Mario Rea, a former boxing promoter turned trusted lieutenant in gangland killer Robert O'Hara's crime mob, was sentenced to six years in prison last week. The 47-year-old admitted playing a key role in O'Hara's drugs empire while the gangster directed operations from behind bars, using dirty cash to bankroll luxury flats, fast cars, designer clothes and watches for O'Hara's partner and daughter.
IRA death threat in 2012
Rea's gangland connections previously saw him targeted by IRA hitmen. In 2012, weeks after major drugs and money laundering charges against Rea and his twin brother Carlo were dropped due to insufficient evidence, detectives from the Police Service of Northern Ireland passed intelligence to Strathclyde Police that Rea had become the target of a murder plot. He was issued a formal Osman warning after an alleged Real IRA-linked gang dispatched an assassin from Northern Ireland to Scotland.
The gang, linked to jailed tobacco smuggler Aidan Grew, believed Rea had duped them over a tobacco deal. MI5 officers believe Grew is a senior member of the Real IRA, which carried out the 1998 Omagh bombing that killed 29 people. A PSNI insider said: “The gang believe Rea duped them over a tobacco deal. The threat was taken very seriously.” Another source in Northern Ireland added: “A hitman from Crossmaglen in County Armagh was sent to look at his house in Bothwell. They were either going to shoot him or throw a grenade in.”
Escape from Lyons clan hitmen
The intelligence emerged amid wider fears for Rea's safety after he narrowly escaped an attempted attack by rivals linked to Glasgow's Lyons crime clan. The Rea twins were blamed for battering crime clan member Eddie Lyons Jr at a party in Coatbridge. Rea was trailed by two hitmen before screeching away in a 4x4 to escape.
Mario, his twin Carlo and several associates faced a major probe by the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency in 2008, but prosecutors abandoned the case before trial citing insufficient evidence. Mario Rea was also handed a seven-year ban from serving as a company director after failing to account for more than £1.3 million that passed through the accounts of a property development company he ran with his brother.
Operation Gadget exposes O'Hara's prison drugs empire
More than a decade later, Rea returned to court admitting his role in one of Scotland's highest-profile organised crime investigations. The prosecution said Operation Gadget exposed how O'Hara continued to direct an "industrial scale" drugs empire from prison using illicit mobile phones. O'Hara was serving a life sentence for the 2005 murder of Paul McDowall in Glasgow's Possilpark.
Rea played a central role on the outside, managing criminal finances, arranging luxury homes for O'Hara's family and handling almost £80,000 in criminal money through his bank account. The court heard Rea also exchanged messages relating to drug deals and was linked to wider trafficking involving more than £2 million worth of cocaine, heroin and cannabis uncovered during a separate investigation.
Six-year sentence
Last week, Lord Arthurson sentenced Rea to six years in prison after he pleaded guilty to two charges of involvement in serious organised crime and an offence under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Passing sentence, Lord Arthurson accepted Rea claimed he felt unable to leave the crime group but said he had willingly assisted an organised crime network. He told Rea: "You acted for an organised crime group assisting the principal... you facilitated the lifestyles of family members of him." The judge added that Rea had been involved in drug trafficking on an "industrial scale".
