Seven jailed for attempting to smuggle £900,000 of drugs into Jersey

Seven people have been jailed for a total of almost 74 years after a conspiracy to traffic more than £900,000 worth of drugs into Jersey was foiled.

61-year-old Nicholas Maxwell Thurban, 45-year-old Colin Russel Sait, 59-year-old Paul Dennis Brown, 55-year-old John Alexander Roy and Jon Adam Hughes, aged 41, all received jail sentences of between 12 and 14 years at Jersey's Royal Court.

26-year-old Daniel Niall Riley received a sentence of 8 years and 2 months, while Deborah Karen Wolff, aged 54, was jailed for 2 years.

They had all pleaded guilty to drug and money laundering offences.

The group had planned to smuggle drugs with an estimated street value of £919,000 from the UK to Jersey on a private yacht on 21 June 2019.

The vessel sailed from Lymington to Bel Val Bay near St Catherine’s but the drugs were intercepted before they could be distributed across the island.

In total, authorities recovered more 5,000 tablets of MDMA, two kilos of MDMA powder, one kilo of cocaine and more than four and half kilos of cannabis resin.

The convictions followed what has been called the most complicated investigation ever undertaken by Jersey Authorities.

The investigation, known as Operation Lion, involved States of Jersey Police and customs officers working in partnership with the National Crime Agency, UK Border Force and Australian Police.

Data from 136 mobile phones was examined, with investigators trawling through 26,000 calls and messages exposing links to other drugs operations around the world.

Covert searches of the group’s hotel rooms and luggage were also carried out in the months leading up to their arrests.

Sentencing the group, the judge said drug trafficking was ‘an evil that wreaks havoc on the lives of individual users and their families.’

He added that individuals found importing drugs on a commercial basis would receive lengthy sentences.