The largest police investigation into drugs trafficking ever undertaken in Cornwall - Operation Ipanema - has ended with the jailing of a drugs gang.

Over the course of nine months, beginning in September 2010, officers seized cocaine, amphetamine and cannabis with a street value of £880,000 and cash totalling nearly £95,000 from two Cornish gangs, one based in Falmouth and the other in Newquay.

But it took a further two years to bring 21 of the gangs' members to justice and this week they were sentenced, receiving more than 100 years jail time between them.

It all started to unravel for the drugs gangs targeted by Devon and Cornwall Police's “Operation Ipanema” in October 2010.

On the 13th of that month officers stopped a Peugeot Bipper van travelling southbound on the M5 with 4kg of cocaine in the back.

The van was registered to 56-year-old Anthony Bird, father of 33-year-old key player in the Newquay crime syndicate Matthew Bird, and through analysis of mobile phone data and the recovery of forensic evidence both Birds and co-conspirator 34-year-old Samual Tucker were incriminated.

Around this time a “pattern of activity” was identified amongst some of the main offenders in the Falmouth gang, headed by Roy Jones.

Whether the earlier seizure of cocaine on the M5 was known to them is unclear, but as Detective Inspector David Dale from the serious organised crime investigation team (SOCIT) said pre-trial: “We recognised that if we took out one group, it would create a vacuum that the other one would fill.”

The two were “not rivals,” he said, “they were separate groups who could operate together.”

Jones and his henchmen were trafficking drugs from the north through couriers who brought their narcotics via rail and road.

One such courier, Jack Clark, was spotted on CCTV in the Liverpool area carrying a seemingly empty holdall as he got off of a train. When he was next seen 50 minutes later the holdall was noticeably heavier as he boarded another train southbound.

This was November 2010, the same month when Andrew Smith, of Barr Terrace, was stopped while driving Jones' Renault Clio south from Huddersfield with £85,000 worth of cannabis and £5,285 of cocaine in the back.

By January the Falmouth syndicate were in need of a new supplier, so Jones, his co-conspirator Roy Wilks and Helston-based gang member William Mason met with a man called Kevin Waller at a pub in Surrey.

Waller, of Maidstone in Kent, had only just been released from a 10-year prison sentence for his part in a conspiracy to supply cocaine.

A week after that forty minute meeting Mason was stopped on the A394 near Helston, on his way back from Surrey, with £135,000 worth of cocaine and amphetamine in his boot.

The drugs gang meet in a Surrey pub A search of his home address also revealed an extensive cannabis farm with a predicted yield of some £100,000.

Further seizures followed targeting both gangs until by March “they were becoming increasingly desperate and needed to pool their resources,” Detective Constable Chris Louca from SOCIT said.

On the 21st Falmouth's “Mr Big” Jones and his half-brother Michael Dean Thom met members of the Newquay syndicate outside Matthew Bird's home address. An exchange took place and police later found £7,000 in cash and parts of cocaine press in the car being driven by Jones.

Ten days later Thom's dad was arrested after being passed a package containing £6,640 by Samual Tucker outside the County Arms in Truro.

Despite all the arrests and seizures, the Newquay gang continued to operate and were caught once more in June trying to exchange £90,000 at Quintrell Downs.

The criminals kept getting caught out because “the vast majority were blissfully unaware that they were being investigated,” DI Dale said.

“On a couple of occasions they even carried on because they didn't realise they were part of a larger operation.”

Sentences of those named: Anthony Bird (Newquay), six years imprisonment.

Matthew Bird (Newquay), 12 years imprisonment.

Samual Tucker (Newquay), nine years imprisonment.

Michael Dean Thom (Falmouth), five years imprisonment.

Jack Clark (Falmouth), four years imprisonment.

Andrew Christopher Smith (Falmouth), two and a half years imprisonment.

Roy Jones (Falmouth), 13 years imprisonment.

Roy Wilks (Falmouth), five years imprisonment.

William Mason (Helston), three and half years imprisonment.

Michael George Thom (Falmouth), two and a half years imprisonment.

Kevin Waller (Kent), six years imprisonment.