Dealer tried to pick up parcel with 3,500 ecstasy pills stashed in soup cans
The drugs had a street value of £35,000.
A dealer who tried to pick up a package of 3,500 ecstasy pills hidden in soup cans from a parcel depot has been jailed.
The drugs, worth around £35,000, were stashed inside the cans and sent to an address in Chard, Somerset but the homeowner turned it away.
Ricardo Guerreiro, 30, tried to get the package from the depot but was unsuccessful.
It was then re-routed online to an address in Ilminister where another man, Neil Francis, 45, signed for it.
Border Force agents had been tracking the package after intercepting it at Coventry Airport in June 2019 and arrested Francis at his home.
Guerreiro was arrested two months later and both were charged with drug offences.
Guerreiro, from Ilminster, pleaded guilty to importing and supplying class A drugs. He was sentenced to four years in prison at Taunton Crown Court last Wednesday.
His neighbour Francis pleaded guilty to possession with intent to supply and was handed a suspended sentence last Thursday.
In total, police found 3,551 tablets concealed inside five soup cans.
Detective Inspector Adrian Hawkins, of the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit, said: ‘This comes on the back of a case earlier in the year where a woman who tried to import £1million worth of crystal meth disguised in toy figures and coffee beans was jailed.
‘Again, Border Force intercepted the parcel and we investigated those behind the importation attempt.
‘Cases like this demonstrate that this kind of criminality crosses international borders and, by working with our partners, we’re determined to do all we can to disrupt the criminal networks involved in drug supply and distribution and protect people in the South West.’
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