£100m cocaine plotters sentenced for at sea smuggling bid

Four drug smugglers have been sentenced over a plot to smuggle more than a ton of cocaine on a fishing boat off the coast of Cornwall, after a National Crime Agency investigation.

The crime group members were found with more than a ton of the Class A drug on board their boat, the Lily Lola, in September last year.

Michael Kelly, 45, and Jake Marchant, 27, pleaded guilty before trial.

Jon Williams, 46, of Windmill Terrace, St Thomas, Swansea, and Patrick Godfrey, 31, of Danygraig Road, Port Tennant, Swansea, were convicted after a trial in March of smuggling the £100m haul.

Shortly after 2pm on 13 September, the Border Force cutter HMC Valiant was on patrol off the north coast of Cornwall and deployed a RHIB (rigid hulled inflatable boat) to intercept the Lily Lola.

Williams, the captain and who had bought the boat for around £140,000 two months earlier, was at the helm. Marchant, of no fixed abode, was next to him. Kelly, of Portway, Manchester, was in the accommodation area and Godfrey was asleep in a deck chair.

The Lily Lola was taken into a secure port and the seized substances, which were divided into bales, removed and tested showing them to be high purity cocaine.

An electronic device that had been on board the Lily Lola was downloaded and some messages were recovered. These demonstrated the boat receiving instructions and co-ordinates from a third party.

Also, Godfrey’s phone showed he sent a message to someone saying ‘delete everything u see and not show anybody’. His phone also made the internet search ‘how long does it take a ship to leave peru to uk’.

A tracker was found in the drugs haul which NCA investigators established was linked to a user in South America

Williams, Godfrey and Marchant made no comment in interview and Kelly claimed he was on a fishing trip. But faced with the evidence against them, Kelly and Marchant pleaded guilty at Truro Crown Court on 15 October.