A crime lord arrested in Ivybridge after building deadly pipe bombs and storing them in a garage has been jailed for life.
Christopher Wallace, 35, turned a back street garage on Merseyside into an armoury where customers from the underworld ordered guns and drugs.
He was arrested by armed officers from Devon and Cornwall Police at an address in St John’s Road on March 29, 2018, as part of a complex police investigation.
The investigation, Operation Bombay, has led to 21 men and one woman being jailed for a total of 309 years.
Wallace, who was at the top of a sprawling crime group, was sentenced to 31 years behind bars on Friday, October 25.
He will spend 15 years and six months in prison before he is eligible for parole.
If released, he will remain on licence for the rest of his life.
Video shows plain-clothed police officers storming the address in Ivybridge to capture Wallace, who is from Wirral, Merseyside - 290 miles north.
Wallace’s offences related to incidents in the Liverpool area.
Bomb disposal experts were called to garages at Jaxson Motors in November 2017 after two bombs were discovered, including a very powerful device packed with nearly 140 screws.
It would have caused “mass casualties” and is understood to be as lethal as the bomb used in the Manchester Arena attack which killed 22 people.
Wallace supplied brothers Jake and Callum Burrows, who ruled over the East Side gang in Liverpool and were jailed for a combined 45 years for their roles.
The Burrows brothers flooded the area with hard drugs and fought a turf war with rivals and a number of shootings prompted an undercover police operation.
Wallace was found guilty of conspiracy to possess prohibited weapons, conspiracy to possess section one firearms, conspiracy to possess ammunition without a certificate, possession of an explosive substance with intent and conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine.
During the course of the investigation into the gangs, police recovered 10 firearms.
These were a St Etienne revolver, a Tikka bolt action sawn-off rifle, a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun, a single-barrelled sawn-off shotgun, a Browning semi-automatic sawn-off shotgun, a Beretta double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun, a Luger self-loading pistol, a T H Kommer self-loading pistol and two Smith and Wesson revolvers.
Officers also recovered thousands of rounds of ammunition, more than £61,264 in cash, Rolex watches, three stolen motorbikes and heroin and cocaine with an estimated street value of £108,000.
They also recovered cannabis with an estimated street value of between £108,059 and £163,000.
Following the sentencing, Det Ch Supt Mark Kameen said: "Those convicted this week were arrested as a result of Operation Bombay – a complex and thorough investigation which started in March 2017 and culminated on May 3, 2018.
“I would like to take this opportunity to thank the detectives involved in investigating this complex and far-reaching drugs conspiracy, their tenacity has led to the justice that has been served today.
“I would also like to thank the prosecuting counsel and the Crown Prosecution Service for all their hard work.”
Watch a video of Ivybridge raid below: