Organised crime ‘bug-sweeper’ has second prison sentence extended after Crown appeal

About this case:

• Citation:
  [2025] HCJAC 5
• Judgment:
  External link
• Court:
  Appeal Court of the High Court of Justiciary
• Judge:
  Lady Dorrian

Ian Sweeney, who acted as a tracker and “bug-sweeper” for individuals involved in the supply of cocaine and cannabis, pled guilty to an offence under section 28 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010 in October 2024, after being previously convicted of another offence in 2023. The Crown sought a longer sentence on the grounds that the 2-year sentence did not achieve the objectives of sentencing.

The appeal was heard by the Lord Justice Clerk, Lady Dorrian, with Lord Matthews and Lord Beckett. The Lord Advocate, Bain KC, appeared for the Crown and Ross KC for the respondent.

Together with earlier offence

The respondent was a service user of an encrypted platform called EncroChat used by people involve in organised crime which was infiltrated by the police in 2020. From the data recovered by Police Scotland, it was clear that under the name “bug-sweep” the respondent had developed a reputation as someone who could obtain private information about individuals, including their whereabouts.

Between 29 March 2020 and 15 May 2020, the accused was in contact with over 100 other individuals on EncroChat. During this time, he sourced and supplied drugs, advised others on how to store and covertly transport drugs, and conducted sensitive information checks on third parties. He also published a price list for bug-sweeping services and advice on avoiding detection by law enforcement agencies, with his services being used across the UK and Europe.

On 20 March 2023 at the High Court in Glasgow, the respondent was convicted after trial of a separate offence under section 28 of the 2010 Act and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. In respect of the second offence, the trial judge characterised the offending as “particularly serious” and said that it would merit a sentence of seven years’ imprisonment taken in isolation. However, he took the view that had the offence been taken together with the earlier offence the headline sentence would have been eight years and therefore considered the proportionate sentence to be three years, discounted by a third to reflect the plea of guilty.

For the Crown it was submitted that the trial judge erred in treating the matter as though he was sentencing the respondent for both the 2023 and 2024 convictions. The offences were committed more than three years apart, and in the latter case the offending was calculated, deliberate, and committed in the knowledge that the services were being provided for the purposes of serious and organised crime.

Much more sophisticated

Lady Dorrian, delivering the opinion of the court, said of the trial judge’s approach: “In the present case the trial judge relied on the case of Ibbotson v HMA (2022) to conclude that ‘in circumstances such as those which pertain in the present case, the interests of justice do not require both sentences to duplicate the same sentencing purposes’. This is a direct quote from Ibbotson, and seems to have been relied upon by the sentencing judge to conclude that the offending before him should be viewed as being apiece with the offending which led to the sentence already being served.”

She added: “In his report, the sentencing judge suggests that this is not what he intended to do, and that he was seeking merely to apply the totality principle. It does seem however, that he went beyond this, when one takes account of his sentencing remarks.”

Considering whether there was any basis for weighing the two offences together, Lady Dorrian said: “The offending which led to the sentence already being served involved taking steps which [the respondent] knew or suspected would enable or further the commission of serious organised crime, by using technology to trace the location of a mobile telephone, and direct an individual to continue with previously arranged plans, all between 13 September and 23 November 2016.”

Comparing this to the second offence, she continued: “The subsequent offending occurred three and a half years later and, whilst it involves a breach of the same statutory provision, it is much more sophisticated, much more organised and operated on a commercial basis, creating considerable risk to the wellbeing of the individuals whose details he traced and sold.”

Lady Dorrian concluded: “The judge required to consider the nature of the offending before him, assess the seriousness of it by reference to culpability and harm, and determine what would be an appropriate sentence to reflect these factors. He required to consider the extent of any discount which should be applied as a result of the plea. And finally, he had to determine how the fact that the respondent was already serving a sentence should be dealt with. This did not require him to consider the circumstances of that earlier offending, or bring it within some hypothetical overall sentence by combining two quite separate and distinct instances of offending.”

The court therefore quashed the sentence imposed by the trial judge and substituted a consecutive sentence of five years and six months, reduced from six years and eight months to reflect the guilty plea.