The gang war tearing a nation apart mapped: The territories under the control of ‘Mr Big’, ‘Scarface’ and a feared ‘cocaine king’

Detailed maps showing exactly where the battle lines have been drawn in a deadly gang war taking hold of Scotland can be revealed today.

As four Scottish crime lords are embroiled in a vicious fight to control the country’s drug trade, the Mail can reveal interactive maps of the territories they are waging war over.

Since the outbreak of the gang feud on March 2, there have been dozens of firebombs, machete attacks – and even a double murder.

Beyond the primary war, the Mail has identified hundreds of other gangs in Edinburgh and Glasgow that could take advantage of a power vacuum if this violence wipes out the current kingpins.

While the deadly battles rages on the streets of Scotland, 344 up-and-coming gangs are lying in wait, eager to take over.

For the most part, these lower-level gangsters are defined by their geography. It’s only once they reach the top tier of crime bosses that they can claim an entire city as their territory – and have the money and firepower to defend it.

The man declaring he is the rightful lord of the most territory is Dubai-based gangster Ross ‘Miami’ McGill, also known as Mr Big. He was allegedly swindled out of £500,000 of cocaine by associates of jailed Edinburgh kingpin Mark Richardson in February when they paid for the drugs with counterfeit cash.

Before this year, McGill was not considered a major mobster: he was a former Rangers hooligan who had posed with Steven Gerrard and fled Scotland around four years ago, supposedly scared he would be arrested on drug charges.

But since then, he has capitalised on the jailing of key drug bosses such as Glasgow’s Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson and cocaine king Richardson to take effective control of the country’s entire cocaine supply.

So, when he was duped out of so much money, it seems to have provoked this violence. He allegedly put £100,000 bounties on the heads of Richardson and his Glasgow allies the Daniel family, which is run by the Scottish Scarface Steven ‘Bonzo’ Daniel.

McGill also teamed up with the Daniels’ arch-enemy the Lyons mob, from Glasgow; allied with the infamous Irish Kinahan Cartel; and hired a gang of secretive thugs called Tamo Junto (TMJ) to wage a fierce gang war aiming to ‘eradicate’ the Richardsons and the Daniels.

And so, as the four clans wage war – and younger criminals wait in anticipation – these are the battle maps that can expose the danger zone of this unsettling and violent period of Scotland’s history.

In Glasgow, the key families are the Daniels, the Lyons and the Stevensons. The latter are known as the Scottish Sopranos.

All three gangs are based in northern Glasgow. The Daniels originate from Possilpark, the Lyons from Possilpark and Milton and the Stevensons from Barmulloch.

Their proximity to each other means they don’t have concrete boundaries on their territories. Instead, they overlap and any part of the city is deemed fair game for these drug pushers. The only question is whether they can beat their rivals and stay in power.

Yet they too are aware of other young gangsters in the city eager to win fame, money and power – and the mob bosses use this to their advantage.

In Edinburgh, the only top gangster is Mark Richardson and even though he was jailed in 2018 on a firearms offence, he is thought to have still been able to run his gang from behind bars.

Like the leading gangsters in Glasgow, he too is surrounded by an array of younger gangsters hoping to achieve fame and fortune by picking up his crumbs or – if the Richardson gang is wiped out – taking over completely. 

Explaining how the gangs work, former undercover cop Simon McLean said that instead of an organised crime syndicate broken into different gangs and levels, there was a patchwork of gangs – as displayed in our maps.

Instead of a series of ranks from high to low of mob boss to low-level criminal, location and criminal speciality plays a bigger part, he said.

MailOnline’s maps have listed every gang in Glasgow and Edinburgh and colour-coded them by location within each city. 

McLean said: ‘You get these hubs of crime. You’ve got categories of smaller, mostly geographic gangs.

‘In Glasgow, the Gorbals is drugs-orientated. Springburn is more travelling criminals. Possil is shoplifting and extortion. Partick was huge in the day for shoplifting. You could go into certain pubs there and buy or order anything.’

Further detailing the life of a hypothetical gangster, he said: ‘There might be a lieutenant within the mob. He might be well-trusted, working with them for years and live or work on my patch [on the fringe]. 

‘He will only tell me what I need to know to keep that patch running and he might sacrifice me at some point because he’s got something more important.

‘And he’s informing as well. Every one of them is informing to keep their own operations intact because they’ve all got competitors.

‘They’re all fighting each other all the time and trying to keep territories. 

‘The most important thing to say is that these people are always going to do what they do.

‘They’re just people like you or I who have these affiliations and relationships with the criminal world, and it’s built on trust and mistrust and competition because they’re all chasing the same thing.’

McLean said the major bosses will often employ up-and-comers as freelance mobsters in certain ventures, depending on their expertise and where they live.

This practice could explain why the newly-created Tamo Junto – Mr Big’s enforcers – were so prepared despite the group only being created in February this year.

This practice could explain why the newly-created Tamo Junto – Mr Big’s enforcers  were so prepared despite the group only being created in February this year.

It could be they were already hardened gangsters with experience of violence but lacked the backing of a major player – until McGill came along.

In McGill’s case, although he comes from Glasgow, it is believed he views the whole of Scotland as his territory, which could explain why he is targeting the Daniels in Glasgow as well as the Richardsons in Edinburgh.

However, if this war does not create a clear winner, there will be a chance for other gangs to fill the void.

Hundreds of eager gangs are waiting in the wings to usurp them, from the Young Sooside Cumbie in the historic home of Glasgow’s Razor Gangs, the Gorbals, to Edinburgh’s Muirhouse Casual Fighters in the west of that city.

You don’t need to be a genius to work out a gangster’s trajectory. It’s rare for these men to have a peaceful end. For most it seems their destiny is either rotting inside a prison cell or being executed in the street, bleeding out as members of the public look on, wondering who would ever be so stupid as to think joining one of these gangs is ever the right thing to do.

Sadly, the list of budding gangsters remains long. This means if TMJ achieves its goal of wiping out the Richardsons and the Daniels, it could ignite a more widespread turf war as youngsters vie to become Scotland’s next godfather.

Another former Scottish police detective, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told MailOnline: ‘If it all goes horribly wrong with [the Daniels and Richardsons] and there’s a vacuum, someone is going to fill it.

‘Where there’s money to be made, there will be serious and organised crime. If a vacuum is created, there could be a power struggle.’

For the moment though, the focus is on the four major clans pitted against each other on the streets of Scotland. 

Blood is being spilt as four clans fight over the alleged theft of £500,000 of cocaine from Ross ‘Miami’ McGill, a top-level criminal based in Dubai, also known as Mr Big. 

McGill, an ex-Rangers FC hooligan, is also thought to be friendly with the Stevensons, for whom his girlfriend’s cousin works.

Last month, the war saw senior Lyons figures Eddie Lyons Jr, 46, and Ross Monaghan, 43, shot dead by a masked hitman as they watched the Champions League final at an Irish bar on the Costa del Sol on May 31.

Some people think that these gangsters should be left to wipe each other out. It’s bad versus bad after all.

But, in addition to that being a morally questionable standpoint, this misses the key issue: this gang war is taking place in the streets, bars and shopping centres that normal people go to.

When Kevin ‘Gerbil’ Carroll was shot to death in 2010 as part of the ongoing feud between his bosses the Daniels and the Lyons family, it was at lunchtime on a Wednesday afternoon in an Asda carpark in Robroyston, Glasgow. Innocent shoppers watched as two gunmen shot 13 bullets in 25 seconds.

In 2017, the attempted hit on Steven ‘Bonzo’ Daniel included a 100mph car chase on Glasgow’s roads. Footage showed the two cars driving past innocent motorists at shocking speeds. One wrong move and a bystander could have died.

Instead, Bonzo’s car crashed on an-off ramp and his attackers slashed his face with a meat cleaver and a machete. They almost severed his nose from his face and his top jaw was detached from his skull. When paramedics found him, the slash wounds were so bad they thought he had been shot in the face.

Then just two weeks ago, innocent holidaymakers found themselves at the centre of a horrific double murder that shocked the world.

At 11.30pm on Saturday, May 31, tourists were packed into Monaghans bar in Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol to watch the Champions League final on the telly.

Outside, a car pulled up and a man dressed in a black jacket and shorts with a white T-shirt wrapped around his face and a baseball cap pulled over his eyes stepped out.

He wasn’t there for the football. He was there to carry out a cold, calculated mafia-style execution of two senior Lyons gangsters: Eddie Lyons Jr, 46, and Ross Monaghan, 43, who also owned the bar.

He stepped onto the terrace outside and shot Lyons dead. Lyons was a gangster but he was only there for a ‘lads golfing holiday’ with more than a dozen friends.

His killer did not care. He stepped inside the bar, locked eyes on Monaghan – and shot him in the abdomen. Monaghan collapsed. The shooter adjusted his aim and squeezed the trigger again – but there was no sound. The gun had jammed.

‘I thought I was hearing fireworks at first,’ recalled one man who had been watching the Champions League final on the bar’s big screen. ‘But then I saw the noise was coming from someone firing a gun.’

With a deathly red stain seeping across his otherwise pristine white T-shirt, CCTV footage released earlier this week by Spanish police showed the haunting moment a desperate Monaghan tried to crawl away to safety. But despite his assailant’s gun malfunctioning, the flame-haired Monaghan must have known the game was up.

And duly, it was. A volley of four further shots and Monaghan crumpled to the floor. The assassin turned on his heels and fled around the corner to a waiting car which shot up the winding dual carriageway eastward towards neighbouring Benalmadena, purposefully avoiding toll booths on the parallel highway.

Back in the bar, a British nurse rushed bravely inside where she found a truly horrifying scene: ‘He was lying on the floor and was still alive but his breathing was laboured,’ she revealed of Monaghan in a haunting testimony. 

‘There was nothing I could do, he wasn’t bleeding from his mouth so I just held his hand, stroked his hair and waited for the emergency services.’

When the emergency services did arrive, Monaghan and Lyons were both pronounced dead, their bodies covered and eventually taken away in an ambulance along the same road down which their killer had not long fled.

As the police continue to investigate this shocking crime, others have put forward their own theories. This week one of Monaghan’s relatives came forward to insist the Daniels were not behind the killings, instead suggesting that gang rivals based abroad could be responsible.

Others claim Ross Monaghan had a £250,000 bounty on his head over a feud with a Spanish cartel linked to the south of England. The cartel had reportedly warned about the contract on Monaghan’s life shortly before he was gunned down.

However, the main theory, seemingly backed by Spanish police, is one of revenge for the attacks on the Daniels and Richardsons. 

Spanish police this week said the suspected killer was not a hired hitman but a member of the Daniels clan. 

Englishman Michael Riley, 44, from Merseyside, was arrested in connection with the shooting last week.

Reflecting on the Fuengirola murders, Scottish Tory leader Russell Findlay said: ‘What is beyond doubt is that both of these individuals were active participants in the deadly turf war that has been raging across Scotland since 2001 and has caused untold misery to innocent people.

‘The police know the identity of the millionaire crime bosses, their violent foot soldiers and their white-collar enablers.

‘Dangerously complacent SNP ministers need to give officers the tools they need to end this reign of narco terror being inflicted on Scottish communities.’ 

For while this is the most recent killing in this bloody war, Britain’s streets have been under attack for months. 

Homes, shops and cars have been firebombed and the gangsters are preparing their war councils for a mob feud the likes of which have never been seen.

Last week, there were another two attacks. A van linked to Mark Richardson’s associate Paddy Beatson was blown up in Edinburgh at around 4am on Monday.

At the same time, a Range Rover thought to be owned by another person from the Richardson crew was firebombed half a mile away.

Ross McGill’s secretive gang of violent mercenaries called Tamo Junto (TMJ, Portuguese for ‘We are together’), claimed responsibility for both attacks. 

It may well be true that these violent thugs are not the smartest. Instead of laying low, they brag about their wealth on social media; their wives and girlfriends rub their faux-fur-covered shoulders with local celebrities and footballers; and even post their death threats and violent exploits on TikTok.

This weekend, the Mail revealed the identities of some of these gangsters’ molls.

From a former teenage lottery winner to a vodka boss and Glasgow’s real-life Carmela Soprano, these WAGs have or are dating some of the most dangerous thugs in the country. 

But they don’t seem to care. The main allure of this lifestyle is danger and power, the partner of a reformed Scottish gangster told MailOnline.

She said: ‘Someone who takes the lead and takes charge is attractive and sometimes that bad boy image makes you feel safe and makes you feel more feminine. 

‘Danger is a bit sexy too, like having sex in a balaclava.’

The moll added: ‘That goes back to dominance or an authority thing. I like a guy to be in charge and be in authority. For some women it’s a protective thing that means they’ll look after you.

‘A lot of guys want a girl on their arms as part of a show tactic. They don’t want to walk down the street with someone the size of a house. The guys want the best of birds because they’ve got it all and they can probably take their pick.

‘Some of the uglier guys don’t get glamorous girls unless they’ve got money or something, so it definitely helps them to look and feel good. They’ve got all the best designer gear too and the fancy watches and the whole family benefits and is respected better.

‘They are famous in their own area like a film star. If you’ve made the money then you feel like you can get anything you want anyway, including a dolly bird on your arm.

‘It’s part of the package. Who wouldn’t want a sexy girl by their side?’

Speaking to MailOnline, her reformed gangster partner said: ‘Everybody likes a bad boy, especially those who look like one. Birds don’t always go for the pretty boys. 

‘They like the big fancy motors and the money coming in and like people to know they are going with someone important.

‘Being the wife or girlfriend of an associate is just part of the culture here in the schemes. They are involved in the drugs war but that’s just their business. 

‘They fight over their territory like anyone protecting their business. They just get their pals to work for them.

‘These guys will meet someone of his own type who is streetwise. He’ll always go for the nicest one in the scheme and will marry the most glamorous girl there.

‘They all grow up together in the council schemes and work their way up to be lieutenants and associates.

‘The girls love it cause they have a better lifestyle and they don’t get too involved. 

‘They usually end up with tanning shops, hairdressing shops or beauty shops as a front though.’

Former undercover police officer Simon McLean infiltrated Scotland’s gangs during his career as a cop and now runs the Crime Time Inc podcast.

He told MailOnline: ‘It’s all about the money and power. [The molls are] more sneaky and dishonest but their job is to look what’s considered good in their world and do exactly as they’re told – total abuse, control and very disposable. 

‘[It’s a] different world and culture. [Molls] are often shared and used as currency. They just use them: “Take her for the night, it’s part of the deal.”

‘It’s all very pathetic. They come from the schemes. This is not class women we are talking about.’

Many of the men involved in this world grew up together on Scotland’s council estates, and became closer on the terraces of the football stadiums.

Ross ‘Miami’ McGill is a perfect example. He was relatively small-fry and a name unknown to respectable Brits until he unleashed this wave of violence on our streets.

But the seeds of his despicable lifestyle were there to see. He headed the notorious Rangers ultras – a band of sad, sectarian thugs spewing hateful chants often associated with fascists such as the supposedly anti-IRA chant of ‘No Surrender’ – which is actually strongly associated with the BNP and National Front.

It was there his relationship with gangster Lloyd Cross was solidified.

Cross is the right-hand man of Jamie ‘Iceman’ Stevenson and both men were jailed last year for their part in a £100million cocaine smuggling plot.

He grew up less than a mile away from McGill in Glasgow and the two are known to be close friends.

Cross’s cousin is even Olivia Newall, who is now McGill’s girlfriend.  

Still, McGill’s reputation didn’t stop former England and Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard stand smiling beside McGill as they posed for a photo.

Of course, Gerrard is no stranger to gangsters. His own daughter Lilly is heavily pregnant with the child of Liam Byrne, son of Kinahan mob boss Lee Byrne, who recently came out from a stint in jail.

In fact, Lilly’s new family and their associates are a patchwork of wanted, jailed, and murdered gangsters.

That said, while the Gerrards might want to watch what they say at Christmas, there’s absolutely no suggestion they are involved in any criminality whatsoever.

But while gangs like the Kinahans may be at the top now, in Scotland another threat is brewing.  

McGill is reportedly thirsty to bag a murder – and may even be more so now that two Lyons mobsters have been killed instead.

It is believed ‘Bonzo’ previously fled the country but has now returned. 

Richardson is stuck in solitary confinement in HMP Low Moss, in Bishopbriggs, where he is seven years into a nine-year sentence for having a Glock handgun and being part of a 65-mph police car chase in north Glasgow.

Even so, it is believed he has already sent a group of men to Dubai to track down McGill and his cronies. 

Explaining the gangsters’ mindsets, former international drug smuggler turned Harley Street addiction counsellor Mark Dempster said: ‘You get people whose egos are fragile. 

‘It’s no different to when you have mafia – when you disrespect someone, they have no choice but to kill you. It’s all about feeding the egos for the people in power.

‘No matter how much any [crime] family gets, they want more. It’s the same process of expanding their empire. They have got to commit violence.’

He added: ‘They get put on a pedestal. Young people want to be involved and think violence will go unpunished.

‘[Gangsters] drive nice cars, they have nice girlfriends and there appears to be no justice.’

Dempster said the shameless flaunting of their wealth ‘continues the same dysfunction for the next generation’. 

A source close to the Daniel crime family agreed. He told MailOnline the existence of gang crime in Glasgow would ‘never change’. 

Alistair Fraser is a Scottish gangs expert. He is a Professor of Criminology at the University of Glasgow, and part of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. 

One of his most recent reports was a policy brief into ‘the past and present of violence reduction in Scotland’. 

Professor Fraser told MailOnline there was ‘a need for urgent and sustained investment in what has been termed “social infrastructure” for young people’ to prevent them joining gangs.

He said: ‘In the aftermath of Covid-19 and funding constraints, community participants [of his report] identified that support and “safe spaces” for young people who are facing multiple disadvantages was harder to access, and less readily available. 

‘In one case, a youth project that had originally been converted into a Covid-19 testing centre now lay derelict. 

‘As one youth worker stated: “There are these spaces but they’re lying empty, so there needs to be people actually in them and facilitating activities”.

‘There is a lack of understanding – and corresponding fear – of young people’s use of social media. 

‘Changes in society have led to increased use of technology, and the opening up of “digital communities” for children and young people that are not always well understood by adults. 

‘There is a need for youth practitioners and social media platforms to learn from young people about how to maintain “safe spaces” across community and digital sites.’

Police Scotland is ‘working tirelessly’ to build cases against criminals fighting in the growing gang war and attempts have been made by Scottish police to crack down on organised crime for years.

Notably, in 2017, Operation Engagement led to the arrest of 30 people associated with the Lyons gang, as well as the seizure of 50 stolen cars and around 300 phones. 

Two years later, six known Lyons associates were jailed for a total of 104 years for attacks on the Daniels family. 

Police Scotland has arrested at least 42 people in connection with the gang war so far and Chief Constable Jo Farrell has called to make Scotland a ‘hostile environment’ for gangsters.

Police Scotland’s Detective Chief Superintendent Dave Ferry said: ‘I want to be clear that violence will not be tolerated, and we will not stop until we bring those responsible to justice.

‘We are still following positive lines of enquiry, and this arrest highlights our continued resolve to target organised crime.

‘The support of our communities remains vital, and I want to again express my sincere thanks to the public for their continued help and information so far.

‘If you know anything that could assist our ongoing investigation, please do the right thing and speak to us.’

Anyone who can assist their enquiries is asked to contact Police Scotland via 101 quoting incident number 0562 of Friday, 21 March, 2025.

Alternatively, you can call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 where information can be given anonymously.