Drug dealer who claimed benefits

The extraordinary story of how Britain’s most prolific drug dealer made £100,000 a week while claiming housing benefit is revealed today.

At the height of his operations, Turkish crime baron Recip Yilmaz was suspected of being responsible for the majority of heroin flooding into Britain. He owned seven houses here and abroad and drove a £75,000 Mercedes.

While he amassed a multi-million-pound fortune from his drugs empire, which he invested in a series of legitimate businesses, he was also claiming housing and disability benefit and renting his council flat out to a friend.

Today Yilmaz, 46, was beginning a 30-year sentence after being convicted of heroin trafficking at Woolwich Crown Court. His premises were secretly bugged and police listened as he bragged of how he made £100,000 a week from the crime. The sentence is the longest ever achieved by the National Crime Squad, which targets Britain’s most serious criminals.

In a two-year inquiry, police recovered 130kg of heroin with a street value of £13million. During Yilmaz’s six-month trial police provided jury
protection at a cost of £1million. Details of his case can been revealed for the first time after his wife, Mine, 45, and sons Hakan, 22, and Bulent,

26, were jailed for money laundering linked to his drug trafficking. They had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing at the same court and were each jailed for between two and three years.

Seventeen other men, all linked to Yilmaz’s criminal network, were jailed for a total of 143 years.

With a previous conviction for heroin smuggling in 1984, Yilmaz was a
leading member of the Turkish mafia, which controls the vast majority of the heroin trade into the UK.

He ran a network of couriers and drivers who smuggled the drug across Europe from Turkey. One courier who worked as a London ambulance driver used the vehicle to carry drugs across the city. Raheel Anwar was jailed for six years at Southwark Crown Court in 2002.

Detectives are now working on seizing Yilmaz’s assets. Most of his properties are in Turkey. He also invested in a café in Edmonton, a Finchley Road dry-cleaners and a Wood Green car showroom.

He and his family lived in a £300,000 semi in Enfield and his wife drove a £25,000 Mercedes. As he claimed benefits, including a disability allowance for an alleged heart condition, he also ran up a £52,000 dentist bill. At the time of his arrest Yilmaz was looking to buy a new family home worth £800,000 in the Home Counties. He offered the owner half the asking price in cash.

Detective Inspector Graham Hancock of the National Crime Squad said: “The judge in the trial called him Mr Big and, as far as we were concerned, he was as big as you get. The group was responsible for the availability of large quantities of drugs on ourstreets and fuelling drug taking, drug-related violence and street crime.”