hit us hard. you know we didn't expect our mum to die at that age after just a little shitty stupid operation that should never have been anything wrong she should have come out of it fine and i was working at that time though as well i was doing sports all floors but i was working all over the country but everywhere i went people were asking me for gear tablets so that's how everything started as well and then um like my dad now my dad's never been with a woman another woman since 96 he's been on his own since and you know he loved my mum and the shit I've put that man through makes me sad but I love my dad and I didn't I didn't get on with him until I was sort of until the day my mum died me and them never used to see eye to eye we were dad and lad but we'd never seen eye to eye and then the day my mum died something clicked with me and my dad and we'd just become fucking super close and I loved that man did you get tapped did your phone get tapped at all probably but in them days you wouldn't really know you know but we used to change our phones all the time and there's a book I read in prison I want you to have a little read of it it's called The Interceptor it's about an undercover copper working on the Euro Tunnel then he goes working for soccer and then he goes working for a company called Alpha that was a phone tapping company read that fucking book I read that in my last sentence and it fucking opened my eyes to a lot of worlds and that's where I went fuck that mate we're done yeah yeah and it's a true story about like people who they were tapping on for two but like the main guy in it's slim he'd get a new phone and he'd phone all them and go new number bang they've got him straight away and then they'd phone him and go right new number they've got him straight away but the stuff they took off him he ends up getting irons out him in the end but his dad got caught three times in a taxi with money because they were listening to his phone you know the people he was working with the Irish firm they were listening to them and it fucking opened my eyes about a lot of stuff

1:17:00John Burton: you know what I mean so Did anything come on top at all in your journey? You had the clubs, you had the money, you had the cars, you had the missus, you had the... Did anything ever... At one point where you thought you might lose your life here? A few times, probably two or three occasions, yeah. I think probably one when I had bloody hell, I'll go back to the early 90s. We'd had a few... We'd put some money on something coming over. We only thought it was one person, like there was 40 bits of ours between us on it. But found out when it went down, there was three other people's bits on that.

1:17:36Right, okay. And then we'd had to go to Manchester for a meeting and some stuff we found out who robbed them, stuff like that. They were over in Amsterdam and there was a fucking mayhem going on and we ended up going to Manchester. It all kicked off and a gunshot started. I had three bullets in the back of my car. But I've had a few times where it's been like that. But you know what? You look at it and it doesn't bother because it comes with the territory. and at the time when someone's shooting at you you're all firing you're sort of giggling running but trying to get away and then when you get away it's funny isn't it but I never wanted to put myself in them positions I didn't want to be like this big name in Liverpool going round shooting people or causing fucking murder because that stigma stays with you now there was a lot of people in Liverpool doing that you know what I mean and a lot of them have been lifed off a lot of them haven't and a lot of them have come out of it and just gone straight but every single person has been to jail you know it's not going to get you away from going to jail and that's why when I got out I thought I've just got to go a different way and my life what was then is I used to have people coming to me cell every morning dodge and dropping me like bags of fucking food and clothes I'd say you're going home he said yeah I'll be back in at 10 I said what do you mean I've got nowhere to live I've got nowhere to go I'll go out I'll get me dick sucked I'll have a bite to eat and I'll have a fight and come back in at 10

1:18:54John Burton: and I couldn't get my head around it but I can also understand why people do that yeah they've got free meals they've got a gym they've got a bed they've got a little telly and they're safe I get it what some people do but I don't no I don't because what happened is I get out then February 2017 now bearing in mind that governor backed me right the way and he used to let me go out the front of the prison with my iPhone go to the cafe and research and do all my bits and he said to me John he said if I back here on this he said I want you to do a presentation two weeks before you get out I'll tell you what Jim I said if you do that I bet you see a different person that day in your office by the time that come I had 14 months left when I was speaking to Jim and then the last two weeks I've been working out all the time and the last two weeks I went in I grew me ear I had glasses because obviously I was getting a bit older and I dropped five stone and I knocked on his door I went hi Jim I'm here he went can I help you I went yeah I'm here to do my presentation and he looked and went fucking hell Johnny I never recognised I went Jim I said I told you at the time if you back me I'll come out with a different person because I don't want to stand here as a 15, 16 stone fucking lunatic trying to make people change in life when they're looking at me going fuck off I said so I said to you back me I'll change the way I am and he did he backed me and then when I was getting out they hit me with you can't go back to Liverpool what do you mean they banned you from Liverpool yeah yeah yeah so I said what do you mean how long for well it worked out two years I said what do you mean I went I've been gone on my own leaves they let me go to my dad's on my own leaves and then I ended up going to probation arguing with probation I said look I've got to go one to watch Everton I said two to go to my dad's so they agreed that I could go to my dad's and stay on the night every Everton matches were staying but when I got out I went to a place called Runcorn in Cheshire just outside Liverpool just so I could see the kids for a couple of months and then I moved back down to Kent I went back down to Kent because I was familiar with it working out there and I thought I just needed to get my own life together for a year for a bit and just stay away from like all my mates like i went home and seeing all my mates went when i got out and i went look i'm done yeah what do you mean you're done i'm done i'm not just staying in my advice to you is get out of this game before it's too late now a lot of these have been in it for a long time and they were all like yeah like one of my mates went look i'll give you a shitload of dough now if you fuck off and go and carry on doing this I went, not interested.

1:21:22Said, I'm done with that life. I said, look, I can't. Come in cafes with you no more. I can't come meeting you in fucking restaurants or have a coffee or whatever. I went, I can't. I said, because I'll be guilty by association. I went, my life, what I'm doing now is going to help people rehabilitate from prison and get them into education training and most of all employment so they can stay out of the prison system. I said, so I cannot have anything to do with anyone. I said but if you're in a party in a christening or a wedding I went I'll fucking sit with you all night I went but I can't be meeting you in the gyms and stuff

1:21:56John Burton: how's your relationship been like with your boy and your girl them knowing that you got banged up for all this time unbelievable it has yeah because my two children run the companies yeah so they're involved in Inside Connections yeah yeah what are those companies Inside Connections yeah so Inside Connections was thought of with that idea of the app yeah helping people rehabilitate and get into education training and support. When they come out. Yeah, yeah. But actually, I've took it one step further. Dodge, if I said now, I'd have been happy helping 25 people. I'd have said, you know what? Fucking made up.

1:22:30But since, so while I was in Kent, I was going around to all these third sector organisations because I want to know why you as a training provider get a shitload of funds and to train people up. You train people up, but why aren't you putting them in work? You know, that bothered me. but you're playing with people's fucking lives mate you know when I didn't like it so I went round learning a lot of the trades and then I think it was about May June 2019 I was approached by a company called Wilmot Dixon wanted to work with me on because they'd seen what I'd been doing for the two years by putting people into training getting them educated

1:23:09John Burton: so where are you meeting everyone are you going into the prisons now you mean Yeah, now, you go into the prisons, meeting everyone, and saying, right, when you come out, I'm going to help you. Not even when you come out, I can get them out while they're still serving prisoners. So when they're inside now, they can go and work? In a CAT D, yeah. A CAT D, okay. A CAT D opener station. So 2019, I was approached by Wilmot Dixon, said we want to work with Rottle, which is release on temporary licence. And at that time, you could go to an open condition with two years left to serve. But for them two years, just one day, you were allowed to go out of the morning, go to work, earn your money, and go back to prison of the night.

1:23:44Now for me that was the best part of it because it's our families and kids that suffer while we're in jail. So getting people in the jail system a job that can earn proper wages when they go home five days a month from a cat D. And put some money on the table. Yeah, of course. So that was where my thing was. And then September, the first job come, fucking Liverpool docks, weren't it? So there was a car park on Liverpool docks on the arena that burnt down. Wilmot Dixon got the contract to build this new£30 million car park. But part of their corporate social responsibilities were working with people who were in prison.

1:24:18So they approached me to work with Rottle. So I went to HMP Thorncross and said to them, look, I've got jobs here. A two-week introduction construction. Get a CSES card. They can go working on site. So they went, yeah, come on, we'll have a go. We got 12 people onto the site. We had classrooms in there. We'd done them all, introduction to construction, small tours asbestos awareness manual handling level 1 health and safety and construction CSCS cards and tests they all passed every one of them got a job with the supply chain on site so that to me was like fucking hell this is this is fucking great this and you know how do you run out of it well I had the charity so I had the CIC so I've still got the CIC which is a community interest company non-for-profit now we weren't making money we were just getting funding so our wages like I think I was on about 20 29, 30 grand a year for them first four years.

1:25:13And then obviously 2019, got this contract with Wilmot Dixon. It went fucking beautiful. Next minute, Granada Newsday, BBC Newsday, everyone highlighting what we'd done. Then it gets another 15 on. So I think it had about 27 on there. And then what happened? Fucking March 2020, we goes into lockdown. All the prisoners who were working had to be brought back the prison system and basically kept in isolation. and then we nearly closed we nearly had to shut the business because we couldn't train anybody we were working with the prisons who were basically closed and then we started going into like frontline workers, construction workers you know after like six months to get them trained, accredited and out of work kept that going mid 2022 the prisons reopened again we started working with more Rottal and more people on site but in between this COVID we started opening training academies so our training academies now do about 15, about between 12 and 15 different sectors in industries so we train everything in construction right down to a CSCS card we train everything in civil engineering so gas, water, lechy, fibre loads of jobs all over the country doing civil engineering HGV we have partnerships with beauty we do for the women catering hotel hospitality when we need it, renewable energy.

1:26:40It's all about innovation and working with clients and companies that want to have corporate social responsibilities. Yesterday I was on a call. We are now from September 2019, we've put just under 8 ,700 people into education, training and full-time employment.

1:26:59John Burton: Unbelievable. But the best part for me is since mid-2022 to where we are now, I've had about a thousand people coming out of jail every day going to work. As from today, I said to you when I come I was in HMP Ford yesterday I'd done 16 interviews there for a company that they're working down here. They're taking eight lads on out of there. So I've got now all the cat D's in the country and I've got people working out of all of them Last year I was took down to Downing Street and Parliament The prisons are work in, the governors and the staff have put me forward to chair the board of the prison advisory, prison employment advisory board.

1:27:42And I took that last year, probably, I think it was probably about 10 months ago, maybe something like that. I've got, I'm on the board of a few prisons, but I've chaired one prison, which is HMP Thorncross, which is a category D open estate. I've got about 100 not coming out of there every day for work. I've turned that prison down from probably being four to fifth in the country to the best prison in the country now.

1:28:07John Burton: Yeah, yeah. And that's just a testament to the staff in there, the lads in there, and the companies we work with. But I never, ever thought I'd put this many people in work. But you've got a business model that's a winner, right? It's a win-win for everyone. Yeah, but I was doing it for four years. I want to know how the people who are employing the ex-prisoners, how they feel. You've got to have a certain type of boss to go, or director or owner of a company to go, do you know what? Yeah, let's get them all in. Yeah, but see, when I first come out, What's the win for the owner of the business?

1:28:38John Burton: Good, good labour. You turn up on a Monday morning and work like that. Like, they don't fold you up on Monday and go, I've got a hair on my leg, it needs amputating, and go on the hospital on Monday. They've been out all weekend. You don't get that. Now, we've got warehouse sites that we do. We always, every now and again, we'll take 10 of their core staff and 10 of our staff. We'll give them the same picking rates. I will guarantee you hands on heart every time we've picked near double or what their core staff are picking now if I get companies now who come in and say well John I'm a bit scared about working with prisons I'll say I'll tell you what do you want me to take you in the prison I go what you can take us in I went yeah of course I can I'm not taking them into a closed condition a cat B, C or A I'm taking them into a cat D open that basically is like everyone calls it butlands it's not butlands it's an openness thing you can see people's personality basically Yeah, but you have your key to your own cell and you can go walking around the grounds.

1:29:33You're not locked up all the time. Your billet gets locked at eight and you can still walk around and have tea and coffee with your mates. It's a trusted position to be in them prisons. So I take companies in. I'll walk them around the prison. They'll be talking to a few of the lads and then when we get back, they'll say, so when are we meeting the prisoners? I went, you already off? What do you mean? I went, you see all the lads you start, because I don't tell them who they are. I just take them in and show them. I said, see all them lads you were talking to on the way around? they're not prisoners are I yeah they are I would never have guessed that I said because you see what you see on television I said this is totally different she went I'll have a go every person or every company we've worked with we start with a trial I've had near 400 people in some of them companies now because they know what they're getting so basically you're vetting them yeah I'm vetting them risk assessing them

1:30:24John Burton: training them this lad's the real deal this girl's the real deal I'm putting them through quality. But what I do is I get Is anyone else doing this? Yeah there's quite a few coming into it now yeah but you know what I'm not bigging us up but we're probably one of the biggest in the country doing what we're doing now because I'm like Yozzi Hughes do you remember Yozzi Hughes? No. It was a Liverpool fella it was a Boys from the Black Stuff it was called it was a Liverpool series and Ozzi used to go round to people going give us a job I can do that. So I go to companies now and I target them for giving us a job.

1:30:53Yeah because part of them going in for tenders there's like a 10 % corporate social responsibilities that they've got to give back to diversity and inclusion, prisons, veterans, care leavers, long and short term unemployed. They've got a duty of care. So I go in and say, look, I can hit all them targets for you. And then by word amount now, we're just growing and growing and growing. How would you explain Liverpool today? Unbelievable. Look, Liverpool today is not like what we had when we were in the 70s and 80s. because look you've got to remember like Maggie Thatcher was in power then and Liverpool got fuck all and extra fuck all but you've got like the mayor in there now Steve Rodham is doing a fucking great job you've got quite a few people there but Liverpool's changed as a place but you still have your you still have your places but you've got them all over the place you know you go to London you go to Birmingham you go to Glasgow you know to Manchester you've still got them areas that are sort of targeting but then why is why is we got too many people in jail?

1:31:55Because the country is costing too much people. It's costing people too much money to live. Now, if you're on a minimum wage job at the minute and you've got a property and you're paying rent and food and stuff. There's nothing left over. Yeah, but what are you going to do for that last week of the month? Yeah, I agree. You know, to me, like, John, I've got to sell a bit of weed. But John, what am I supposed to do? So I like to get them progression jobs where they'll start on a minimum wage. Three months later, they'll grow. Three months later, they'll grow and they'll just build themselves up.

1:32:23But I've got lads now who are serving prisoners in cat D's who have all got untalented skills. They've got skills they've got are just talented right the way through. And we've got an untapped talent pool in the prison system that have been on the roads, that have done fibre, that have done telecoms, but have all got involved in selling cocoa bits of weed and got caught. But it doesn't stop them from having a brain and know how to do this job.

1:32:47John Burton: How do you think someone would explain you now, if you mention the name John Burton in Liverpool, um

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1:35:19I don't really know because everyone looks at me like, like everyone says like your ex this ex that. I don't want to be a gangster. I never was a gangster. I was just someone who could make money. Yeah. And you know, I didn't want to be, you know, like my gangsters to me were like the Richardson's the crazy, you know, they are gangsters, you know, then you've got your mafia gangsters. You may, I was just a minnow in, in a town where unfortunately Liverpool was the epicenter for the fucking drug trade. Yeah. Because we had docs growing up and stuff. And anyone in the country wanted drugs, you probably know Dodge to say, get to fucking Liverpool, they've got the best drugs up there.

1:35:52And that's how it was. And that's how I say about kids aspiring to want to be a drug dealer. I go, look, mate, that ain't going to fucking give you a life. I've been there, seen and done it. And I go down, I go round now to do motivational talks all over the country. I work with Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard approached me about working with care leavers and I said yeah I'll work with them but you're going to get them arrested so many care leavers now are getting groomed and exploited by drug dealers and it'll start off with a Gucci bag pair of trainers, bit of weed, tracksuit jeans, at the end of the month you owe me a grand, I thought that was free not in this world free I need you out doing this and this is what I can't get my head around, that's fucking wrong, do you know what I mean so they've asked me to work with like care leavers getting them education, training and jobs.

1:36:39I said, yeah, I'll do that. But as long as you drop all the charges, I said, because otherwise I'm not spending my dough on it. Yeah. Yeah, they have. Yeah, okay. Now the police on the beat, we're sort of learning them a little bit more about how to deal with county lines. So if you give me your normal address as a home address, you're getting arrested. If you give me a care address, we've got to look at you a little bit different now because we know 95 % that you're getting groomed and exploited. So we've got to keep them apart and try and work them a better way. Because 54 % of kids now are going to prison for on care.

1:37:10Yeah. That's a fucking high number. It's high, isn't it? So we can get to the root of the problem and stop these people getting into young kids and getting them out grafting and stuff. Then that's what we've got to do. You know, we wouldn't have done that.

1:37:22John Burton: It makes my blood boil, mate. Yeah. When I hear what these kids have gone through for the care system and what's happened to them or what's happening to people now dealing with kids. Anyone touches a kid, castrated. Yeah, yeah. Just fucking castrated. Or wrapped around a lamppost. But this is what I've said about... Imagine if you wrapped a nonce around the lamppost, wrapped around the lamppost, Get stolen to fucking death. They're like, what annoys me, those lot get banged up, they come out, they do two years, and they can change their name. Yeah, and you see that word nonce. Do you ever know where that word comes from?

1:37:50No. Okay, so I want to educate you now, right? So, I'm in a prison a few years ago, and I went, but I don't work with nonces. One of the officers went, don't you fucking dare use that word again. I went, what? I'm going, what? She went, nonce i went what about her she went well it's a derogacy word against a prison a sex offender no it's not love i said how long have you worked in the prison system she went five years i went so do you know what nonce is no she went no i said right i said every sex offender in prison years ago had the word on a card nonce i said do you want me to tell you what that word nonce stands for not on normal community exercise i said that's where the word nonce comes from yeah yeah yeah so every sex offender who was in prison had a card outside the door with non-sonny and that means not on normal community exercise and you know the next day I got an email she said I'm awful sorry she said I have checked and it was a word that was used on prisoners doors that's where the word nonce comes from now they've changed that word to picosso so it's a prisoner of convictions with sexual offences something like that I went picosso it sounds like a fucking village in Wales but this is where like all these sentences right now so i'm in parliament not long ago and i'm talking to mps about obviously the sentence guidelines and stuff and i said well yeah i'll put something out you know i said if i go out kick fuck out of someone beat them to fuck and get 10 years when i have to save three quarters of that which is seven and a half years they went yeah yeah i said but if i go out and rape a kid or a woman yeah and get 10 years yeah I went, I only do half of that.

1:39:26I went, you tell me where the justice is in that. I went, if you've been caught sexually abusing kids or raping women, if you get fucking 10 years, you fucking deserve to save them 10 years. I said, manslaughter. I said, you've got two different types of manslaughter. You've got them three kids who killed that police officer a few years ago and dragged them up the road. But what pissed me off about that is that man's wife and kids were in that court and they were laughing at them. And I think that's disrespectful. you know they've killed a man take it on the chin and that was the whole problem about people getting released on a manslaughter charge now unfortunately anyone who gets killed with a car or anything it's down as manslaughter or death by dangerous driving it doesn't go as a murder or something but then I was in jail years ago on the Siggy charge with a young kid crying every day had his missus in the car his girlfriend and his mate had his his girlfriend in the car dodged they were having a little race his mates clipped him it was raining flipped over he's flew out the window screen landed outside the car the cars blew up in front of him with his girlfriend in it so that kid got a manslaughter charge to me that's an accidental fucking death do you know what I mean which he's got to go through that for the rest of their life you know he's got to wake up every day now he was bad he was in a bad way he went look John they should have given me more time I can't just do three years for killing my missus I need to do life but I know I understand where you're coming from.

1:40:53I said, but it's a manslaughter charge. And I went, it was an accident. You're only being foolish and silly. We're the lads who kill that policeman. You know, come on, there's a little bit of difference between them two manslaughter charges. So I've said to them, you need to look at all your different charges. Like anyone going to jail today with two years sentence, it's a waste of time. It's a waste of time. Yeah, yeah, it's just a waste of time.

1:41:12John Burton: How many people are there in jail across the UK? Just under 100 ,000. 100 ,000. How many of them are British? What percentage would you say? Well, there's 12 % of the prison system at the minute that are getting deported on release. Now, I believe Andy Burnham now is in the middle. Do you believe him? Yeah, I believe he's going to get them deported straight away because they need to... Look, if anyone comes into this country, does a crime, and they're not from this country, just deport them back and put them on a list. Yeah, it costs us a grand a week. Yeah, yeah. Just to keep them in prison. But do you not think the prison's a business?

1:41:48Or do you think it's a punishment? especially like last year or the year before it was 18 billion this year it's gone up to 24.5 billion

1:41:57John Burton: what would you do if you were the head of the prisons would you take away the tellies would you take away all the luxuries would you take away the pool tables and go you've got to serve it not really not would you think it's been so easy what's that prison what's that thing we watched on Sky the other day what's the country where they've just locked people up you know where they've got tattoos all over their foreheads they're like Thailand Philippines no no it's that country in between Venezuela Oh man, I can't say, I watched this program. Like I was in the prisons in Thailand last year. Yeah.

1:42:25I went into a couple of prisons over there and I've heard really bad stories about them, but fuck me mate, they're prisons.

1:42:31John Burton: Yeah, yeah, they're serious. You know, but if you had... But do you think, do you think being in a prison now looking in going, do you think it's a bit of holiday camp? Like when you compare it to other countries? Is it that, is it that tough where people are going, do you know what, I can do three quite easily, do five? I wouldn't, not close conditions, close the conditions, I mean, Closed conditions are the one that play with your head. Yeah. You know what I mean? But when you get to an open condition, you think, fucking hell, this is easy. Yeah, but forget the open condition. Yeah, closed conditions.

1:42:58So look at it now.

1:42:59John Burton: You think it's easy? Well, here's the problem now. Yeah. If you got nine years, two years ago, you would serve four and a half years behind the door. Yeah. Okay, so people would look at that a bit different. Yeah. If you get nine years today, you're only serving three years of that. When did that change? it comes out October now what's the point of giving someone nine if we can do three why don't you say because the prison system's full I'll get that why don't you go you've got five you're doing five what's all the half and quarters because we haven't got enough spaces in the prison we haven't got enough prisons in the country and the problem what they are doing in the country is building supermax prisons but they're not putting no conditions outside so you've got all these like Wellingbrette all these Berwyn all these supermax how many prisons are there in the UK do you know 121 maybe is that right and there's 121 and there's roughly 1000 on each one you're saying no I'd say anything from there's prisons with 240 people in it there's prisons with 2600 people in it which is the biggest one the biggest one in the country now I think at the minute is HMP Berwyn where's that in the country Wales that's in Wrexham yeah and I'm not sure that you've just had another couple of Supermax prisons built as well Wellingborough Milksaich there's another one just built as well.

1:44:16Now, whatever you want, like you'll see milkshakes in the news quite a lot at the minute because when you open a new prison and you're trying to fill that prison, what you've got to fill that prison with is all the shit out of every other prison around the country because if I phone you and say, look, I need prisoners. We've got an overspill. Yeah, I'm not going to give you the best prisoners I've got in my jail but I'm going to give you all the shit to fill it up and that's what Oakwood was like for a bit but Oakwood's a fucking brilliant jail.

1:44:42John Burton: I really want to know the percentage of British prisoners versus... I'll find out for you. I'm intrigued. Because there's a lot of Muslim society in our prisons now. And you've got to remember that you've got Turkish Muslims, you've got Pakistani Muslims, you've got Muslims all over in different nationalities all over the world. There's quite a lot in them. There's quite a lot of British in there. 12 % of them are people who are getting deported. I remember when I got sentenced from the Qatar unit for the drugs, I was downstairs and I was getting sentenced the same time as them lads from Roderham who were grooming yeah okay I knocked one of them out in downstairs I'll never forget him and you see then when they got out they were supposed to go back to Pakistan yeah and Pakistan knocked them back do you know they're still in our country today they should just be lifted and just sent back home yeah but it's like when do you not think everyone should be lifted what do you mean like you come in lifted bank just going to serve in your own country do you want me to be honest with you Todd you know over the past year or so there's so many people that have been lifted and sent home you know sent back to countries I never quite believe it yeah but look I know there is yeah there is honest to God look I know people who are scousers who've lived here for years have had to be deported because they've come from a heritage background where they're not supposed to be in this country but for some reason there's too many look what the problem we've got what would happen if you said what did you say 100 ,000 just under 100 ,000 I'm just argument's sake there was 50 % of them were foreign are you saying it's best to pick them up and lift them and go back to your own countries different in foreign you see because foreign people could have citizenship in our country they're different it's the ones that there's 12 % of our prison system who will be getting deported and that could be Albanians Romanians anywhere out of this country who are here illegally and they're in prison now they'll be getting sent back but instead of waiting for them now to finish the sentence Andy Burnham's looking at it now to get them sent straight away now Do you think Andy Burnham's the real deal?

1:46:50John Burton: I know he's an Everton fan Yeah up the fucking toughies I like Andy Burnham and I've always liked him because I've spoke to him a couple of times at the match and I think he's a genuine type of guy but what we've got to remember about our Prime Ministers and stuff it's like Keir Starmer when he come in he promised the world he promised everyone in England Wales, Scotland and he was going to do this, this, this, this and this. And it's totally opposite. But then got in and it's totally opposite. How's that allowed? Because it's not him who runs the country. It don't matter. How's that allowed? Who do you think runs our country?

1:47:22Well, the Fabian Society. Our country is run by civil servants. Yeah. And Whitehall are the ones who run the country. Yeah. You know, to me, I...

1:47:30John Burton: Pulling the strings, though, is right behind it. Yeah, yeah. But like, if Keir Starmer or Andy Bainham go out with some sort of thing, then nine times out of ten it's come from Whitehall. do you know what I mean so I believe that everything like I speak to a lot of people in government and they all tell me that everything's run from Whitehall but Andy Barnum's come in he says a good few things and do you know what I've got a feeling he might stick to what he can but let's see how his hands are tied John we could be speaking for hours mate yeah we're in an hour and 40 now this has been brilliant is that how long we've been on yeah mate yeah fucking hell I've really enjoyed it yeah it's like me now Dodger you know here's my message to any young people people who want to get into trouble apprenticeships might be a shit wage for you and you don't want to take it get that apprenticeship done and out the way you have no debt yeah nothing getting to you but the thing is you know further on in life you learn a lot more money get away from crime because you'll end up in jail and won't know what's fucking hit you get your life sorted get some work into you and just get away because crime doesn't pay you've got phones that are like human tracking machines everywhere you go with your phone it's fucking with you you've got grasses all over the place you've got cameras, ring doorbells everything now, you're fucked you're not going to get away with it you know what I mean, it's like when I was a kid in the 80s, if you shot someone you get 14 years, you shoot someone now, you're looking at 30 to 45 years our sentences are growing up and our prisons are not capitalising so it's about us working getting people rehabilitating and I'm not going to stop we're just under 8 ,600 700 people in five and a half years.

1:49:08That's quality. And I don't go on LinkedIn and say, oh, this is Dave. Dave was a smack head five years ago. I'm not fucking interested. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hate all that. I just want people to come out, get rehabilitated. Yeah, yeah. And like Inside Connections now, it's grown from a CIC to a training, to a recruitment.

1:49:27John Burton: So where, John, where can people find you? So we're on our website. If someone wanted to get in contact, you never want. Yeah, they only have to do an email to enquiries at insideconnections.co.uk. Quality. And then if you want to go on, you've got insideconnectionstraining.co.uk, insideconnectionsrecruitment.co.uk, and insideconnections.co.uk, and you can always get us from there. But I never envisioned where we'd be today, but I fucking love it. Do you know what I love going in the jails and the officers go, keys, John? I'm not taking your keys, mate. Why not? I'm one of them, not one of you.

1:50:01Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, I still have PTSD of keys. and then well you won't be able to come in I said it's alright just phone your governor and just tell them I'm here and they'll put the phones and say what did the governor say wherever Mr. Baird wants to go fucking escort them there because I've got that much not power and pull respect but I've got a lot of respect by the cons all the lads and girls in there but also the staff because they know I'm rehabilitating people and I'm smashing the fucking life out of it for people that's all I care about because on a Sunday morning if I get a video call of someone who's out with their kids and their kids go to me John thanks for letting my dad come home and getting him out of work see that to me cost anything better than money mate that's all I want because I want people in caties getting a job and supporting their fucking families who are finding it tough yeah mate and that's all I want mate

1:50:48John Burton: mate I've really enjoyed this yeah me too mate yeah mate good man thanks Dodge nice one mate cheers thank you nice one John hi guys I really hope you enjoyed that as much as I did can you do us a favour and leave us a review as it massively helps us grow the show cheers guys

1:51:31We'll be right back. when peak season hits, you're ready to go. Switch today at shipstation.com code audio.