News Investigations
South American drug gangs are dropping cocaine in the sea around the UK to be picked up by smaller boats and brought to shore, Border Force has warned.
Tens of millions of pounds worth of drugs are being wrapped in flotation devices equipped with trackers, allowing gang members in Britain to see where they are, officials say.
This sophisticated method of smuggling large quantities of the drug into the UK has become a “significant and persistent threat”, they say.
Last week, a court heard that four British men were arrested after picking up a tonne of cocaine, with a street value of £100m, left near the Isles of Scilly in September. They face lengthy prison sentences.
In an effort to intercept the parcels, Border Force has deployed its cutter units, alongside highly trained sniffer dogs.
News got rare access to this unit, including a dog called Flash who sniffed out a cocaine haul hidden among bananas on a ship inbound from South America in January.
The drugs – packed in waterproof parcels and equipped with trackers – were found behind the locked doors of a container on the vessel, which was stopped off the coast of Dover, Kent, and had a street value of more than £50m.
“They were bundled into around 30kg blocks, with life jackets which would then be inflated… and that would be thrown overboard,” Charlie Eastaugh, maritime director at Border Force, told the .
This tactic known as an ASDO, or at-sea-drop-off, has led to seizures of multiple tonnes of cocaine over recent years, he says.
‘Track, locate, seize’
Drugs are transported on so-called “mother” ships by gangs in South America who are in touch with criminals in the UK using satellite phones. When the vessels are in British waters the packages are thrown overboard to be collected by smaller “daughter” boats, which locate the contraband.
Mr Eastaugh says the problem is “significant” but “we are able to identify, track, locate, seize and ultimately prosecute and imprison those that are involved”.
Last week, Truro Crown Court heard that last September four men on a boat called the Lily Lola sailed to an area near the Scilly Isles on instructions from a gang in South America.
There, they retrieved a tonne of cocaine dumped by a larger vessel floating in the sea – but before they could bring it back to shore they were intercepted by officers from the NCA.
Jon Williams, 46, the captain of the boat, and Patrick Godfrey, 31, both from Swansea, were hired by Michael Kelly, 45, and Jake Marchant, 27, because of their boat handling skills, the court heard.
They will return to court to be sentenced on 8 May.
There have been a number of other high-profile incidents over the last two years, including:
Prof Adam Winstock, a consultant psychiatrist and addiction medicine specialist who spends much of his time working in prisons, says the purity and price of cocaine has “remained immune to inflation over the last five years”.
As a result, he says “it doesn’t matter to [smugglers] if they lose 20% of shipments” through seizures by authorities because the mark-up on the drug is so high.
Despite record seizures in 2024, the number of cocaine-linked deaths in the UK is at a 30-year high. There were 1,118 deaths in 2023 – ten times higher than in 2011, according to the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics.
Derek Evans from the NCA, who led the investigation into the Lily Lola, warned people working in the fishing community: “If someone from a crime group approaches you, please let the police know. If you are tempted to go into this line of industry in the criminal framework, think twice”.
