A self-employed window repair man has been found guilty of drug trafficking and involvement in an organised crime group.

Christian Mayers, 50, looked straight ahead as the guilty verdicts were delivered on Thursday. Members of his family sobbed in the public gallery.

The seven-strong jury took just over four and half hours to reach the unanimous verdicts on all six charges Mayers faced.

He will be sentenced at a later date alongside six others involved in the crime gang. A directions hearing will take place on October 22 when a date for sentencing will be set.

There was no application for bail.

Remanding Mayers in custody ahead of sentencing, Deemster Graeme Cook told him: ‘You are likely to receive a substantial prison sentence.’

The Deemster told the jury: ‘There is force in what verdicts you have come to.’

Mayers, of Ashley Park, Onchan, was convicted of being concerned in the importation and supply of cocaine and cannabis, possession of ketamine, and participation in a criminal organisation.

The prosecution accused him of being the ‘right-hand man’ for the Liverpool-based head of a crime gang responsible for bringing significant amounts of drugs to the island and removing criminal cash back to Merseyside.

It activities included a shipment of drugs in October 2023 by rigid inflatable boat from Anglesey to Port St Mary.

Some £160,000 worth of cocaine and cannabis was later found stashed in a bush by the Sloc after the gang’s Audi was abandoned following a police chase.

Covert audio recordings from the organised crime gang’s remote country ‘bolthole’ in the island were played to the jury.

The Granary had been put under surveillance by the Manx Constabulary’s Serious and Organised Crime Unit as part of an investigation codenamed Operation Voodoo.

Mayers had taken over the tenancy from the alleged head of the OCG.

Prosecutor Roger Kane told the court that the covert surveillance provided strong evidence that the defendant was involved in drugs.

In one audio recording he could be heard talking about getting out of ‘the game’.

The jury was also shown covert CCTV footage from cameras installed in trees opposite The Granary.

This showed people entering and leaving the property, including those subsequently convicted of involvement with the crime gang.

On October 25, 2023, two men travelled to Holyhead by RIB, where they picked up a package containing drugs and returned to Port St Mary harbour.

But police were conducting surveillance of the harbour.

There was a car chase and the black Audi Q7 being pursued was abandoned in a remote area of the Sloc after a tyre was deflated when police deployed a stinger device.

Police arrived at the scene but were too late to apprehend the suspects or seize the drugs.

A Mini Cooper said to have been driven by Mayers was spotted by the abandoned Audi on the Sloc before speeding back towards Port St Mary.

Police set up a cordon around the area and at 2.45am the following morning, the defendant was stopped in his girlfriend’s blue Mini as he headed down the Ballakilpheric Road.

Body-worn footage from the officer who carried out the stop was shown to the jury. It showed the windows of the Mini steamed up. The defendant was hot and sweaty and his clothes were wet at the elbows and knees.

Mr Mayers claimed that he had gone for a test drive after he had tried to fix the car’s electrical fault.

‘I suggest your explanation defies all logic,’ the prosecutor put to him at the trial.

A package was later found stashed in a bush in a field just off the Sloc. It contained 0.5kg of cocaine and 3kg of cannabis.

CCTV footage was shown to the jury of Mayers on North Quay, Douglas, apparently looking down at the RIB that was to be used in the drugs shipment.

In February 2023, an Onchan resident reported suspicious behaviour outside her home in Royal Avenue West. She had looked out of her window to see a man trying door handles of vehicles and then rummaging inside a red van.

Inside the Bedford Rascal, which was one of Mayers’s company vans, they found cocaine in the glove compartment, with a street value of £1,840, and a significant quantity of cannabis in the back, valued at £9,906.

The prosecution said it was likely the man seen trying the car door handles was one of the drug runners for the OCG and that the unlocked van was used as a drop off and pick up point for drugs.

When police searched Mayers’s nearby flat, a quantity of ketamine was found in a kitchen cupboard. A handwritten note on an envelope was also found in a kitchen drawer, which the Crown said was a blueprint for importing drugs.

The gang leader was arrested in March 2024 as he attempted to remove criminal cash from the island.

Mayers was arrested the same day. A search of his new home on Ashley Park found traces of cocaine in a bedside drawer. The inside of a latex glove recovered from a safe in his van tested positive for the presence of cocaine.