Peter ‘Fatso’ Mitchell told to pay just €27k - after being caught with drugs worth €2.1m

The former key member of John Gilligan’s infamous gang is serving a ten-year-sentence, but faces more time if he fails to cough up the cash.

A Proceeds of Crime Act order was made at Swansea Crown Court yesterday morning, according to WalesOnline.

It means he has to pay £23,610 within three months, or face having another 15 months added to his sentence.

Fatso Mitchell was caught in July, 2020 as he drove from Bradford to Swansea with cocaine worth £133,000 hidden in boxes on the back seat.

The Irish man and two other gang members had been identified as drug traffickers after French police cracked the encrypted message system EncroChat.

When Fatso had been intercepted his two co-conspirators began to send each other messages discussing the possibly he had been arrested after he failed to turn up at the drop-off point.

The National Crime Agency and South Wales Police were able to use intelligence gathered from it to identify Mitchell, who went by 'Gorilla Hawk'.

Over a five-month period the gang shipped an estimated 42kg of cocaine into Swansea.

News of his arrest was the first time Fatso Mitchell had been heard of for several years since he was forced to flee the Coast del Crime.

He had left Ireland following the shocking murder of crime reporter Veronica Guerin in 1996 as gardai closed in on the Gilligan Gang.

In the Costa Del Sol where he continued to be involved in international drug trafficking and established himself as a major drug supplier operating out of a luxury villa in Puerto Banus.

He often worked with George ‘The Penguin' Mitchell and was in regular contact with John ‘The Coach' Traynor, who was moving between The Netherlands and Margate on the UK's south coast.

Mitchell was considered one of the top dogs on the Costa when he purchased `Paparazzi'.

The bar just outside Puerto Banus was effectively a meeting place for drug gangs, including the Kinahans.

Freddie Thompson and his cousins Liam and David Byrne were regular visitors, along with their father, James `Jaws' Byrne.

The Sunday World previously revealed how Mitchell was then lucky to escape with his life after Christy Kinahan Snr sanctioned his murder in 2008.

Kinahan sr had just been arrested in Belgium over money-laundering charges.

As a result, he closed his Paparazzi bar in Puerto Banus which had become a HQ for international gangsters.

He effectively went on the run from the Kinahan Cartel after surviving a shooting just six months after his pal Paddy Doyle was murdered by the mob.

His arrest in the UK in 2020 highlighted his fall from grace in the underworld from brokering international drugs deals to moving cocaine consignment himself.

Mitchell used the alias 'Anthony Swanson' while living out of a middle-class address on Pollard Lane, Bradford in Yorkshire, according to Sunday World sources.

This was the same alias used by the former Gilligan gang member when he fled Ireland in 1996.

During his time living in Bradford, Mitchell had not amassed any convictions under either his own name or the name 'Swanson.'