Month: January 2023

Bradley Pryer and Cain Adams were caught by an airport sniffer dog at Stansted Airport before they boarded a flight to Reykjavik with more than £6000 of cocaine hidden inside their bodies.  The drugs would have been worth three times that in Iceland.

Pryer was targeted by the Organised Crime Partnership (OCP) as part of Operation Venetic, which was the police’s response to the takedown of EncroChat – an encrypted communication service where drug dealers  conducted their businesses.  The EncroChat messages showed the value of the drugs he had supplied across the UK came to approximately £2.7 million.

Following earlier guilty pleas, Pryer was jailed for 12 years and Adams received a two-year suspended sentence at Chelmsford Crown Court on 13 January 2023.

Operation Venetic: EncroChat drug supplier attempted to smuggle cocaine to Iceland – National Crime Agency

That’s why drug dealers go to Iceland – to sell cocaine for three times its UK value – Wales Online

The trial continues at Winchester Crown Court of Shaye Groves, who is accused of murdering her boyfriend in his sleep last July in Havant, Hampshire.  Groves, 27, allegedly stabbed Frankie Fitzgerald 22 times after discovering he had been messaging a 13-year-old-girl.  She then tried to create a false alibi by texting a friend that Fitzgerald had walked out on her.  Groves went on to video-call a friend, Vikki Baitup, showing her the deceased’s body and saying she had “just lost it” and stabbed him in the neck whilst he slept.  When asked what she was going to with the body, Groves replied, ‘it’s alright, we are going to bury it in the back garden’.

Upon her arrest, Groves told police that Fitzgerald had tried to attack her.  The defendant denies murder.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-64248591

Oliver Weetch, instructed by GT Stewart Solicitors, defended MV who along with another defendant was charged with importing over 200kg of cocaine and heroin into the UK through the Eurotunnel with an approximate street value of 12 million pounds. It was the largest ever seizure of drugs through the tourist route at Coquelles in France (UK territory). MV was the driver of the van that contained all the drugs. At the end of a 10 day trial at Canterbury Crown Court he was unanimously acquitted by the jury of all charges he faced.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11576265/A-Dutch-van-driver-smuggling-200-kilos-coke-heroin-jailed-16-years.html