Gang of drunken sailors caught smuggling £100m worth of cocaine into UK

A gang of drunken drug smugglers caught attempting to smuggle £100m of cocaine into the UK aboard a fishing boat seized off the coast of Cornwall, face lengthy prison sentences. Border Force officers swooped on the four men as they were being coordinated by South America drug dealers who were using a sat-nav device and mobile phone to instruct the ‘crew’ on the Lily Lola vessel where to sail, when it was intercepted off the northern Cornwall coast last September.

Truro Crown Court heard how 1,078kgs of high-purity cocaine had been left in the sea in 49 sacks, all containing Apple tracking devices, so their location could be monitored by GPS. Two of the men, Michael Kelly, 45, and 26-year-old Jake Marchant previously admitted conspiring to smuggle a tonne of cocaine, the court heard. But accomplices Jon Paul Williams, 46, and Patrick Godfrey, 31, both of Swansea, have today been convicted of the same charge. All four were all charged with conspiracy to evade the prohibition on the importation of class A drugs after the vessel was intercepted by UK Border Force officers and the case was passed to National Crime Agency investigators who already had them under surveillance.

The trial heard how Border Force officers intercepted the Lily Lola on September 13 last year at around 2pm and noticed a “strong smell of alcohol” before finding Williams and Marchant at the helm.

Kelly was lounging in the accommodation area at the front of the boat and Godfrey was found asleep in a deck chair.

Frederick Hookway, prosecuting, said: “Upon a cursory search of the vessel the officer’s saw five large black packages in the forward accommodation space where Kelly had been found.

“It was suspected these were packages of drugs. All four men on board were arrested and removed.

“The officers made further searches of the Lily Lola and found more suspected drug packages.

“Sixteen to 18 blocks were stashed in the deck toilet and another eight to nine were in the right side deck hatch and two more bales were in the stern compartment.”

The Lily Lola was taken into Plymouth Royal Dockyard an impounded.

The blocks found on board weighed a total of 1,078 kg, and the sixteen sent for forensic analysis were found to be more than 80 per cent pure cocaine.

At £33,000 per kg, the wholesale value was £35million, reportedly worth around £100million if sold on the streets.

A mobile phone which Williams attempted to hide down his trousers was also seized as well alongside the Garmin sat-nav device.

Mr Hookway added: “The Garmin device was downloaded and some messages were recovered. These demonstrated the boat receiving instruction from a third party. These included coordinates.

“Whoever was sending the messages was linked to those who were supplying the drugs.

“They said things like “why have you stopped?”, “Speed up, you are going too slow” and “you are going to be late”.

He said those monitoring the haul must have been able to place the exact location of every sack via the Airtags because there was a later instruction that they did not have all of the 49 bags and needed to go back and get more.

National Crime Agency investigators were able to access Godfrey’s mobile phone and found photographs taken on the morning of September 13 of seven of the packages containing the blocks of cocaine, including loose blocks with the label ‘PEZX’.

There was also an image of a radar screen showing a route to a location south of the Scilly Isles which was very similar to the route travelled by the Lily Lola.

At 9.56am on September 13 Godfrey sent a WhatsApp message which told the recipient “delete everything you see and not show anybody”.

He also had carried out internet searches from August 29 onwards linked to shipping, Newquay/Cornwall, and “how long does it take a ship to leave Peru to UK”.

Mr Hookway said: “Given the majority of cocaine is produced in South America, this might reveal where the boat was coming from.

“That inference is strengthened by one of the Apple Airtags from drug packages being linked to a user account in Ecuador.

National Crime Agency officers had also installed a listening device and GPS tracker on their boat which enabled them to plot the route which showed the boat left Newquay during the morning of September 12 and travelled west along the north coast of Cornwall before reaching the Isle of Scilly.

It then sailed south into the middle of the channel, reaching the most southerly point at 4.45am, before sailing north, rounding Land’s End, before heading east back towards Newquay.

Williams paid £140,000 for the boat from its former owner in Ramsgate and had it transported to Swansea.

It was previously sailed in the Celtic Sea and stopped and searched by Border Force but nothing was found.

Williams, Godfrey and Marchant made no comment in interview while Kelly claimed he was on a fishing trip. But faced with the evidence against them, Kelly and Marchant pleaded guilty at Truro Crown Court on 15 October. The four men will return to the court on 8 May to be sentenced.

NCA branch commander Derek Evans said: “The NCA and Border Force have prevented a huge haul of cocaine from hitting the streets of the UK and wider Europe, where it would have blighted countless lives and communities.

“We’ve disrupted a drug supply chain and ensured organised criminals are deprived of the significant profits they would have gained had these drugs made it into the country.

“The NCA is working around the clock with partners here and overseas to erode the criminal networks benefiting from the destructive drugs trade.”