Two Scots drug smugglers who attempted to flood the UK with £46m worth of cocaine on a small boat have been jailed.
Daniel Livingstone, 25, from Campbeltown conspired to smuggle the 524kg stash alongside Mark Moran, 23, from Ardrishaig and Colombian national Didier Tordecilla Reyes. But their plans were unravelled by detectives after their van was busted outside a Yorkshire pub on May 4.
Earlier in the day, Moran was in Norwich, where he drove a hire van and a rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) up to Grimsby. He and Reyes sailed the boat into the North Sea to collect the huge consignment of multiple high-purity 1kg blocks of cocaine and bring it ashore in the “dead of night”.
They sailed from the Hessle slipway before returning hours later with the drugs haul and unloading it at a beach near Easington caravan park. Livingstone was waiting for them and had been seen shining a torch out to sea and talking on his mobile phone before they approached.
But after reaching the Stag’s Head Inn in Lelley, a village east of Hull, they were busted by cops from the National Crime Agency (NCA), who had been observing their actions.
Angus MacDonald, prosecuting, claimed that the first steps of the conspiracy were on March 29, when the two Scots, including Moran, turned up at Padstow Harbour, Cornwall, and bought a fishing boat for £40,000 with false names.
The boat was taken to Southwold Harbour, Suffolk, where it was moored. Moran and Reyes, who had flown in specifically for this operation from Colombia, boarded the boat and set sail, the Crown had claimed.
In the early hours of the following day, Border Force officers boarded and searched the boat off the coast of Lowestoft, Suffolk.
Mr MacDonald. said: “No drugs or contraband were found,” as the Border Force officers “acted a little bit too early” because the cocaine was due to be collected later on. After this “near miss” it might have been thought that Moran would “think better” of continuing their involvement and would “pause and think” about it.
A jury at Hull Crown Court convicted Moran of conspiracy to import cocaine on October 28 following an eight-day trial.
Livingstone and Tordecilla Reyes pleaded guilty to the same offence on June 5 and July 22. A fourth man, also from Argyll and Bute, was cleared by the jury.
At the same court today, Moran was sentenced to 15 years behind bars. Livingstone was jailed for seven years and nine months imprisonment.
Reyes is due to be sentenced at a later date.
NCA Senior Investigating Officer Alan French said: “There’s no doubt these drugs would have been sold into communities around the UK, but working with our partners including Humberside Police and Border Force, we have disrupted this crime group’s offending and made a huge dent in any profits they were due to make.
“We are determined to do all we can to tackle the class A drugs threat activity, and protect the public from the horrific damage it causes our society.”
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