Notorious Brit 'Wikipedia Narco' dies in Spain as family remembers 'crazy b***tard'
A notorious British drug baron nicknamed "Teflon Don" because of his ability to evade justice has died in Spain.
Brian Charrington was also known as the "Wikipedia Narco" in Spain as he updated and corrected his own online profile....even behind bars. He died in hospital in Spain after suffering a heart attack. He also had a lung condition possibly linked to his exposure to asbestos early in his working life, his family said today.
His villa in Calpe, near Benidorm, was raided by police in 2013. He bought a Rolls-Royce, Bentley and a fleet of yachts from the proceeds of his crime. In 2011 his fortune was estimated at £20m. But he had spent many years behind bars, and at the time of his death he was waiting to see if he would have to serve time on a historic case, according to sources on his native Teesside.
His son, also called Brian, announced his father's death in a Facebook post which received hundreds of messages of condolence. His dad, a former car dealer from Middlesbrough, worked with Colombia's most fearsome drug networks and UK gangsters including Curtis Warren.
He had been sentenced to 15 years behind bars in 2018, but that was later reduced on appeal. His life story was straight out of a Netflix series.
It involved huge quantities of cocaine, cash and court cases that once earned him the nickname "Teflon Don" because of his ability to escape prosecution. Brian had three children, Brian Junior, 48, Danny, 44, and Ray, 38. Brian Jnr told the Mirror: "He was a crazy b***tard. I cannot think of anything else to say really. He was just crazy."
His role as a police informer was revealed at a trial in the 1990s which resulted in the collapse of the case against him.
But Brian jnr added: "Those who knew him, knew that he was not really an informer. He never hid where he lived - he would not have been there if he had been an informer.
"He had inside information at times, but he did not give information to the police."
He lived for years in Spain, where he apparently kept crocodiles in his swimming pool. He was found guilty of a plot to import nearly 200 kilos of cocaine into Spain from South America in 2018.
He was ordered by the court to pay more than £27m - 31 million euros - in fines. Spanish media referred to Charrington as "el narco de la Wikipedia" as he updated his own Wikipedia page with detailed information about his international criminal career.
When Charrington was arrested in 2013, Spanish police said he was one of Europe's 10 most-wanted criminals.
He was also thought to be one of Britain's richest. Customs officers suspected Charrington was flying to South America with Curtis Warren in the early 1990s. They met senior representatives of Colombia's Cali Cartel, a feared cocaine export operation featured in the 'Narcos' Netflix TV series.
Charrington was arrested as his private plane touched down at Teesside in June 1992. When police raided his home in Nunthorpe they found 12 holdalls in his loft containing £1.7m in cash with traces of drugs.
Charrington and Warren were both charged with conspiracy to supply Class A drugs and set for a trial at Newcastle Crown Court in 1993. The case against the two men collapsed due to Charrington's role as a police informer.
Warren, who walked free from court, is famously rumoured to have taunted a customs officer with the words: "Now I'm off to spend my £85m share and there's nothing you can do about it."
He later denied he had said those words, but the boast added to his reputation for being 'cocky'.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scottish Sun
an hour ago
- Scottish Sun
Police spring into action as around 100 hooligans clash with rival fans before Spanish clash
The disgusting scenes were widely condemned FAN CHAOS Police spring into action as around 100 hooligans clash with rival fans before Spanish clash POLICE were forced to spring into action after close to "100" football hooligans ran riot at a Spanish pre-season friendly. CD Tenerife and UD Las Palmas locked horns in a tasty pre-season friendly on Saturday afternoon. Advertisement 3 The pre-season friendly between Tenerife and Las Palmas was marred by violence before the match Credit: EL PARTIDAZO DE COPE 3 Reports claim Las Palmas fans attacked their counterparts, with footage showing barriers being thrown by louts Credit: EL PARTIDAZO DE COPE But the Canary Islands derby was marred by truly disgraceful scenes before kick-off. Footage on social media showed a slew of football hooligans abandoning their seats and attempting to storm another stand. According to El Partidazo de Cope, the footage showed travelling Las Palmas hooligans leaving their designated seating area to try to attack home fans. Las Palmas louts appeared to launch missiles at the home supporters, with some even attempting to chuck barriers past their counterparts. Advertisement READ MORE SPORTS NEWS LEGEND SCARE Bayern legend and president Uli Hoeness rushed to hospital after falling ill Spanish police and La Guardia Civil, thankfully, raced onto the scene and stopped the chaos from spreading. Videos of the disgraceful incident spread like wildfire on social media. One viewer said of the scenes said: "Morons being morons." Another said: "There are fools everywhere!!" Advertisement SUN VEGAS WELCOME OFFER: GET £50 BONUS WHEN YOU JOIN 3 Spanish police and La Guardia Civil had to step in and halt the violence Credit: EL PARTIDAZO DE COPE And another said: "But these kinds of people are never stopped. I don't understand anything." One remarked: "The field is not suitable for this type of match and the security operation is even less so." Advertisement Barcelona coach SMASHES IPAD in fury as he appeals for penalty in La Liga clash Another chimed in: "Regrettable scenes before the Canary Islands derby." The Teide Trophy clash ended in a 1-1 draw and went to penalties. Tenerife emerged from the shootout victorious, getting their hands on the trophy and earning bragging rights with a 4-1 win.
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
BREAKING: Desperate hunt for Brit, 59, who vanished from sunbed on holiday as husband slept
An urgent search has been launched for a British woman who went missing on holiday. Michele Ann Joy Bourda, 59, was last seen on a sunbed at Ofryni beach, Kavala in Greece on Friday. Her husband is said to have been sleeping when she disappeared.
Spectator
2 hours ago
- Spectator
Horst Mahler, far-left terrorist who became a neo-Nazi
One of the strangest German lives in the post-second world war era closed on 27 July 2025 with the death of Horst Mahler at the age of 89. Mahler's life epitomises the fatal German tendency for much of the 20th century to embrace extremist politics of the far-left and ultra-right, since he converted from being a hunted and jailed leader and lawyer of the Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorist group, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, to become Germany's most notorious neo-Nazi, an outspoken anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier – activities for which he also spent time in jail in his old age. Even more extraordinarily, Mahler was also a one-time legal partner of his friend Gerhard Schroeder, Germany's Social Democratic Chancellor from 1998 to 2005. As a young lawyer, Schroeder had defended Mahler and other RAF terrorists and led a successful campaign to readmit Mahler to the German Bar after he was briefly disbarred. If you want a British parallel, imagine Tony Blair defending members of the Angry Brigade in his youth. Mahler was born in Silesia (now in Poland) in 1936. The family was forced to flee west in the face of the advancing Soviet Red Army at the end of the war. Mahler's father was especially anxious to avoid the Russians, as he was an ardent Nazi, and appears to have passed his ideas on to his son. At university, where he studied law, young Horst joined one of the ultra-nationalist and conservative 'bursenschaften' – elite student societies that combined drinking and duelling with sabres. He also joined the youth arm of Germany's moderately left-wing Social Democratic Party (SPD) but soon migrated to the far-left Marxist wing of the movement. The late 60s were a period of foment among West Germany's students, with frequent violent clashes between police and students protesting against the Vietnam War and against the staunchly right-wing tabloid newspaper empire of Press tycoon Axel Springer. After the shooting of the leftist Student leader Rudi Dutschke, Mahler converted his left-wing legal practice into a hotbed of the so-called 'extra-Parliamentary opposition'. His lifelong journey into illegality under the cover of the law had begun. Mahler became an active terrorist in 1968 when he organised the springing from a Berlin courtroom of Andreas Baader, an early leader of the RAF, and Baader's girlfriend Gudrun Ensslin during the couple's trial for firebombing a department store. For much of the 1970s and 80s, West Germany was convulsed by the activities of the RAF, a violent group of middle-class radicals who pursued their version of the class struggle by shooting down working-class cops, bombing 'bourgeois' symbols like department stores and US army bases, robbing banks and kidnapping and killing business leaders. They moved between their targets in fast BMWs which were nicknamed 'Baader-Meinhof Wagons' as a result. I lived in Germany at the time among such student leftists, and many a night passed in anguished debates in our communal flats as to whether the RAF's violent acts were the right way of achieving a socialist society. One morning a flatmate seized me and pushed my face against the wall lest I should recognise and betray an on-the-run RAF fugitive who had spent the night in the apartment. The thoroughly alarmed West German state responded to the challenge with crackdowns of dubious legality, but eventually the RAF militants were all hunted down and jailed. Here, some of them emulated the IRA and starved themselves to death, while others committed suicide with pistols smuggled into their cells by their lawyers. Mahler was one of those lawyers before going on the run himself with a price on his head as a hunted terrorist. He spent some time with his comrades in Palestine, undergoing military training with the PLO which almost certainly fuelled his own growing anti-Semitism. Returning to Germany, Mahler was finally caught and jailed. Hailed as a martyr by Germany's far left, by the time of his release Mahler's political views had undergone a dramatic sea change. At the funeral of a far-right activist, Mahler claimed that Germany was an 'occupied land', controlled by foreign forces in the pay of an international Jewish conspiracy. He put his new beliefs into practice by joining the neo-Nazi NPD party and defended it in court against attempts to ban it as unconstitutional. He soon proclaimed such classic Nazi ideas openly, and for the last quarter century of his life the ageing Mahler was in and out of the jails where he had spent so many years, but this time for such crimes as Holocaust denial and trying to revive Nazism. By the end of his days Horst Mahler had returned to the warped ideas he had first learned at his father's knee.
