Two pensioners were duped into smuggling crystal meth into the UK inside bags of chocolate truffles by an international drug trafficker from Nigeria.
Tonny Ezeh, 51, convinced Heinz Magel, 80, and a 67-year-old man they were entitled to legitimate cash windfalls and they had to travel abroad to get paid.
Ezeh, who holds Nigerian, Canadian, and Jamaican passports, fooled the pair into carrying the drugs hidden in sweets into Britain for onward flights to Hong Kong.
The 67-year-old was stopped at Heathrow on October 18 and three days later Magel was stopped at the airport on a flight from Mexico City.
The German pensioners were unwittingly each carrying around three kilos of methamphetamine worth up to £300,000.
Both were charged with smuggling class A drugs but the charges were dropped once investigators established that Ezeh had scammed the pair.
Ezeh admitted smuggling class A drugs when he appeared at Isleworth Crown Court yesterday, and was sentenced to nine years and three months in prison.
He was based in Mexico where he organised drug shipments with other Nigerian contacts across the world.
Tonny Ezeh, 51, convinced Heinz Magel, 80, and a 67-year-old man they were entitled to legitimate cash windfalls and they had to travel abroad to get paid
The German pensioners were unwittingly each carrying around three kilos of methamphetamine worth up to £300,000
Victims were told they were the beneficiaries of large sums of money but to obtain their cash they travelled to Mexico to sign fake paperwork, where they were given the ‘gift’ of the truffles to take to Hong Kong
His mobile phones revealed that he was part of a West African crime group responsible for transporting Class A drugs internationally via air passenger courier and fast parcels.
Elderly and vulnerable couriers were singled out and recruited via email finance scams.
Victims were told they were the beneficiaries of large sums of money but to obtain their cash they travelled to Mexico to sign fake paperwork.
They were then given gifts of ‘Elvan Chocolate Truffles’ which were to be given to hosts in Hong Kong who would pay the pensioners.
But before the men could catch connecting flights to Hong Kong, they were arrested by Border Force officers at Heathrow.
NCA officers arrested Ezeh when he flew into the UK on 23 December last year.
Magel, of Bautzen, Eastern Saxony, had been remanded in custody when he appeared at Uxbridge Magistrates Court last October charged with illegal importation of class A drugs.
The charge was dropped by prosecutors soon after.
NCA operations manager Peter Jones said: ‘Tonny Ezeh is an extremely callous criminal. He and his crime group singled out and took advantage of elderly, vulnerable victims.
‘He didn’t care at all about the trauma the men would experience when stopped, arrested and remanded in a foreign land.
‘If an offer is too good to be true, it very likely is and we urge anyone who is approached and asked to transport goods to think very carefully.
‘The NCA and partners at home and abroad continue to fight the threat of class A drugs entering the UK.’
