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THE white powder which thousands of Scots are snorting up their noses every day may look like cocaine and taste like cocaine - but it certainly isn't cocaine.
Scotland's major organised-crime groups are flooding the nation with "fake coke" - a product so diluted it contains just a fraction of a per cent of the drug. The fake cocaine scam is making gangsters and drug dealers richer than they ever imagined.
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MERSEYSIDE'S top cop today vowed to take on the city's gangs and gangsters head-on.
The force has mapped out all of the known "organised crime groups" (OCGs) across Merseyside and built them into a "hierarchy".
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SCOTLAND's public sector is under attack. And its leaders remain blissfully unaware of it. The Sunday Herald can reveal that at least 93 organised crime groups are actively using corruption tactics against the nation's officials.
Yet, according to the country's leading crimefighter, practically no public body outside law enforcement has put in place the safeguards needed to combat a new gangster onslaught on the state.
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A MAJOR crime crackdown aimed at violent criminals, gangs and serious and organised crime groups gets under way today.
The month-long Operation Neptune will target the B division police area, which covers North East Glasgow and East Dunbartonshire.
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POLICE have put "the dirty dozen" of Scotland's most corrupt lawyers and accountants out of business, The Herald can reveal.
The Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency has ended the careers of the key specialists propping up the country's most dangerous organised crime groups.
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MERSEYSIDE'S top cop has vowed to take on the city's gangs and gangsters head-on.
The force has mapped out all of the known "organised crime groups" (OCGs) across Merseyside and built them into a "hierarchy".
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UP TO one in four prostitutes working off-street in Scotland is from South America.
Senior police sources say that in just two years they have seen a "several hundreds per cent" increase in the number of sex workers who are either from Brazil or claim to be.
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SCOTLAND's elite crimefighters carried out crippling "disruption" operations against gangsters more than once a week last year.
The Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency today said it had caused turmoil in the underworld with 59 schemes to undermine the nation's 360 organised crime groups.
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ROCKETING levels of metal thefts are costing Northumberland churches thousands of pounds and pushing parishes to the brink, it was claimed yesterday. Thefts from churches in the rural countryside are costing huge sums and are forcing churches in other parts of the region to lay off staff as they bid to cope with organised crime groups.
Police revealed thefts of lead from churches in rural Northumberland are a main concern for officers in isolated areas and the crimes is ranked alongside thefts from cars on the force's priority list. During an emergency meeting yesterday leading figures from across the North East urged the Government to change the law on scrap metal dealers.
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TWO members of one of Staffordshire's biggest organised crime groups have been ordered to repay some of their drugs money.
Marc Brookes is already serving five years in prison, while his "right-hand man" Kristoffer Hall has been jailed for four years.