A gangland armourer who advertised machine guns to some of Britain’s most terrifying criminals and plotted to ‘melt the face’ of a rival with acid has been jailed for 26 years and eight months.
Philip Waugh, 40, from Warrington, Cheshire, armed organised crime groups across the UK with military grade weapons which he would flog on the now-defunct encrypted messaging platform Encrochat.
Using the handle ‘AceProspect’ on the network, Waugh offered AK47 assault rifles, a Cold War-style Skorpion machine gun, an Uzi machine gun and a host of lethal pistols to Britian’s crime bosses.
The 40-year-old also offered hundreds of rounds of ammunition for the groups to load their machinery with.
Authorities first became aware of the plot Waugh had been orchestrating in 2020, but had initially struggled to crack his identity beyond his alias on the chat site.
A series of texts discovered by the National Crime Agency (NCA) found that a British man – who they would later unmask as Waugh – was advertising automatic and semi-automatic weapons which would typically be used on the frontlines of a war.
Among those EncroChat messages, which the Daily Mail have produced mock-ups of, showed Waugh plotting his associate, Jonathan Gordon, 37, to blind a Warrington man named Nathan Simpson with acid.
Gordon, a hitman member of Liverpool’s Deli Mob, replied to say that he would ensure Mr Simpson gets ‘the full face wash’ in an apparent return for £10,000.
Philip Waugh (above) has been jailed for 26 years after arming organised crime groups in Britain with military-grade rifles and plotting to ‘melt the face’ of a rival with acid
Pictured are some of the weapons police seized after arresting Waugh
However, on the day the 37-year-old was due to carry out the attack, police approached him and seized his car as he fled the scene. The acid plot was prevented as a result.
The NCA’s investigations into EncroChat – and their subsequent infiltration of the chat platform – was at the heart of a Channel 4 documentary earlier this summer titled ‘Operation Dark Phone’.
It explored how the NCA’s Operation Venetic which would go on to uncover the identify of ‘Aceprospect’ as Waugh.
Recreations of the chats between Waugh and Gordon, who used the alias ‘Valuedbridge’, showed the scale of the violence the crime boss had instructed on Mr Simpson.
In the chats Waugh is seen exhibiting disturbing sadism, urging the hitman to blind the man and stab him in the leg so he is unable to run to a sink to wash his face.
Further mock-ups of chats to another associate also show Waugh blithely admitting that a ‘pineapple’ – slang for a grenade – had been left outside the home of one of his enemies on a residential street in Warrington.
After they asked him to remove it because a child lived inside the house, Waugh dismissed the concerns and wrote back: ‘It’s in god’s hands now.’
All of these messages, and evidence of the guns being sold by Waugh, saw the NCA to build a case strong enough to snare him.
Waugh sought the help of to Jonathan Gordon (above) to blind his rival with acid
Using the handle ‘Aceprospect’ on EncroChat, Waugh offered rifles (like the one seen above) to UK crime bosses
Working alongside Thai authorities – where the 40-year-old had been living – the agency swooped in on Waugh at his rented villa in Benahavis, Malaga, in September last year.
After being notified by Thai enforcement that he had left the country for Spain, the NCA and Spanish National Police descended on the property where they arrested Waugh.
He was later extradited and appeared at Liverpool Crown Court on April 11, where he admitted a range of firearms and a count of conspiring to inflict grievous bodily harm in which he instructed an accomplice to throw acid in a victim’s faces.
His sentence had a third deducted because of his guilty pleas.
The NCA also uncovered that Waugh would smuggle guns to the UK where his right-hand man Robert Brazendale, 38, took possession of them and provided them to customers from various organised crime groups.
Brazendale was jailed for 11 years and three months (later reduced to 10 years on appeal) in February 2022 for transferring other firearms from the gun list.
He admitted new firearms offences committed with Waugh and was jailed for 11 years and four months in addition to the term he is already serving.
Brazendale also admitted conspiring to inflict GBH on this victim.
Ben Rutter, NCA senior investigating officer, said: ‘Waugh’s sentencing is extremely welcome and is the result of huge amounts of work by NCA officers who persisted tirelessly for five years to trace, locate and bring him to justice under Operation Venetic.
‘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. We will continue to do everything we can with partners at home and abroad to prevent organised crime groups trafficking firearms.’
