PERVERTING THE COURSE OF JUSTICE: Convicted killer William Todd's elaborate but ultimately botched bid to get EncroChat drug bosses convictions overturned

A convicted murderer and two accomplices staged an elaborate but botched scheme to try to help criminal associates escape big EncroChat prison sentences for international drug trafficking.

William Todd, 61, (top left) was 21 years into two life sentences when he orchestrated a plan to help Danny Brown, 58, Stefan Baldauf, 66, (below) and four other guilty men walk free after they were convicted of trying to smuggle 448kg of MDMA worth £45m to Australia in the arm of an industrial digger.

Brown and Baldauf were jailed for 26 years and 28 years respectively in December 2022 following a National Crime Agency Operation Venetic EncroChat investigation.

When the jury trying them retired to consider verdicts in June 2022, false claims were sent to Kingston Crown Court and policing that the that the jury had been tampered with.

The reports claimed that five jurors had been bribed to convict the men on trial.

The judge paused proceedings for the NCA’s Anti-Corruption Unit to begin an investigation.

Whoever made the reports did not know that two of those named jurors had been discharged from sitting on the jury some months earlier and the trial soon recommenced.

NCA investigators studied court CCTV from the start of the trial and noticed an unidentified man enter court when the jury was sworn in, but leave soon after.

That man was identified as Danny Thomas, 46, (above) of Skylark Way, Shinfield, Reading.

Thomas had somehow recorded jurors’ names when they were read out and was operating under the orders of Todd - who was given two life sentences in 2001 for the attempted murder of his business partner and shooting dead his bodyguard in the Berkshire village of Pangbourne.

Having failed in their first bid to derail the trial, in August 2022 Todd (above) and Thomas tried again.

They needed a woman and recruited Sheree Avard, 41, of Hammond Road, Woking, Surrey.

The three hatched a plot whereby Avard would phone Kingston Crown Court and ask for details of Brown’s and Baldauf’s solicitors.

Southwark Crown Court heard that Thomas was reporting back to Todd and Todd was making these arrangements on behalf of ‘the boys’.

Using the name Ioana Andrei, she then contacted Brown’s solicitor, the human rights lawyer Karen Todner, and claimed she had had a short relationship with a man on the jury – citing a real name that Thomas had captured.

She claimed the juror confessed to her that he was pressured into convicting the men, and that two other jurors had also been pressured to do the same thing.

Realising that Avard’s story was likely to be exposed as lies, the conspirators told Brown’s solicitor that Iona Andrei had moved home to Romania so was not available to give evidence.

But they didn’t let that stop their plans.

They paid for a fake passport in the name of Ioana Andrei to be given to a woman in Romania who they paid along with a corrupt solicitor to sign an official deposition that the juror told her he was forced to convict the men. This was then sent to Brown’s lawyer, who went on to make a statement (above and below) about the contact she had from the conspirators, which was posted on X in December 2022.

The conspirators hoped that by providing this to the authorities in the UK, the statement would be accepted at face value and the drug traffickers’ convictions would be quashed.

Thomas was arrested at Heathrow Airport on 24 November 2022 when he arrived on a flight from Dubai.

He was in possession of a mobile phone which had the same number used to phone Brown’s solicitor. It was also a treasure trove of evidence.

He had recorded conversations and screen grabbed messages.

The number for Todd’s secret phone – which was discovered concealed in a DVD player in his prison cell – was saved under the alias of Ari Gold, a character from the TV series Entourage.

NCA officers linked the two numbers together and identified Todd as the driving force behind the conspiracy.

Thomas and Avard (above) admitted conspiring to pervert the course of justice and were sentenced on Friday, March 13 at Southwark Crown Court to three years and four months, and one year respectively.

Thomas claimed in interview he was given money to initially approach jurors and offer them bribes to derail the trial.

Todd – who made national headlines in December 2001 when he escaped from prison and was captured five days later - was convicted by a jury of the same charge.

He was jailed for seven years.

Steve Ahmet, senior investigating officer at the NCA’s Anti-Corruption Unit, said: “This case shows the remarkable lengths that high-harm criminals will go to in order to cheat justice and why they pose the greatest corruption threat to crucial pillars of our society.

“The offenders were determined to help their criminal associates walk free but our team built a rock-solid case against them.”

Nicola Rutter from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Jury tampering undermines a cornerstone of our justice system.

“Danny Thomas, Sheree Avard, and William Todd tried to sabotage a drugs trial, firstly by disrupting the trial itself and later by trying to undermine the convictions.

“While they didn’t actually interfere with the jury, they made false reports that there had been jury tampering. This has landed them with prison time.

“I want to thank officers from the National Crime Agency for getting to the bottom of their plot which allowed the CPS to bring this successful prosecution.”

Danny Brown (above) and Stefan Baldauf were jailed after an NCA investigation was launched under Operation Venetic - the NCA-led response to the takedown of encrypted communications platform EncroChat.

Brown, of Kings Hall Road, Bromley, Kent, helped investigators smash his own OCG when he sent a picture of his pet French Bulldog ‘Bob’ (above) to Baldauf showing his partner’s phone number on the dogtag.

Baldauf, of Midhurst Road, Ealing, London, also sent a picture of a brass door sign with his face visible in the reflection.