Drugs-in-furniture pair jailed

Drugs-in-furniture pair jailed

Drugs were hidden inside a consignment of flat-pack furniture

Two men have been found guilty of smuggling more than £4m of drugs into Devon.

Timothy Andrews, 40, of St Marychurch Road, Torquay and Adrian Griffiths, 40, of Wesley Mews, Torquay were jailed for 15 years.

Two other men - Patrick Mills, 40, of Audley Avenue, Torquay, and his brother Gerald Mills, 41, of Enfield Close, Erdington, Birmingham, were cleared.

Plymouth Crown Court heard that the drugs were spotted by customs in a check on a consignment of flat-pack furniture while it was in a transport company's Northampton depot.

Customs officers replaced the illegal drugs with sand, and delivered the intercepted furniture consignment to the tiny village of Bittaford, near Plymouth where the men were arrested last May.

Hand grenade

The drug smugglers bought the furniture from a company in Wrexham and sent it to Holland, where it was imported back into Britain with more than 50kg of heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis hidden inside the flat packs.

The court heard that similar weights were imported on four previous consignments.

The smugglers had set up a furniture company in Bittaford and called it Remember Me.

They had also established a front company in Amsterdam called Woods Express.

Andrews and Griffiths were also found guilty on charges relating to the importation of a hand grenade and ammunition.