Warrington gangster who ordered acid attacks caught after five years

When Lee Deakin came out of his house to fetch a phone charger from the boot of his car, a stranger armed with a bottle of acid was lying in wait for him.

Only when he got to his vehicle did Mr Deakin realise that someone was crouched down behind him.

And before he was able to ask “what are you doing?” his eyes were burning and his skin “felt like jelly”.

That attack in St Helens on 14 April 2019, which came very close to permanently blinding Mr Deakin, was carried out by hitman-for-hire Jonathan Gordon, a member of a north Liverpool street gang called the Deli Mob.

Analysis of Gordon’s gangland conversations revealed he was a man in demand to carry out similar attacks across the north-west of England.

For a fee of up to £10,000, he was willing to maim and disfigure whoever his clients wanted him to.

His services were advertised over Encrochat.

The encrypted phone network, developed in about 2016, was almost exclusively being used by criminals three years later.

Hundreds of criminals across the UK who believed their Encrochat communications were 100% secure have been brought to justice since the platform was hacked by Dutch and French police in late 2019.

They shared their intelligence with British counterparts working in the National Crime Agency (NCA).

Law enforcement agencies across Europe were able to secretly monitor criminal conversations until June 2020, when the company realised it had been compromised and alerted its users.

For many criminals, though, that message came too late.

Using the handle, or username, of ValuedBridge, Gordon had casual conversations with another user, AceProspect, who would become a priority target for the NCA.

AceProspect was making a living by advertising military-grade weapons, including AK47 assault rifles and Uzi sub-machine guns, for sale to British crime groups.

He was also having direct conversations with Gordon about blinding people outside their homes.

The identity of AceProspect was revealed last week as Philip Waugh, from Warrington in Cheshire.

While the 39-year-old was not charged with ordering the attack on Mr Deakin, he did discuss it with Gordon when planning how to carry out similar assaults.

Waugh has now admitted conspiring to commit grievous bodily harm by hatching a plan to blind a Warrington man called Nathan Simpson in April 2020.

He had also been charged with ordering Gordon to attack another man in Blackpool a few days earlier, but the Crown Prosecution Service agreed not to proceed with that case in light of Waugh’s other guilty pleas.

“Just need him blind and face melted,” Waugh had messaged Gordon about Mr Simpson.

Gordon spoke about his earlier attack on Mr Deakin, complaining that the St Helens man had “got to the sink” to wash his face and save his eyesight.

This prompted Waugh to suggest Mr Simpson should be “stabbed in the leg”.

He also suggested Gordon should “double the dose” and said he also wanted Mr Simpson’s partner to be blinded in the same attack.

On Encrochat, Gordon sent pictures of metal canisters overflowing with acid, and the pair discussed plans to “cook” their targets.

One attempt, on 6 April 2020, was abandoned when Gordon spotted CCTV cameras near Mr Simpson’s home.

The following day, as Gordon was preparing to drive from Liverpool to try again, police patrol officers approached him and caused him to flee and abandon his car.

Gordon, who was also linked to a number of non-fatal shootings in Liverpool, was arrested in July 2020.

He was jailed for life with a minimum term of 24 years in June 2022 after a jury convicted him of offences including grievous bodily harm and possessing firearms with intent to endanger life.

One of the charges referred to a “gunfight” in a residential street in Walton, Liverpool.

While nobody was injured in that incident, a bullet crashed into the home of an elderly couple.

At the time, Waugh was in Spain, where he had been co-ordinating an operation to smuggle firearms into the UK.

According to the NCA, Waugh’s right-hand man Robert Brazendale, from Thelwall in Warrington, would then be responsible for storing the weapons and passing them on to customers.

Brazendale was charged with firearms offences in November 2020 after NCA search teams dug up his back garden and found several semi-automatic handguns.

He was initially jailed in February 2022 for 11 years and three months for dealing firearms which had been on Waugh’s guns list.

His sentence was reduced on appeal to 10 years.

Elusive Waugh was eventually caught in Spain in September 2024, hiding in a villa in Benahavis, Malaga.

After his arrest by Guardia Civil, Waugh was extradited to the UK.

The NCA said it and other agencies recovered two AK-47s, Uzi and Skorpion machine guns, a Grand Power automatic pistol, a Smith and Wesson pistol, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Waugh, and Brazendale, who was charged in prison with new firearms offences committed with Waugh, appeared at Liverpool Crown Court last week.

They both admitted ordering the acid attack on Mr Simpson and firearms offences.

Both will be sentenced at the same court in June.

The NCA’s senior investigating officer, Ben Rutter, said: “The NCA worked for five years to trace, locate and bring Philip Waugh to justice under Operation Venetic.

“He supplied an array of terrifying automatic and semi-automatic weaponry to offenders who were planning horrific crimes.

“He didn’t care at all about who might be killed in the process – he only cared about money.

“He is an extremely dangerous offender.”