The supposedly secret meeting of three old codgers in England
planning an ambitious drug smuggling scheme sounds exactly like you imagine it would:
The Mob Reporter here with news of a trio of British pensioners
plotting to haul cocaine, heroin and ecstasy in from Europe for Liverpool
gangsters — but they were caught red-handed in a covert police probe and it's pretty cringey
This case is just one in a flood of truckers bagged at the border trying
to get their hidden cargo across the channel into the United Kingdom
one of Europe's largest markets. Let me tell you about it
It's been a messy crush at Britain's ports as a shortage of truck drivers Covid-19 restrictions and
changing import export rules under BREXIT brought havoc to the supply chain and commercial crossings
In the middle of this chaos three old timers hatched the plot in league with British gangsters
73-year-old Brian Wright owned a moving company
with a long and honest history — that's the gold standard for a front company
Wright hatched the ambitious scheme with Alfred Rumbold, 65, from Kent, and Mark Youell, 64, from Essex
Here you can see the meeting as they mapped out the scheme, and as you can tell they weren't good
with their operational security. I guess times have changed since their heyday because not
only were they tracked and photographed almost every step of the way but also recorded
Despite the cringy way they discussed the job, they weren't just talkers. These geezers were really
going for it. In July 2020, Wright pulled into Britain at the port of Dover in one of his trucks
after making a dry run. He made notes on his phone about security and border checks along the way
The next day the seniors gathered at a cafe in Kent to go over the final arrangements
These are photos of the meeting you see here. Covert listening devices from Britain's National
Crime Agency captured their scheming with remarkable clarity. The next week Wright headed
back to the continent for the real thing, to pick up the load which was sealed inside fish tanks
On his return journey, he was raided by British and Dutch police
on the road in central Netherlands, outside Utrecht, 25 miles south of Amsterdam
When the cops approached his truck, they found Wright sound asleep inside his cab. Dutch police
seized 20.5 kilos of heroin, 32 kilos of cocaine and 3 kilos of MDMA, known as ecstasy. British
police estimated the haul would have had a UK street value of about £4.5 million British pounds
That's more than $6 million US dollars. His pals were then arrested in their homes
It's all a bit curious. Wright doesn't seem to have needed the money, so i'm not sure what his game was
He was the owner of a seemingly successful moving company, what they call "removals" in
Britain. And his firm wasn't a small one. Wright had a significant fleet of modern trucks, what
they call "lorries" in Britain — from vans to enormous haulers. He specialized in national and continental
European moves. Here he is when he's not looking stunned in a mug shot. They call him "Our Brian" —
a specialist in moving fine art. His company did work for the National Portrait Gallery, Sky TV
several banks even the British Coastguard. He had warehouses and transport yards and his
success was signified by the Rolls Royce he drove. He offers a five percent discount for members of
emergency services. I wonder if that applies to police and border agents. Maybe he was bored or
having financial trouble. I reached out to Wright to hear his side of things, but I didn't hear back
Youell, on the other hand, had served time. He sounds like the hard man of this lot
As for his past, in 2007, Youell pleaded guilty to nine counts of tax evasion and conspiracy
He was running construction companies but hiding all his revenue using false identities and family
members names. He and his wife lived well off the scam; they had an executive property on a
gated estate, an Aston Martin and Range Rover with personalized license plates, investments, jewelry
and a holiday home. When the fraud unraveled he was jailed for two and a half years and ordered
to pay back the equivalent of more than a million dollars. How did these three old timers' plot fall
apart? Someone hooked them up with the hottest underworld fad — encrypted phones used mostly by
criminals to communicate in secret. Alas, these systems have been penetrated by police, allowing
investigators to secretly monitor calls and texts. They probably should have stuck to the old ways
When Youell and Rumbold were arrested, police seized phones with two encrypted apps EncroChat and Sky
ECC, along with messages trying to connect with gangsters about their pending import services
For more information on the EncroChat fiasco i'll leave a link to a previous video i did
These guys didn't give up without a fight — a legal one that is. In that they remained old
school. Youell and Rumbold denied they were trying to import hard drugs, claiming the plot was to
smuggle alcohol, cigarettes and pot. Wright, who was caught with the fish tanks, said he thought he was
only moving furniture back to the UK. All three were found guilty of conspiring to import Class
A drugs this week after seven weeks of trial in west London. They'll be sentenced later this month
These truckers seem to have eyes only for easy money without seeing the hard time. Despite the
UK border crush, many truckers are getting pinched. The load manifest at the Dover crossing for a
truck driven by 30 year old Karol Niewiadomski, from Poland, said vintage clothing for a business
and Nottingham. I assume there were some cool threads in there but police were more interested
in 50 kilos of coke hidden in the driver's cab. The colorfully wrapped bricks were packed in cardboard
boxes and shoved into a compartment where he slept. He denied the drugs were his. He said he left
his truck unlocked while on the ferry from the Netherlands — raising the improbable defense that
strangers broke in and left him a tremendously valuable gift. Police said his coke had a high
purity and estimated its street value at £4 million pounds, equivalent to about $5.3 million US dollars
He was sentenced last week to 14 and a half years in jail. Another truck driver was jailed this week
a Croatian citizen, 53-year-old Predrag Gogic, after he pulled into a UK port following his
trip from Belgium. In Dover, his truck was scanned by UK Border Force officers who
spotted hard packages inside the center core of reels of paper cord in the trailer of his truck
Officers pulled out blue and green shrink wrapped packages, 20 of them, weighing about a kilo each
Investigators say he admitted to knowing about the drugs and said he was hired to smuggle them
into the UK. He was headed for Leicester, he said, where his €10,000 euro fee was waiting
for him, which is a bit over $11,000 US dollars. Police say if his load was cut and sold on local
streets he would be worth an estimated £1.6 million pounds, which is more than $2.1 million US dollars
His kilos had a curious shape. Typically, bulk coke is in rectangular bricks. These were disc-
shaped, like large hockey pucks. He subsequently pled guilty and this week jailed for six years
A similar fate met a Lithuanian truck driver, 46 year old Robertas Trimailovas, who was also
searched at the port of Dover. Border agents found cocaine hidden in three different spaces
in the lining of the driver's bunk bed. In total they weigh 24 kilos, police said
They were conventional brick shapes. He also pled guilty and was sentenced to nine years in prison
And, in September, a driver from Birmingham was returning to the UK from the Netherlands with
a cargo of nitrous oxide canisters. They're the charged cartridges of compressed gas used to
shoot whipped cream out of dispensers. Some of the boxes had been filled with bricks of cocaine
and heroin instead — 181 kilos between them, police said, estimating its street value at seven million
pounds; that's almost nine and a half million US dollars. The 26-year-old driver remains before
the courts. Maybe they shouldn't have chosen a load that was already destined for scrutiny
as the canisters of so-called laughing gas are already a diversion concern for police
It seems unnecessarily risky to me. But maybe, just like the old codgers were hoping to boost
their deals by selling fruit and veg to groceries, someone running the nitrous oxide deal wanted to
hit two markets with the same load. Trucking is a competitive business, after all. Thanks for watching