The final gang member who plotted to send £45million worth of MDMA hidden in a digger to Australia has been jailed.
Seven men – including people from Greenwich, Bromley, Hillingdon and Ealing – have now been sentenced in total for their roles in the drug operation.
The group hid the drugs within the arm of an industrial digger and organised an online auction to make the excavator’s transportation to Australia look legitimate.
It’s reported that MDMA would have sold for far more than the UK street price.
The digger was first stored in an industrial unit in Grays, Essex.
Two men, Tony Borg and Philip Lawson, arranged for a welder to cut the vehicle’s arm to seal the Class A drugs.
Peter Murray, from Greenwich, was responsible for sourcing and transporting the goods.
The digger was taken to Southampton Docks and it took three months for it to arrive in Brisbane, Australia in 2020.
But Australian Border Force officers found the drugs after x-raying the machine, before letting it move on to the auction house in Sydney under watch.
From there, members realised that the smuggled goods were missing.
National Crime Agency (NCA) investigators cracked down on the case after intercepting messages from Encrochat, an encrypted messaging platform that was mainly used by criminals and brought down after a Europe-wide investigation.
Messages from the platform showed the group held meetings trying to figure out who could have stolen the drugs.
They were arrested by NCA officers between mid-2020 and early 2021.
Six of the men were sentenced for their roles in 2022.
But William Sartin, 63, of Timberlog Lane in Basildon has become the latest to be jailed after being sentenced to 23 years today (December 3) at Kingston Crown Court.
He had multiple previous convictions including an attempt to smuggle 480kg of cannabis into the UK from the Netherlands in the year 2000.
In 2011, he was convicted of conspiracy to cheat the public revenue, having conspired to smuggle tobacco and tobacco shredding machinery into the UK.
Chris Hill, NCA branch commander, said: "Sartin played a vital role in this conspiracy; it was in his industrial unit that the excavator was concealed, cut open, and filled with MDMA.”
Who else were jailed?
The other men jailed in 2022 includes Danny Brown, of Kings Hall Road in Bromley, who was sentenced to 26 years' imprisonment.
Peter Murray, of Trafalgar Road, Greenwich, and Leon Reilly of Tudor Way, Hillingdon, were sentenced to 24 years.
Stefan Baldauf, of Midhurst Road in Ealing, was sentenced to 28 years.
Philip Lawson, Wraysbury Road, Staines-upon-Thames, and Tony Borg, of Southwark Park, Basildon, were sentenced to 23 and 15 years.
Commander Hill continued: "All of these men thought that they were safe on EncroChat, but NCA officers painstakingly combed through every single message they sent to build evidence against them.
"Our work with partners abroad, shown here through our collaboration with the Australian Federal Police, protects the public from the dangers of Class A drugs, which destroy lives and communities here in the UK and across the world."
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