How a teenager from north London ended up selling drugs in the Cornish flat of a heroin addict

At the start of last year, a 16-year-old north Londoner, Boy X, found himself in a terrifying situation. He owed a drug dealer £55 and did not have the funds to pay off the debt.

He was told the cannabis debt would double – and keep doubling – if he failed to pay. But the teenager was offered a way out: he could work for the dealer and his associates.

“I had an idea it would probably be selling drugs,” Boy X said. “I agreed because I was scared of him, I didn’t know what he was going to do to me. I would have ended up getting hurt. He knows my area – I was scared.”

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Boy X was informed by the dealer he was going to be driven somewhere and packed some clothes and a games console into his bag.

“I thought I’d be with him around London,” he said. “I got in the car and he said, ‘You’re going to be going somewhere far,’ but he wasn’t telling me where. I said, ‘My mum and dad don’t know’ and he said, ‘I don’t care, you have to go.’ I wasn’t really asking questions.”

In February 2018, Boy X ended up 250 miles away in Bodmin, Cornwall, holed up in the cramped, messy flat of a 56-year-old heroin addict called John Griffin. Boy X and Griffin were in effect the shop front for an enterprise called the “Billy line”.

Boy X said Griffin’s council flat was “dirty, disgusting”. The bathroom was filthy and he had to sleep on a chair. The routine was that Griffin was given heroin and went to his room to smoke it while Boy X began selling drugs to 90 or so addicts who had been alerted that a new batch of Billy line heroin and cocaine was on sale in Bodmin.

The Billy line is a typical example of the way criminals are using so-called county lines operations to traffic drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine from cities into faraway towns across the UK.

Gangs often drive out local dealers, exploit children such as Boy X and frequently take over a local property belonging to an addict or vulnerable person to use as a base, a practice known as cuckooing.

Image shown to jurors of John Griffin’s property, which was involved in the ‘Billy line’ county lines operation in Cornwall

Most tourists whizz through Bodmin, which nestles between the moors and the coast, en route to the surfing beaches of north Cornwall.

A very different sort of Cornwall is to be found here. Bodmin bills itself as the historic heart of the county and in the town centre a granite monument pays tribute to Cornishmen Thomas Flamank and Michael Joseph, who led a 15th-century rebellion against taxes imposed by Henry VII and were hung, drawn and quartered in London for their efforts.

The town’s tourist attractions tend towards the macabre. Bodmin jail says more than 50 people have been executed within its walls and organises paranormal tours, while visitors to Shire Hall are invited to sit on a make-believe jury to hear the case of Charlotte Dymond, a servant who was murdered on Bodmin Moor in the 19th century.

But the town’s crime and social problems are not all historical. According to Safer Cornwall, an umbrella group made up of police, council, housing providers and other agencies, one in four people in Bodmin and the surrounding parishes live in the 20% most deprived neighbourhoods in England and 22% of children live in poverty – compared with 16% for the whole of Cornwall and 17% across England.

Safer Cornwall says while the county is safe, crime is concentrated in its town centres and the level of recorded crime in Bodmin town centre is comparatively high.

According to a survey, only 48% of Bodmin residents felt safe out in their local area during the night, and drug dealing is the issue most people worry about.

“It’s terrible in the town at the moment,” said a resident on Berryfields estate, one of the developments on the northern edge of the town built in the early 70s as part of London’s overspill scheme, in which the capital’s overcrowding problem was eased by sending families to remote parts of England.

Quick guide What is ‘county lines’ and who are the victims? Show Hide What does the term ‘county lines’ mean? The name ‘county lines’ refers to the phone numbers, or lines, that criminal gangs which traffic drugs from urban to rural areas use to organise the sale of their wares. Gangs in cities such as London, Birmingham and Liverpool use children to deal mostly heroin and crack cocaine over a network of dedicated mobile phones to smaller towns and rural areas. Who are the victims and how are they recruited? The majority of victims groomed into working for gangs are 15- to 17-year-old boys but children as young as 11 have been safeguarded and girls have been targeted.

Many victims are recruited over social media, with offenders luring them with images of cash, designer clothing and luxury cars, but vulnerable girls and women are being targeted by men who create the impression of a romantic relationship before subjecting them to sexual exploitation. How big is the problem? In 2015, about seven forces reported county lines behaviour. Now, 44 forces, including British Transport Police, have recorded county lines behaviour on their turf. No one really knows how many young people across the country are being forced to take part. Children without criminal records – known as ‘clean skins’ – are preferred because they are less likely to be known to detectives. The Children’s Society says 4,000 teenagers in London alone are exploited through county lines, while the children’s commissioner estimated at least 46,000 children in England were caught up in gangs. How many children have been affected The number of individual phone numbers identified by law enforcement officials as being used on established county lines networks is about 2,000 – nearly three times the 720 previously established.



Police estimate the phone numbers are linked to about 1,000 branded networks, with a single line capable of making £800,000 profits in a year. The Children's Commissioner estimates at least 46,000 children in England are caught up in gangs.

“It’s easy to spot the dealers,” said the woman, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals. “The London ones are in their North Face jackets; the Liverpool ones tuck their tracksuit trousers into their socks.

“Twenty years ago, we used to drink a bit of cider or smoke a bit of weed. Now it’s crack cocaine and heroin all over the place.”

A woman on another of the estates, the Kinsman, said her brother had been in trouble with the police since falling in with the wrong crowd. “It’s so easy to get hard drugs. There’s not a lot for kids to do round here – few jobs, not a lot of places to go. You can see how it happens.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Shire Hall, a key tourist attraction in Bodmin, which bills itself as the historic heart of Cornwall. Photograph: SWNS

The case of Richard Clegg illustrates how terrifying county lines gangs can be. Clegg, a man in his mid-40s with cerebral palsy, lives on a third Bodmin estate, Hillside Park. Last year, he was caught by police with a cleaver in a park.

He told a sad story. He said he had come into contact with county lines gangsters because he smoked cannabis to ease the pain of his condition. They tried to persuade him to let them use his flat as a drug distribution centre. When he refused, they put a brick through his window and broke in to steal his television.

He decided he needed to find a way to defend himself and began walking around with the cleaver. The courts accepted his story and gave him a 12-month conditional discharge.

It is not clear if those behind the Billy line targeted Clegg, but the flat where Boy X worked from in Old Market Place is just a short walk away from Hillside Park.

Boy X had found he had little in common with Griffin, who he knew only as the “Old Man”. “I didn’t really speak to him much,” said X. “He let us in and went to his own room and was doing his own thing.”

Originally from Liverpool, Griffin came to Cornwall to work as a chef, but for most of his adult life was addicted to heroin. He was one of the Cornish addicts who bought from the Billy line before he allowed – or was coerced into allowing – its dealers to use the flat as a base.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hillside Park resident Richard Clegg was found carrying a cleaver, which he said was to protect himself from gangsters. Photograph: SWNS

It did not take police long to spot that Boy X was in Bodmin. When officers raided Griffin’s flat, Boy X tried to hide drugs between his buttocks. Drugs with a street value of £1,200 were in the flat.

The boy was taken to a place of safety and Griffin was bailed. A few months later, a second boy, Y, was installed in Griffin’s flat. Again he was soon spotted and again the police raided. Y tried unsuccessfully to hide drugs in a kitchen bin.

A third boy, Z, who had been missing from a London care home, was found working from a flat in the surf resort and party town of Newquay. Z was originally regarded as a victim but in the end police treated him as a member of the gang because he went back to dealing and at one point brandished a machete at officers.

In February 2019, about 200 Devon and Cornwall and Metropolitan police officers raided addresses in the London boroughs of Haringey, Lewisham and Hackney, as well as in Bodmin, St Austell and Newquay in Cornwall. Suspected gang members were arrested for drug dealing, modern slavery and human trafficking offences. Knives were found at a flat in Newquay.

Twenty years ago, we used to drink a bit of cider or smoke a bit of weed. Now it’s crack cocaine and heroin Anonymous resident

The police investigation, Operation Ligament, was painstaking, involving mapping the progress of gang members’ phones as they drove from London to Cornwall and tallying the data with hire car and number plate recognition records. Officers established that in 2018 65 return journeys between London and Cornwall were made.

Gang members spun strange stories to explain why they had been visiting Cornwall so frequently. Shanice Morrison, a single mother from north London, for example, claimed she was visiting a boyfriend she had met on the internet at a hotel. But police established she had been staying in Cornwall for only 20 minutes at a time and there was no sign of bookings for her in the hotel where she claimed the liaisons had taken place.

Griffin was also charged with being part of the organisation but in court his barrister, Lee Bremridge, argued that he had simply been given heroin and retired to his room to smoke it. “If Lord Lucan had arrived he would not have cared,” Bremridge said.

The crime statistics suggest Ligament disrupted supply to Bodmin. In the year leading to September 2018, drug offences in Bodmin were down by 34% compared with the previous 12 months.

Police are pleased their intelligence also suggests Ligament slowed supply in Bodmin and that at least a few young people who were forced to take part in the Billy line scam have a second chance. But they accept that where there is demand there will always be supply. A new line will open, if it has not already.