Three people have been sentenced to a total of more than 47 years in prison for trying to smuggle £80 million worth of cocaine into the UK, following an intensive Metropolitan Police investigation.
The final sentence was handed down on Wednesday 4 November, when Craig Le-Mare, 36, of no fixed abode, received 20 years in prison. He had been convicted of conspiracy to supply cocaine at the Old Bailey on 27 October. Michael Weston, 57, also of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to the same offence at Snaresbrook Crown Court in March 2024 and was sentenced to 12 years and nine months in May 2026. Kelly Robertson, 46, of Peregrine Close, Watford, pleaded guilty at Snaresbrook Crown Court in March 2024 and was sentenced to 15 years in November 2024.
The plot began with a container that left Mexico on 30 September 2021, supposedly carrying 29 pallets of steel furniture parts. It arrived at Felixstowe port on 12 November, and financial records showed members of the group had arrived in Ipswich the same day, booking rooms at a budget hotel, hiring a van and ordering large takeaways to their rooms.
At 6.02am on Friday 26 November, the group followed the container lorry as it left a haulage yard, trailing it for 125 miles across the country in a black Ford Mondeo, a grey Vauxhall Astra and a white BMW. At 8.20am the lorry pulled into a layby on Lilliput Road in Northampton so the driver could get a coffee from a burger van — and the group moved in, blocking the lorry in, breaking into the container and loading wrapped packages into a grey Transit van.
Bystanders saw what was happening, and the group were forced to abandon the theft and flee. Officers recovered 18 holdalls of cocaine in total — seven left behind inside the lorry and a further 11 in the Transit van, which Northamptonshire Police located within two hours — totalling 780kg with a street value of more than £80 million.
Met officers then tracked the thieves as they left the scene, even as they switched cars, changed number plates, split up and falsely reported the van as stolen. Forensic analysis of their devices further proved their roles: after news of the seizure broke in 2021, phone data showed Weston had texted a friend a link to a news article, complaining that he was now “skint” for Christmas.
Robertson was arrested on 14 December 2023 after Met officers had unravelled the network. Le-Mare left the UK shortly after the drugs were seized and was arrested at Gatwick Airport on 25 January 2025.
Detective Inspector Dean Grafton, who led the Met investigation, said the investigation exposed an intricately planned operation in which the defendants hoped to make millions by selling cocaine across the UK, and that officers worked for two years to meticulously unravel it. He added that drugs fuel criminality and rip families and communities apart, and that the sentences prove the Met’s determination to pursue organised crime groups.
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