Walter Finch
A BRITISH arms dealer living in a luxury villa on the Costa del Sol plotted to ‘melt’ a rival’s face with acid before his arrest last year.
Gangster Philip Waugh, 40, was a mysterious figure operating in the dark known to British police only as ‘Aceprospect’.
The Liverpool native, who has a previous conviction for domestic assault of a partner, had been operating his criminal empire from abroad whilst UK crime groups carried out violent offences with his weapons.
He sold military-grade weapons including AK47s, Uzi and Skorpion machine guns to organised crime groups across the UK whilst operating from rented properties in Benahavis and Thailand.
In one scheme, the crime boss conspired with a Liverpool gangland enforcer to permanently disfigure a victim in a chilling acid attack.
“Just need him blind and face melted,” Waugh wrote in one message to his accomplice Jonathan Gordon, before instructing him to ‘double the dose’ and ‘cook’ the intended victim with acid.
The horrific plot was only prevented when police patrol officers spotted Gordon on the day of the planned assault in Liverpool. He fled but his car was seized.
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Waugh had sparked huge concern among UK law enforcement in 2020 when investigators discovered an unidentified British crime boss was advertising a notorious weapons list on the encrypted platform EncroChat under the handle ‘Aceprospect’.
The arsenal on offer included two AK47 firearms, a Skorpion machine gun, an Uzi machine gun, a range of pistols and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Waugh smuggled the guns into the UK where his right-hand man Robert Brazendale, 38, took possession of them and distributed them to customers from various organised crime groups around the country.
A series of linked investigations saw dangerous offenders across Britain jailed for conspiring to buy and transfer the weapons from Waugh’s list.
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National Crime Agency investigators worked tirelessly for five years to unmask and trace Waugh, eventually identifying him as the man behind the handle.
Waugh had been living in Thailand before moving to Spain. The breakthrough came when Thai authorities alerted the NCA and Spanish National Police about his relocation.
Officers from both forces arrested him at his Malaga province villa on September 12 last year in a coordinated international operation.
Following his extradition from Spain, Waugh appeared at Liverpool Crown Court on April 11 where he admitted a range of firearms offences and one count of conspiring to inflict grievous bodily harm.
He was sentenced to 26 years and eight months in prison, with a third deducted because of his guilty pleas.
Brazendale, of Selworthy Drive, Warrington, Cheshire, had already been jailed in February 2022 for 11 years and three months for transferring firearms from Waugh’s gun list.
He admitted new firearms offences committed with Waugh and was handed an additional 11 years and four months on top of his existing sentence.
He also admitted conspiring to inflict grievous bodily harm on the acid attack victim.
Gordon, 37, from Kirkdale, Liverpool, who used the EncroChat handle ‘Valuedbridge’, was a member of Liverpool’s notorious Deli Mob gang.
The NCA and policing partners recovered two AK47s, Uzi and Skorpion machine guns, a Grand Power automatic pistol, a Smith and Wesson pistol and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Ben Rutter, NCA senior investigating officer, said: “Waugh only cared about making a lot of money. He supplied an array of automatic and semi-automatic weaponry to offenders who were planning horrific crimes and had no regard for public safety.
He didn’t care at all about who might be killed in the process.
“The NCA and policing partners went into overdrive when we discovered Waugh’s gun list, doing everything possible to find and seize them.”
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