A bloke dubbed the “Wolf of Widnes” who became Arizona’s ecstasy kingpin has seen his empire crumble.
Shaun Attwood saw his drug-fuelled reign topple just like the character he has been likened to in The Wolf of Wall Street film. On May 16, 2002, Attwood’s world came crashing down when a SWAT team burst through his mansion’s doors in Arizona.
Facing charges as the ringleader of a criminal syndicate, he was chucked into the notorious Maricopa County Jail. From a cushy Cheshire childhood to clashing with America’s most notorious drug lords, Attwood’s journey is one for the books.
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(Image: Widnes Weekly News)
A trip to Arizona to visit family sparked his love affair with the US. “My aunt forged a fake ID and took me to bars and introduced me to women as Paul McCartney’s nephew,” he reminisced, reports the Manchester Evening News. “I was dazzled. I loved it and knew I wanted to go back.”
Despite only possessing a traveller’s visa, he managed to secure a job as a stockbroker in the US after graduating from university, often working 15-hour days making cold calls.
Within half a decade, he claims he was pulling in a salary of around £450k, however, the gruelling hours and high-pressure environment soon led to burnout.
(Image: Press Association)
To alleviate the stress, he took to the club scene and started using ecstasy, which was just beginning to gain popularity in America. “I started throwing house parties and suddenly I was making a lot of friends, while giving away drugs,” he confessed to the Mirror in 2018.
“That was when I began realising the potential business opportunities in selling ecstasy. I started dealing and when the local dealers could no longer supply my needs I found who the main supplier was and arranged to buy 500 hits from him for $7,000. Before long I was importing ecstasy from Holland at $3 a tablet and selling it for $10 to my own team of sellers. We would hide it in luggage and all sorts of stuff, like computer towers and vitamin bottles and smuggle it through.
“I’d send my employees from Phoenix to Germany or France and then on to a train to Amsterdam and back and later through Mexico and over the US border.”
Attwood transitioned from being a weekend party-goer to a drug lord. By 1999, he had hundreds of people under his employ and alleges that he was Arizona’s top ecstasy dealer.
(Image: youtube/@On a mission)
At the peak of his infamy, he was dubbed the Bank of England due to his massive wealth, cruising in limos and snapping up properties left, right and centre. But his rise to success made him a target for established US crime syndicates.
The plot thickened when Salvatore Gravano, the infamous ex-Gambino Crime Family heavy known as ‘Sammy the Bull’, launched a competing ecstasy operation. It’s alleged that Gravano put a price on Attwood’s head and even plotted a kidnap.
Meanwhile, Attwood’s ventures took a nosedive during the NASDAQ crash. And let’s just say, his shady dealings hadn’t slipped past the feds.
His mules started getting collared at airports globally, and then a SWAT team rocked up at his door. Thrown into the clink with murderers and mobsters at the time, he managed to survive the gruelling experience and is back in the UK.
Now banned from America for life, he speaks to student audiences across the UK and Europe about his jail experience and the consequences of getting involved in drugs and crime. He has appeared on TV multiple times discussing issues affecting prisoners’ rights, and also hosts his True Crime Podcast on YouTube.
He has also penned three books about his prison experiences and generously donated 20,000 copies to schools and inmates.
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