John Smith has six months to pay back £622,662 or face having five years added onto the 13-year prison sentence

John Smith, 47, was the mastermind behind a gang who posed as booze cruisers to bring cocaine into Britain from Holland on passenger ferries.He owned houses in Allerton and Marbella – a popular retreat for Merseyside crooks and gangsters – and was found to have moved stacks of cash from UK bank accounts out to Spain.
But now Smith, brother of murdered drugs kingpin Colin, has six months to pay back £622,662 or face having five years added onto the 13-year prison sentence he is already serving.Smith and a seven-strong gang was caught by police after they launched Operation Copybook in September 2005.They trailed the suspects for seven months, following them on the European ferry rides they used to courier the drugs.Smith, formerly of Booker Avenue, Allerton, was the last of the gang to be put before the courts and ordered to pay back cash under Proceeds of Crime legislation.
The gang forged links with a Dutch drug dealer, collecting suitcases full of half-kilo blocks of heroin and cocaine every two weeks.John Traynor, of Keswick Drive, Litherland, took the drugs on board a P&O ferry and, during the 11-hour voyage, packed it into cases of bottled beers. Francis Gallagher, a ferry employee, then took them off the boat, past customs officers.The gang then met at Gallagher’s home, in Clorash Road, Kirkby, to distribute the drugs.Traynor and Gallagher were among five men ordered to pay back nearly £150,000 between them by the court last year. Some have been forced to sell family homes to settle the debt.The gang members were jailed for a total of 68 years in February 2007 after pleading guilty to conspiring to import nearly £10m in Class A drugs. Smith’s brother, Colin, 40, was killed in a gangland hit as he left Nel’s Gym in Speke last November.He is said to have taken control of much of Curtis Warren’s drugs empire when the Toxteth drug baron was jailed in 1996.DCI Mike Jones, head of the North West Regional Asset Recovery team, said: “Not only are some individuals in the process of selling the family homes to satisfy the orders, but also it will stop the proceeds being reinvested into further drug dealing on Merseyside.”