Cocaine gang who hurled drugs into the sea as they tried to outrun Border Force before crashing into beach are jailed for total of more than 80 years

Daily Mail​

3 days ago

Four men who threw cocaine worth more than £18 million into the sea were jailed yesterday for a total of more than 80 years.
Three of the seven gang members had tried to outrun Border Force officers for around 28 miles at sea after their drug laden inflatable boat was spotted.
The trio were seen throwing off the bales of cocaine into the sea before they stopped at Gwynver beach near Sennen, Cornwall, last September.
Scott Johnston, 39, Peter Williams, 43, and Spanish speaking Edwin Tabora Baca, 33, had been spotted off the coast by a Border Force vessel and were arrested on the beach after the high speed chase around the coast of Cornwall as they tried to run from the scene.
Truro Crown Court heard that the conspirators had been due to collect 20 bales of cocaine from the sea after they had been dropped there by a cargo ship.
The prosecution said the drugs were brought from South America on a cargo vessel across the Atlantic and were dumped in water tight bales into the sea in the English Channel.
The bales were fitted with GPS tracking devices attached to Apple air tags so that they could be recovered from the sea by the smaller vessel and transported to mainland Cornwall to be off loaded and transported elsewhere in the country.
But despite the technology the three men on the boat only managed to find eleven bales but dumped them during the chase.
Six large containers containing around 230kg of 'high-purity cocaine' were later recovered from the ocean by Border Force officers and the men were arrested.
The other conspirators were arrested at later times after National Crime Agency investigators trawled through CCTV footage, phone call data and phone messages.
Alex Fowlie, 35, of Chichester; Bobbie Pearce, 29, of Brentwood, Essex; Michael May, 47, also of Kelveden Hatch, Essex; and Terry Willis, 44, of Chelmsford, Essex, helped plan and organise the cocaine smuggling operation and pick up.
May and Jonhston, of Havant, Hants, had denied the charge but were convicted after a trial at Truro Crown Court in June. The other men admitted conspiracy to import Class A drugs. Willis also admitted money laundering and possessing a revolver and live ammo which were found in a rucksack in his bedroom cupboard.
Tabora Baca - who claimed to be a tourist who had accepted a boat invitation from two strangers to go fishing - was the Spanish speaking link between the higher figures in the operation and had flown into the country on several occasions.
But messages on his phone discussed the group's plans and shared a photo of the cocaine on the vessel.
Johnston played a significant role as he piloted the RHIB and helped dump the cocaine during the pursuit.
The other three men involved in the conspiracy - Pearce, Fowlie and Williams - will be sentenced later.
Sentencing four of the men, Judge Jame Adkin said: 'This was an international conspiracy to smuggle a large quantity of cocaine into the UK via a smuggling operation into the South West.'
The judge said two organised crime groups were involved - one in the South West involving the boat and retrieval of the drugs from the sea - and the other in Essex where the cocaine would have been taken to be cut, divided and sold on to street dealers.
Tabora Baca was jailed for 17 years and seven months and will be deported, Johnston was jailed for 24 years, Willis for 21 years and 8 months which included five years for the firearm offence, and May was jailed for 19 years.