Jail for man who smuggled cocaine hidden in doors

[Lunar Loops]

Of course, the old Columbian cheese-grater ploy. This from The Guardian (UK):

Jail for man who smuggled cocaine hidden in doors

Dan Bell
Saturday February 24, 2007
The Guardian


A former public schoolboy who masterminded a £3m plot to smuggle wooden doors impregnated with liquid cocaine into Britain was jailed yesterday for 18 years. Paul Sneath, 24, of Guildford, Surrey, came up with a "unique" plot using sheets of plywood, liquid cocaine, industrial solvent, and cheese graters.
In 2005, after inheriting £250,000, the Bristol University dropout travelled to Panama where he arranged for plywood to be soaked in liquid cocaine and sealed inside doors elaborately patterned with parrots. The doors were then shipped from Panama to his family home, where his unknowing mother signed for them and paid £798 for the shipping costs.
Sneath then transferred the doors to a lock-up in Dalston, east London, where members of a Colombian gang removed the plywood, shaved it with cheese graters and mixed the shavings with heated solvent. Police caught the gang red-handed before they had a chance to dry the precipitate and chop it into powder. The doors were found to have been impregnated with 17.3kg of pure cocaine, with a street value in excess of £3.2m.
Sneath, who had no previous criminal record, was found guilty of conspiracy to supply cocaine at Inner London crown court.
Sentencing him, Judge Lindsay Burn said: "This was a highly sophisticated drug operation. It inevitably involved the importation, using what the crown described as a unique method, of cocaine into this country. Unique because it was impregnated within fibreboard which was used in the construction of ornate doors."
"The crown rightly described that method as virtually undetectable. It follows that you were actually involved in what must have been a thoroughly professional operation."
Sneath's mother, Linda Sneath, who is the lady's captain of Puttenham Golf Club in Surrey, wept as her son was taken down to the cells. After his arrest and conviction, she told fellow golf club members that he had gone away for the ski season.
During the trial, the court heard how in July 2005, police kept Sneath under surveillance as he flew to Houston, Texas, with his girlfriend, and then on to Panama City. Sneath told the court that he bought the doors at a furniture store for £1,750 intending to sell them on eBay.
Sneath's co-defendant, Johnny Mejia, 26, of Islington, was sentenced to 12 years. Luis Lopez, 27, of West Kensington, was sentenced to 10 years. Migel Velasquez, 30, of Edgware, and Diego Tovar, 41, of Islington, were sentenced to nine years.
Acting Detective Chief Inspector Grant Johnson, from the Specialist Crime Directorate, said "Sneath is a man of unusually privileged background." "It is not uncommon for gangs to modify items so they can import drugs. The process they were going to use to extract the drugs is normally used in South America. There is a chance that if they used this in a confined lock-up, they would have died from the toxic chemicals it gives off."