The Shrewsbury gun runner with a Walter Mitty lifestyle

He was described by police as a Walter Mitty-style character. But Steven Greenoe's deadly trade, revealed after a massive international police operation, was far from make-believe.

Greenoe, who liked to boast of being a bodyguard to Madonna, George Clooney, Matt Damon and other stars, paraded his celebrity connections on Facebook and to friends and family.

What he didn't boast about was his trade of flooding the UK with illegal firearms.

For months the former US marine smuggled guns in his luggage on commercial flights from America to the UK.

But when British detectives purchased a number of Glock pistols on the streets of Liverpool in February 2010, which were later found to have been smuggled into the UK by Greenoe, the net finally began to close around the 37-year-old.

Greenoe, who lived in St George's Street, Frankwell, Shrewsbury, was eventually caught smuggling a cache of 16 dismantled guns onto a passenger flight to Manchester in July 2010.

He now faces a decade in a US jail for his crimes.

Greenoe brought dozens of weapons into the UK over a period of months in 2010, buying them for hundreds of dollars in the US before selling them on for thousands of pounds in Britain.

He was involved in the conspiracy with 31-year-old Steven Cardwell, 31, from Liverpool. Cardwell, who was given an indeterminate jail sentence in November following a trial at Liverpool Crown Court, took delivery of scores of smuggled guns from Greenoe and then sold them on to UK criminals.

The trial in Liverpool heard that weapons linked to the conspiracy were used in at least one fatal shooting in the UK.

It is understood he was stopped by airport security staff in North Carolina on at least one occasion when screening detected items in his suitcase.

But he managed to convince workers he was an arms salesman and the weapon parts were dummies.

In February 2010 he purchased five Glock pistols from Carolina Shooters Supplies in America – but the net was closing.

Undercover officers purchased three of the weapons in Liverpool for £10,500, which later tests showed were the ones brought by Greenoe a week earlier. Greenoe continued to purchase weapons from America, making several trips to the US between the March and July.

He was eventually caught on July 25, 2010, as he checked in four bags of luggage which were found to contain 16 pistol slides and 16 pistol barrels.

Greenoe's mother's home in Raleigh, North Carolina, was searched and three handguns, two shotguns, a rifle, cases for carrying firearms and various documents were seized. It is understood he stayed with his mother when he visited the area.

The search for evidence in the Transatlantic case took gun squad detectives to Shrewsbury, where officers and sniffer dogs scoured the ex-marine's home for clues and ripped up the stair carpet in the hunt for evidence.

At the time, his then-wife Elizabeth, who is the mother to Greenoe's twin boys, was said to be unaware of her husband's illicit gun smuggling activities until their home in Shrewsbury was raided by police.

The case prompted a review of security on all Transatlantic flights, with talks held in London and Washington over the security breach.

One counter-terrorism source said: "The fact he was able to carry on undetected for so long is bad. That he was stopped at least once with guns in his bag and was then allowed to catch his flight is astonishing."

See also:

• Shropshire gun runner gets 10 years for USA plotRead more: http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2012/01/11/shropshire-gun-runner-gets-10-years-for-usa-plot/#ixzz1j9cgrZQz