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Drug smugglers get total of 10 years jail
Page 10
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• A Scottish haulier and four other members of a drug-smuggling gang who hid £6m drugs in the false floor of a truck have been jailed for a total of 70 years.
During the six-week trial, Liverpool Crown Court heard how police stopped the truck, which was driven by haulage boss Alexander Thom, 41, on the M74 in Lanarkshire on 19 October last year. Hidden beneath a consignment of 19 tonnes of bananas was 21 kilos of heroin, 19 kilos of cocaine, 100 kilos of amphetamine and 150,000 Ecstasy tablets.
Thom, from Guildtown in Perthshire, was a partner in Dundee-based haulage business Scotswede.
The gang was headed by Frank Smith, 53, who was jailed for 25 years after being found guilty of two charges of conspiracy to supply Class A and B drugs.
David Turner QC, prosecuting, told the jury that Smith was the "managing director" of the illegal plot.
Judge Bryn Holloway sentenced his accomplice Anthony O'Toole of West Derby to 19 years' imprisonment, and Thom to 14 years' imprisonment.
The court heard that the gang knew that the truck's false floor had been constructed at a unit owned by Harold Camello on the Weaver Industrial Estate in Anfield. He was also jailed for four years for allowing his premises to be used in the plot.
A fifth man, Alan Gerrard, was spotted travelling to Amsterdam by police, and had called Smith 31 times in six days according to telephone records. Garrard was jailed for eight years.
Judge Holloway said detectives deserved a commendation for their undercover work and for catching the gang.
Turner said it was a cocky text message from Thom that
finally put him and the rest of the gang into the frame. He told the court: 'Thom sent a text message to his business partner which said With this load, we could end up with junky monkeys ha ha'. It was quite a good joke until you realised that he would be making money out of other people's misery."
Sentencing, Judge Holloway said: "People like you would have brought misery to addicts and their families and caused a crimewave of dishonesty" Smith and his co-defendants, including Thom, will be brought back to the court in December for a hearing, in which police will apply to seize the profits he has made from drug crime.