Four drug smugglers have been convicted of trying to smuggle £100m of cocaine on a fishing boat off the coast of Cornwall, after a National Crime Agency investigation.
The crime group members were found with more than a ton of the Class A drug on board their boat, the Lily Lola, in September last year.
Two of the offenders Michael Kelly, 45, and Jake Marchant, 27, pleaded guilty before trial.
But today two other men, Jon Williams, 46, of Windmill Terrace, St Thomas, Swansea, and Patrick Godfrey, 31, of Danygraig Road, Port Tennant, Swansea, were also convicted after a trial of smuggling the 1,076kg haul.
Shortly after 2pm on 13 September, the Border Force cutter HMC Valiant was onpatrol off the north coast of Cornwall and deployed a RHIB (rigid hulled inflatable boat) to intercept the Lily Lola.
Williams, the captain and who had bought the boat for around £140,000 two months earlier, was at the helm. Marchant, of no fixed abode, was next to him. Kelly, of Portway, Manchester, was in the accommodation area and Godfrey was asleep in a deck chair.
The Lily Lola was taken into Plymouth Royal Dockyard and the seized substances, which were divided into bales, removed and tested showing them to be high purity cocaine.
A device that had been on board the Lily Lola was downloaded and some messages were recovered. These demonstrated the boat receiving instructions and co-ordinates from a third party.
Also, Godfrey’s phone showed he sent a message to someone saying ‘delete everything u see and not show anybody’. His phone also made the internet search ‘how long does it take a ship to leave peru to uk’.
A tracker was found in the drugs haul which NCA investigators established was linked to a user in South America
Williams, Godfrey and Marchant made no comment in interview and 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.”
