It started with a simple mechanical failure. Eleven people are now convicted because GPS trackers on waterproof bundles of cocaine stopped working properly one August morning in 2024. What could have been a clean handover for a criminal network became instead a costly disaster, and a clear demonstration that determined policing still works.
The plot was ambitious. Five hundred kilograms of cocaine, with a street value of around £40 million, were pushed overboard from a container ship into international waters some 40 nautical miles south of The Needles, off the Isle of Wight. The drugs were meant to be collected quickly and moved on. Instead the trackers failed. The first recovery attempt by David Paterson, who had sailed a rigid-hulled inflatable boat from Haslar Marina in Portsmouth, came up empty.
Two days later, on 19 August, Adil Nolan succeeded where the first effort had collapsed. He used another rigid-hulled inflatable boat, the Amma Sigga, out of Eastbourne Harbour, recovered the packages and brought them ashore at Medmerry Beach in Selsey, West Sussex. That is where law enforcement was waiting. The seizure was complete.
The group had done what these networks usually do. They used WhatsApp for coordination, prepaid cards to stay under the radar, and bought a boat under a false name. Seven of those now convicted admitted their roles before the case reached trial. Four others were found guilty after proceedings at Portsmouth Crown Court. Sentencing is set for 5 and 6 November.
This was not a small-time operation. It was an organised crime group trying to move industrial quantities of a drug that ruins lives, fuels violence and pours money back into further crime. The National Crime Agency, working with Border Force and police forces in Merseyside, West Mercia, Hampshire and Sussex, dismantled it.
Jules Harriman, the NCA senior investigating officer, put it plainly. "This was a large seizure of cocaine and represents a serious loss for the crime group. Their profits can no longer be ploughed back into further offending and we've prevented these toxic drugs from reaching UK streets where they poison people's lives."
