Episode 8 Fugitives

-Come on!

-On the run...

-Get back here!

-..and over here.

-Hands out, now! Hands out!

When foreign criminals flee their home countries,

many hide out in the UK.

-Give me your hands!

-But if they think they are safe, they're wrong.

They know they are wanted.

A lot of these people are waiting for that knock on the door.

But the traffic in fugitives isn't all one way.

Across Europe, there are hundreds of British criminals also trying to

escape justice.

From the sun-drenched Costas,

to the busy streets of the Dutch capital,

this is how the police take down the fugitives...

You're under arrest under the Extradition Act.

Police officer!

..both at home and abroad.

In today's programme...

it's double trouble for these officers as they go searching for

two wanted men in one small Yorkshire town.

We're going to go

200 metres up the road and do the other one.

But finding the fugitives won't be easy.

Am I going to be OK to walk past that dog and go upstairs?

In London, a helpful suspect introduces detectives to technology

to overcome their language barrier.

COMPUTERISED VOICE SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY

I love this thing!

It is going to revolutionise extradition police work, this.

-It's fantastic.

-And let down by a false passport,

the drug dealer on the run for over a decade,

captured by chance in Amsterdam.

We said, "We are in contact with the police of Liverpool," and then he

said, "Oh, no.

"You got me."

When it comes to tracking down men and women fleeing from justice in

other countries, West Yorkshire Police is one of the busiest forces

in the business.

Today, police officers Dave Lockwood and Tom Allen are out,

hunting down not one, but two foreign fugitives.

It would be nice if we got him.

The two wanted men live quite literally around the corner from

one another.

The first target is a Polish man called Roman Horbik,

wanted for crimes committed a long time ago.

So, just to summarise, Tom, two offences, first one is fraud,

where he has done them 12 withdrawals...

-Oh, right.

-..of cash from the bank,

and then the second one is hiding the stolen car.

Dave thinks the wanted man has probably forgotten all about it.

If you committed an offence and someone came tapping at your door

15 years later, you'd be surprised as well.

-15 years?

-Yeah.

They arrive at the address and see a car parked outside.

Dave runs a check on the number plate.

-His car.

-His car.

-It is a match.

-See if he's in.

They go up to the door to check who's home.

One thing is certain...

DOG BARKS

..there's a dog inside.

A very large dog.

Telly's on, Dave.

Woof.

Hiya, love.

-Hello.

-Hi.

-Are you OK?

-Yeah.

-How many people is in the house?

-Now, three.

-Who is in the house?

My baby...

Just children, no adults in your house?

No. No, I'm no good speaking English,

-but...

-It sounds really good to me.

Does anybody else live here that is not here now?

Erm... Yes, my husband only, but he work now.

He's at work. And what is he called?

-Roman Horbik.

-Roman. OK.

The woman confirms that the man they are after is her husband.

She says he is not here, but Dave is not convinced.

He wants to see for himself.

DOG BARKS

Just let him calm...

Am I going to be OK to walk past that dog and go upstairs?

But first, he'll have to get past the dog.

Just you hold the dog there.

-OK?

-The German Shepherd isn't too pleased to see police officers

-in the house.

-You been bitten yet, Dave?

No, but it is... It's a vicious dog.

Just checking upstairs, mate,

and then we'll get her to ring him if he's not here.

Once he gets past the barking dog,

Dave checks upstairs for the man they are looking for.

What I'm doing, love, I'm just making sure there's no-one here,

then I'll talk to you and explain what we are doing, OK?

OK, you can watch me go around, there's no problems with that.

There's no sign of him.

Dave finds out the man works as a builder and is due back home

-in a couple of hours.

-I don't know, maybe two hours.

-Two hours' time?

-Yeah.

OK, shall we come downstairs, back outside or into the kitchen?

-Yeah.

-Do you want to hold that dog of yours?

DOG BARKS

-Tom.

-Hello.

You can come round, it's clear.

HE TALKS TO DOG

Yeah, you can come and meet the dog if you want.

The woman can't reach her husband.

So Dave makes arrangements to come back later, when he is home.

All right, I'll leave you my details.

I've got my phone on me, so when Roman gets home,

just give us a text, OK?

I'll see you between half-seven and eight o'clock.

Here. All right?

All right, take care.

But how will the fugitive, who has evaded justice for 15 years, react

once he finds out the police are looking for him?

This is where I struggle to always see the worst in people and presume

they're not going to cooperate, but they've got kids here and one of

the kids is poorly, so whether he is going to do owt silly and

panic and run or come home for his tea,

I guess we'll find out in two or three hours' time, won't we?

But at least Dave and Tom haven't far to go for the next job.

It seems that the small town of Batley is also home to another man

on the run. This time from Hungary.

We're going to go

200 metres up the road and do the other one.

Though, when they get there, it's not the warmest of receptions.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-What is your name, please?

-Hmm?

What is your name?

Back in 2003,

police in Aberdeen were battling a growing problem.

Suppliers from Liverpool were trafficking large quantities of

hard drugs into the city.

They're involved in sourcing kilo quantities of heroin

from Liverpool, we know that they were spending tens of thousands of

pounds on heroin and making significantly more than that selling

it in Aberdeen.

Detectives learned that a courier from Liverpool was about to deliver

heroin to the area.

If they could spot him,

they knew he would lead them to the local dealers.

This is where we had intelligence that our subjects were going to be

meeting with a drug courier and collecting controlled drugs,

so we put a surveillance team in this area.

Then one of the undercover team hoping to spot the drugs handover

was approached by a stranger.

At about 9:30 that morning,

a male approached that surveillance officer and asked him if he was

there to pick something up.

So, obviously that focused our attention on him.

He spoke with a Liverpool accent,

and we thought that might be one of the people we were interested in.

The unlucky courier who had identified himself to the undercover

cop was Scott Coleman.

The officer kept watching.

Within minutes, Coleman was meeting

a local dealer already on their radar.

Another officer saw him getting into the passenger seat of a white

Vauxhall Cavalier,

which was known to us and had featured in our operation prior to that.

The driver of that car drove Coleman to here,

where Coleman jumped out of the car and headed back towards the

guesthouse. Pretty innocuous for a member of the public, but to us,

we thought that a drugs handover had occurred,

just with intelligence and what we had seen.

Scott Coleman may only have been a courier,

but he had blown the whole drug dealing operation wide open.

He was arrested in a pub near Aberdeen station.

He was totally upfront with the police when he was stopped,

quite unusually, and immediately said that he had more gear

in his rucksack.

Police found another kilo of heroin when they searched Coleman.

It had been meant for another dealer.

Unusually, Coleman was quite honest in his answers.

He said that he had been offered £1,500 to take what he thought was

either cocaine or heroin from Liverpool to Aberdeen,

and deliver to two different people.

Coleman was charged with drugs offences,

but was granted bail and subsequently disappeared.

For two years, there was no sign of him, until he offended again,

this time in Spain.

He had obviously gone from being a drug courier to having a more senior

position and was actually involved in the arrangement of importation,

so he was obviously still offending,

and offending at a higher level.

But Coleman wasn't going to give up on his life as an international

drugs dealer. Amazingly, the Spanish authorities also granted him bail.

Lo and behold, he disappeared once more.

For the next decade, he would be a fugitive,

on the run and hiding from justice.

In London, the extradition unit

is an elite squad of Metropolitan Police detectives.

Police. Can you open the door, please?

They work round the clock,

tracking down foreign criminals hiding here in the UK.

It's 5:30am and Detective Sergeant Pete Rance is out on the streets

of east London, hunting for a fugitive.

This morning we're looking at trying to arrest a fellow who is wanted in

Moldova for a fraud committed in 2010.

The man he's searching for is accused of giving false details

while applying for a loan.

If police find the man they are after,

he faces being sent back to Moldova to stand trial.

Police. Can you open the door?

Pete has found the address linked to the man,

and it looks like he is home.

There is a warrant that has been issued for your arrest in Moldova.

OK?

In Moldova.

There is a warrant for your arrest in London,

you are wanted for fraud in Moldova.

Do you understand?

The vast majority of them, English isn't their first language,

so it is a real ongoing issue for us.

And we are dependent, in the main,

on them being able to speak English to us,

rather than us being able to speak with them in their language.

The man they've arrested only speaks Romanian,

and his wife is acting as a translator.

Could you tell him, so he understands what's happening?

SHE SPEAKS ROMANIAN

He will know what is happening this afternoon.

He'll know if he can come home here or if he has to stay in prison.

But he will only be able to come home here,

he must give up his passport and his identity card,

otherwise the judge will not give him bail.

Any passport he has, he has to give to me, OK?

Otherwise... He has to give it to me.

Does he have an ID card as well?

This one, yeah.

OK. Are we ready? Let's go.

Pete will now transport the man to a custody suite in central London,

but explaining that to him is difficult,

as there is no-one to translate during the journey.

I've had many, many cases where

you are unable to communicate, you end up arresting someone,

you are not sure they understand,

apart from being able to issue them with a copy of the warrant in their

own language.

This arrest has been a journey of discovery for Pete.

On the way here, the man he is bringing into custody has shown Pete

how to use a translation app on his phone.

How do you get it to...?

We might have to wait a little while.

ELECTRONIC VOICE TRANSLATES

-No problem.

-OK.

It's great. I love this thing!

It is going to revolutionise extradition police work, this.

It's fantastic.

Thank you.

It was very, very useful. I had never seen it before, so I'm not...

I'm a bit of a technophobe, unfortunately, but he was...

We were able to have quite an in-depth conversation using this app.

This smartphone app can translate between more than 50 languages.

And it is making the process of checking into custody much

less stressful than usual.

ELECTRONIC VOICE TRANSLATES

All the legal documents are still provided in the arrested man's own language,

and he will also have access to the official language line translator,

but technology has definitely made conversation much easier.

We'll do the fingerprints.

I'll get a DNA bag and get you to swipe that.

It's a wonderful thing.

He has enlightened me this morning.

He used it to ask me some questions,

because he was concerned about the fact that he had been arrested,

concerned about what was going to happen to him,

so we've been able to reassure him in the car that the judge will

consider the request and he can make his representations through his

lawyer when he gets to court.

But all of those things we've been able to articulate and speak with

him about through the...

through the translating app that he had on his phone,

so it may be that we've...

we've hit on something today.

In West Yorkshire,

police officers Dave Lockwood and Tom Allen had been trying to track

down two fugitives living a stone's throw from one another.

We are going to go

200 metres up the road and do the other one.

The first man they're after is wanted for offences he committed

in Poland 15 years ago.

At the man's house, they find his car, his wife

and his dog,

but the man himself is out at work.

They are hoping he will return in a few hours.

Whether he's going to do owt silly and panic and run or come home for

his tea, I guess we'll find out in two or three hours' time, won't we?

Meanwhile, they make the very short journey to the home of the other

criminal they are looking for.

This man is Hungarian,

and back home he has been convicted of a series of burglaries carried

out between 2010 and 2012.

At the house, Dave covers the back exit while Tom knocks on

the front door.

DOG BARKS

Another dog for you, Dave.

You can deal with this one.

Sounds soft compared to mine.

The door is answered, but this resident doesn't have much to say.

-What is your name, please?

-Hmm?

What is your name? Dave, we've got a houseful here.

Do you know anybody called Tibor?

-Tibor?

-Yeah.

-Tibor?

-No.

No. Right.

Is it all right if I just come in and speak to you, yeah?

We are making some enquiries.

Tom and Dave make their way inside to find out more.

Do you know anybody by that name?

Don't know.

Could you ask your mum if she knows him?

THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE

-Hello.

-Hello.

-What is your name, please?

My name is David Paksy.

-David?

-Yes.

Right. Is that you?

The man at the kitchen table looks familiar.

Dave. It is this lad in the kitchen here.

It's him.

Tibor Paksy. They've got their man.

So you are under arrest.

-Why?

-Because, in Hungary, you are suspected of committing burglary,

all right? You don't have to say anything,

but anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?

As Dave and Tom explain to the fugitive that he has ten months left

to serve in a Hungarian prison,

the family begins to understand the seriousness of the situation.

SHE SOBS

Dave and Tom don't waste any time getting this man into custody.

And then, on their way back to the police station,

Dave gets an unexpected phone call.

It is the first man they were looking for earlier in the day.

Are you at home now, are you?

Oh, right, well, I tell you what, I know you've just got home from work,

why don't you grab yourself some tea,

and I'll come and see you in the next hour, hour and a half,

and come and have a chat with you?

-Is that OK?

-It's OK.

Thanks for ringing me. I'll come and see you soon.

-OK, thank you.

-Cheers. Thank you, bye-bye.

Days like this make up for the long days when you are really struggling,

when you go to address after address and you don't get anything,

so it just shows, even after seven years of doing this, you just...

You just don't know how it is going to play out.

Once they have the Hungarian burglar in custody,

they head back out to arrest the man who called Dave earlier.

I have no doubt he has not a clue what this is about,

so we're going to go in there,

hope his kids are in bed so they don't have to witness this,

and we will talk him through it.

Back in 2003,

drug courier Scott Coleman was arrested transporting heroin

from Liverpool to Aberdeen.

But he evaded justice, fleeing from Scotland whilst on bail.

In 2005, he was arrested again for drug offences in Spain.

And again he went on the run.

This time staying under the radar for a long time.

There's a number of ways in which people can hide themselves.

They can hide themselves through fellow criminal enterprises, so,

you know, they've

been given accommodation,

given cover and support by criminal organisations.

Or they can go further afield.

It would be a decade before the Liverpudlian drug courier would

resurface again. This time in Amsterdam.

For many years, serious crime officers in the city have worked

closely with their counterparts on Merseyside.

When you are wanted, we have good cooperation with the UK

we have focused intelligence, and every chance we get to get people,

we take.

In 2015,

a group of officers patrolling Gershwin Square in the business

district of Amsterdam stopped a group of men

who were acting suspiciously.

Colleagues saw that a known Dutch criminal

was talking to somebody else,

on a corner, and they just went to check, "Hey, what is going on?"

So that was the trigger.

Steven van Dokkum was one of the officers who spotted the group.

We decided to stop them and we

wanted to see their passports and what they were doing here.

We asked them if they know each other.

They said no, but we had seen them talking to each other.

So we started asking them some questions

about what they were doing here,

and we checked our police systems to see if they were...

..if something comes up.

Scott Coleman was using a false Irish passport,

something many fugitives rely on,

and he was now going by the name Wheeler.

Immediately, the Dutch were suspicious

because he couldn't provide certain

details that tallied up with the passport,

he didn't really know that much information about it,

so they obviously wanted to dig... Dig further.

Officers questioned Coleman about his supposed life back in Ireland.

Can I phone your father?

Can I phone your mother?

Can I phone your school,

where you were in school a couple of years ago?

He said, "No, no, no. No, that is not possible."

So he did not give any information to check.

The authorities were soon able to confirm that the passport was false.

One big giveaway,

the Mr Wheeler described on the passport

was a considerably shorter man.

It should be 175.

But he was taller than me, and I am 187.

So that was very strange.

Coleman was arrested on suspicion of carrying a false passport.

But then the Dutch discovered they had arrested a drug dealer,

wanted in the UK and Spain.

We took his fingerprints and

we sent them all over Europe, then we got identification from Spain.

It was time for the Dutch police to reveal they knew who he was.

He asked us, "How long will it take?

"Because I have to go, I have important things to do, I'd like to go.

"How long will it take?" And then we said,

"Yes, we are in contact with the police of Liverpool, Merseyside Police.

"Depending how quick they are."

And then he said, "Oh, no.

"You got me."

Coleman had been on the run since 2003.

It was finally time to send him home to face justice.

It was really satisfying, it was...

Especially when we heard

he wasn't the guy he said he was.

It was a real... A great feeling.

A lot about policing is to do with luck.

We only need that piece of luck on one occasion to actually get what we

are looking for. And, you know, Coleman fell foul of that in Aberdeen,

and again in Amsterdam.

Ultimately, you know, the authorities will always catch up with you.

In West Yorkshire,

police officers Dave Lockwood and Tom Allen are having a good day.

You don't have to say anything, but anything you do say may be given in

evidence. Do you understand?

Earlier, they arrested this man wanted in Hungary for three burglaries.

And then, on the way back to the police station,

Dave gets a call from the other man they've been looking for.

Roman Horbik is a convicted fraudster with a prison sentence

waiting for him in Poland.

Are you at home now, are you?

Yes, yes.

All right, well, I tell you what,

why don't you grab yourself some tea and I'll come and see you

in the next hour, hour and a half, and I'll come and have a chat with you?

Now, they are on their way to arrest him for crimes

he committed in Poland 15 years ago.

-Hi, Roman. Hi.

-DOG BARKS

Are we OK to come in? Thank you.

Are your children...? Children gone to bed?

-Yes.

-Yeah. Shut the door so we can't hear the dog.

-Thank you for ringing me.

-Yeah.

Do you speak really good English?

Not really good, but OK.

-If I talk slow...

-Yes.

-Right.

Thanks for ringing me. We've come back.

Obviously you didn't know, because I didn't explain properly,

why we are here.

There is no other way of saying this.

It is bad news, I'm afraid.

There is a problem in Poland.

Right. There's two offences the Polish have issued a warrant for

your arrest for.

That is an offence of fraud

and an offence of handling a stolen vehicle.

Did you know something about this?

Is it come as a shock or...

did you expect it?

No, I did not expect.

Just as Dave thought,

the wanted man clearly hasn't a clue why the police are here.

Basically, they've said, in 2001, I know it was a long time ago,

15 years ago, they are saying you've withdrawn loads of money from

the bank and not paid the money back.

-Yes, yes.

-You know something about that?

-Right.

-Finally,

it seems the wanted man remembers what it is he has to answer for.

So I am arresting you on a European Arrest Warrant for an offence

of fraud and handling stolen goods. So you do not have to say anything,

but anything you do say may be given in evidence, OK?

Yes. I hope I come back tomorrow.

As long as you can satisfy your bail conditions,

I don't think you'll have a problem.

OK?

He went up and gave all his kids a hug and a kiss,

and spoke to his missus a little bit in private.

You know, there is no need for us to stop that.

We've got what we need.

If that keeps him a bit calmer while he is with us, then so be it.

Horbik is taken into custody, where he will join Tibor Paksy,

the Hungarian burglar Dave and Tom arrested earlier in the day.

Sergeant, this is Roman Horbik,

he has been arrested by myself at 8:40pm this evening.

Tomorrow morning, both Horbik and Paksy will be taken to London to

appear before a judge at an extradition hearing in Westminster Magistrates' Court.

OK, Roman. There is a blanket on there for you.

And there is a buzzer on the wall, just there.

That goes through to the front desk, so if you don't feel well or you need anything,

water or anything like that, push the button, let us know,

all right? OK?

These... Both of them, 200 metres apart, both addresses.

Totally unconnected, different people.

We went for two and got two.

Roman Horbik was extradited back to Poland,

to serve the rest of his prison sentence for fraud.

Persistent burglar Tibor Paksy has been sent back to Hungary to serve

the remaining time on his sentences.

A judge decided to refuse the Moldovan government's request

to extradite the man who was arrested by the Metropolitan Police for fraud.

In November 2015, drug runner Scott Coleman

was extradited back to the UK.

He was sentenced to five years behind bars.

And when that is done,

he will have to serve another three years in a Spanish prison.