Drug dealer who absconded to Thailand arrested and deported to start prison sentence in UK

A drug dealer who fled to Thailand before other members of his organised crime group were jailed for 44 years is beginning a lengthy jail sentence in the UK after he was arrested by Thai police and deported.

Luke Atkin, 37, was given a 10-year prison sentence in his absence for his role in a drugs gang that supplied huge amounts of cocaine in York and Tadcaster.

Other members of the gang were jailed by a judge at Bradford Crown Court in October.

However, Atkin had refused to attend court on the day of his trial and flew out of the UK.

He was convicted of conspiracy to supply class-A drugs and circulated as wanted when he failed to appear in court.

He was then sentenced in his absence at Bradford Crown Court in October.

Atkin was recently arrested in Thailand on suspicion of a separate incident and for overstaying a visa.

He was held in a Thai jail then deported to the UK where he appeared in front of a court last week during a brief hearing at Bradford Crown Court.

Four months was added to his original prison term for failing to surrender.

Atkin, from Warrington in Cheshire, made regular trips to North Yorkshire to meet other members of the organised crime group and deal drugs.

The gang he worked for was taken apart by North Yorkshire Police’s Organised Crime Unit, which seized huge amounts of class-A drugs worth more than £50,000 during a large-scale investigation in 2022 and 2023.