Encrochat: Crime kingpin Conor McGregor jailed for six years after extradition from Morocco

A Scottish drug gang boss has been sentenced to six years in prison after being extradited from Morocco.

Conor McGregor, 32, masterminded an organised crime group that made “significant” amounts of money dealing in drugs including cocaine, heroin and cannabis.

His responsibilities included arranging the receipt and distribution of “very significant amounts” of drugs, and the collection of payments.

McGregor oversaw the operation from May 2019 to July 2022, and used encrypted messages to organise the storage, movement, sale and supply of drugs.

He also made use of a number of vehicles and properties to store and conceal drugs and money.

He was finally arrested in Morocco in July 2024, before being returned to Scotland in January 2025.

It is understood McGregor was traced after the Encrochat messaging platform he had been using was cracked by European law enforcement agencies.

McGregor pleaded guilty to involvement in serious organised crime at the High Court in Glasgow on July 15.

Sentencing him at the High Court in Edinburgh on Thursday, judge Lady Drummond made clear his senior role in the operation.

“You were head of an organised crime group, and were involved over a period of over three years,” she told him.

“You were responsible for overseeing the supply of class A and class B drugs.”

His responsibilities, she said, included receiving drugs, engaging others to take payments, and arranging the collection and distribution of drugs.

She added that he had “generated significant quantities of money” from the operation.

Lady Drummond said of his offending: “It is, in my view, at the upper end of the scale given the amount of drugs involved, and the period of time and the geographical location.”

She sentenced him to six years in prison, backdated to July 19, 2024 when he was first arrested and detained in Morocco.

McGregor, who attended the hearing remotely from prison, showed no emotion as the sentence was handed down.

Earlier, McGregor’s lawyer Brian McConnachie KC told the court his client took full responsibility for his actions, and had expressed a “high level of shame” for what he had done.

“(He) seems to see the impact not just on his own family but on other people who were to all intents and purposes unknown to him,” Mr McConnachie told the court.

“He acknowledges the harm he could well be responsible for by virtue of his involvement in drugs.”

He added that McGregor first become involved in criminality at a “low level” when he was 23, and matters had ultimately spiralled “out of control”.