Jamie 'Iceman' Stevenson gang member ordered to hand over £30,000

A member of a gang headed by notorious Scots gangster Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson has settled a court action by handing over £30,000 to the authorities.

Ryan McPhee, 35, pocketed £255,000 during his life of crime with Stevenson, who was jailed for running an international drug smuggling scheme that saw nearly a tonne of imported cocaine hidden in a banana shipment.

At the High Court in Edinburgh on Monday, lawyers for McPhee and the Crown told judge Lord Summers that they both agreed the accused made the sum from illegal activities.

However, the lawyers also informed Lord Summers that McPhee only has £30,000 available, and that comes from a 50% equity share in a house.

James ‘Jamie’ 'Iceman' Stevenson — James ‘Jamie’ ‘Iceman’ Stevenson Police Scotland

Lord Summers ordered McPhee to hand the sum over at the end of a short hearing.

McPhee and others are currently serving prison terms after pleading guilty to involvement in serious organised crime charges in 2023.

The leader of the gang of which McPhee was a member was Scottish gangster Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson.

He pled guilty to a charge in 2023 which saw him admitting to orchestrating a plot to smuggle cocaine worth £100m from South America in boxes of bananas has been jailed for 20 years.

Silver foil packages were found in consignments of bananas. COPFS

He was given 20 years for directing the importation of the drug, which was seized by Border Force teams at Dover in September 2020.

The other members of his gang were jailed for a total of 29 years.

The plot was uncovered after an encrypted messaging platform used by criminals was infiltrated by French police.

Stevenson had also planned to flood Scotland with millions of Etizolam tablets, also known as street valium, from a factory in Kent.

The 60-year-old from Rutherglen in South Lanarkshire was a leading figure at the top level of organised crime in Scotland.

He was once described as Scotland’s answer to Tony Soprano, the mafia boss portrayed in the television series The Sopranos. In 2022, he featured on a list of the UK’s 12 most wanted men.

Stevenson admitted his role in producing and supplying Etizolam and smuggling a tonne of cocaine, which police estimated would have been worth £100m on the streets, into the UK.

He was jailed for a total of 20 years when he appeared for sentencing at the High Court in Glasgow.

Five other men – David Bilsland, 68; Paul Bowes, 53; Gerard Carbin, 45; Ryan McPhee, 34; and Lloyd Cross, 32 – also pled guilty to serious organised crime and drug offences.

Carbin was jailed for seven years; Bilsland, Bowes and Cross were each jailed for six years; and McPhee was jailed for four years.

Lewis Connor, 27, was jailed for three years in July after the investigation found encrypted phone messages which proved he had set fire to properties and vehicles across Central Scotland.

The drugs operation, which spanned the UK, Spain, Ecuador and Abu Dhabi, had been targeted by police in an inquiry which was named Operation Pepperoni.

Officers had been investigating reports that Bilsland, a Glasgow fruit merchant, had links with organised crime. He was then seen meeting Stevenson in a hotel in Spain.

At about the same time, officers had learned that Stevenson was involved in setting up a factory in Kent, which was producing millions of Etizolam tablets.

The factory was raided in June 2020, and Stevenson was arrested in Glasgow.

He was taken to England by the police before being released on bail. He then fled the UK, spending almost two years on the run before being arrested in the Netherlands.

The National Crime Agency said Stevenson continued to direct the importation of cocaine into the UK from abroad.

Prosecutor Alex Prentice KC earlier told the court that the messages on the encrypted phone network EncroChat showed Stevenson discussing plans to import kilo blocks of cocaine with Cross, as well as the use of Bilsland, providing “an appearance of legitimacy”.

A tonne of the drug was seized in a raid by Border Force teams at Dover in September 2020.

They found 119 packages of cocaine concealed in boxes of bananas from Ecuador, which were destined for Glasgow. It took officers three days to recover the drugs from the shipment.

Defence counsel Thomas Ross KC told the court Stevenson had known exactly what he was doing and had made “a series of bad decisions” for which the motivation was obvious.

“He takes ownership of all those decisions and doesn’t seek to cast blame in anybody else’s direction,” he said.

The judge, Lord Ericht, told Stevenson that he had directed “a complex operation” for the importing and supplying of cocaine and played “a leading role” in manufacturing and distributing Etizolam tablets.

On Monday, prosecutor Bryan Heaney told Lord Summers that the Crown needed further time to prepare their cases against McPhee’s co-accused.

The proceedings against them – Stevenson, Bilsland, Carbin, Cross, and Bowes – will take place on March 16, 2026.