Beer smugglers netted £500,000
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• Four men have been jailed for their parts in a beer smuggling operation which cost the Treasury nearly £500,000.
The four appeared for sentencing at Canterbury Crown Court last week after being convicted of conspiracy to evade duty payable on goods from August 1993 to June 1994.
When customs swooped on the beer-running operation they arrested 14 people.
Five of them were convicted; six pleaded guilty and three were cleared.
Brian Shaw of Green Lane, Oxley, Watford, used his transport company, PDA Distribution of Edgeware, to run the bootlegging operation. He was jailed for three-and-a-half years.
Gary Brown, of Anvile Close, Birchington, arranged storage of goods brought in via Ramsgate and Dover. He was jailed for four years.
Drivers Gary Berry of Fairfield Crescent, Edgeware, and Stephen Bishop, of Dumpton Park Drive, Ramsgate, got 15 months and nine months respectively.
Customs estimated that the lost revenue amounted to nearly £500,000 after a total of 329 trips using 10 vehicles.