A drug dealer ran a county line operation supplying heroin and crack cocaine while on bail and wearing an electronic tag.
Oskar Zegel had been fitted with the tag to monitor a nightly curfew after he was arrested in 2022 on suspicion of robbery, wounding and possession of cannabis with intent to supply.
But The Times can reveal that he later “disappeared” on bail and was able to operate the “K line” network, transporting drugs from Birmingham to Cheltenham. He had 201 tag breaches recorded against his name by the time he was sentenced last year.
Zegel, 22, who is now out of prison and fitted with a new GPS ankle monitoring device, admitted when confronted at his home that he had been ignoring his old curfew tag because it had been on for “too long”.
Ian Acheson, a former prison governor who also served in the Home Office as director of community safety, said: “When used properly, tags can be extremely effective. But you have to have a system in place where there are consequences for non-compliance. This is yet another example of behaviour that erodes trust in the criminal justice system.”
The Times, working with Channel 4’s Dispatches, can show how the Polish-born criminal was able to run the drug operation while wearing his electronic tag.
He had first come to the UK as a six-year-old boy with his parents, a court was told, settling in the market town of West Bromwich in the West Midlands.
A search of his home after his 2022 arrest found more than 200 grams of cannabis, worth more than £700, and a large serrated zombie knife under his mattress.
Three months later Zegel was given a bail order at Birmingham crown court, which included an 8pm to 7am home curfew each day and a duty to report to a police station three times a week. The curfew was monitored by an ankle tag, installed by Electronic Monitoring Services (EMS), which at the time was managed by the business giant Capita. The tagging equipment alerts an EMS monitoring centre if an offender is not at home during the allotted curfew time.
In February 2023 Zegel was arrested for twice breaching his curfew and readmitted to conditional bail with the same requirements. Seven months later, in September, an arrest warrant was issued after he failed to attend a hearing at Birmingham crown court. Court transcripts obtained by The Times revealed that Zegel then went “on the run”.
On the doorstep of his West Bromwich home after his release from prison last month, he told The Times that the curfew tag had stopped him getting work. Zegel, whose new GPS tag monitors his location at all times, claimed: “They didn’t want to change my [bail] conditions. I couldn’t get work in the meantime.”
He claimed that he had complied with the conditions of his curfew tag for about 18 months, but after that he began “living all over”. Asked whether he had ended up just ignoring the tag, he replied: “I just ignored it because … it was two years I had to be on the tag. It was just too long.”
Zegel was eventually arrested in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in January last year. Police had received intelligence about a stolen white Range Rover being driven suspiciously. When officers moved in, Zegel jumped over a wall but was arrested. He was caught with £1,340 in cash, 131 wraps of heroin and 30 wraps of crack cocaine.
He was remanded in custody after his arrest.
Officers also recovered a Nokia phone, described in court as a burner phone, which had a number police had identified as being that of the “K line” drugs network. The network was allegedly operating from at least three months before Zegel’s arrest.
He and an accomplice had been making “almost daily” trips from Birmingham to Cheltenham, Gloucester crown court was told. The trips were made during Zegel’s nighttime curfew. The pair would arrive in Cheltenham in the evening before returning to Birmingham to “reload” in the daytime.
• Revealed: ‘chaotic’ system leaves freed prisoners untagged for months
A Dispatches reporter, working undercover at the EMS last year, noted 201 breaches on Zegel’s tag between November 2022 and February last year. The figure is understood to include at least 21 recorded breaches when Zegel was in custody.
He was sentenced to 30 months in jail in April last year after admitting possessing the drugs with intent to supply. Sentencing him at Gloucester crown court, Judge Rupert Lowe said the fact that Zegel had been on bail was an aggravating feature of the case. He added: “You have involved yourself as an agent of misery in your adopted country, which is a shame. It really needs to stop.”
The robbery and wounding charges for which Zegel was due to be tried in Birmingham were later discontinued but in June he was sentenced to a further six months in prison for possession with intent to supply cannabis and two months for the September 2023 court date breach, to run concurrently.
Recorder Stuart Sprawson told Zegel at the city’s crown court: “You disappeared for four months. You had an obligation to surrender to court.” No mention was made of the 201 tag breaches.
Zegel said he was trying to move on. He added: “I’m trying to get a job right now, do my licence [time] and get my life back together.”
West Midlands police said “necessary action” was taken to get Zegel in custody after a tag breach in February 2023. The force said it was informed of 43 tag breaches between February and November that year. All breaches were reviewed by the force, but in some instances Zegel had “already been seen by police” and only seven were recorded as actual breaches, it said.
A spokesman added: “Following review of the seven breaches, enforcement action was deemed appropriate in response to three. This involved the individual being circulated as wanted on the national police database and several arrest attempts being made.”
After the warrant against him was issued in September 2023, West Midlands police said “arrest attempts took place” until Zegel was finally detained.
Capita declined to comment. The Ministry of Justice said the curfew tag would not have enabled Capita to provide any location data on Zegel’s whereabouts.
