Six semi-professional footballers who ran an industrial-scale cocaine empire worth £260 million have been jailed for a total of 104 years.
Police stopped Luke Skeete, 26, as he drove a small panel van packed with eight kilos of Class A drugs, an arrest which brought down their criminal network like a “house of cards”.
A staggering 123kg of cocaine and 224kg of ketamine was then recovered from storage units in Acton and Chiswick,West London.
The men, from London and Solihull, admitted conspiracy to supply controlled Class A and Class B drugs.
Cocaine, with an estimated street value of up to £260m, was seized from storage units in west London, along with a substantial amount of ketamine.
Met Police detectives described the group as operating on “an industrial level”.
The six men who were part of the gang are:
Adam Pepara, 35, of Wharf Lane, Solihull, who was jailed for 24 years.
Shaquille Hippolyte-Patrick, 29, from North Kensington, who was jailed for 18 years and nine months.
Joseph, 28, from Wembley, who was jailed for 17 years and six months.
Andrew Harewood, 34, from North Acton, who was jailed for 16 years and one month.
Melchi Emanuel-Williamson, 29, from North Acton, who was jailed for 14 years.
Luke Skeete, 36, from West Drayton, who was jailed for 13 years and one month.
But detectives believe in just six months Skeete and his gang of once promising players conspired to supply in excess of 2.7 tonnes of high-grade cocaine across the UK using a “sophisticated and professional business model”.
Surveillance footage from a car involved in one deal shows Skeete parking up in his white vehicle and passing over a holdall of drugs in October 2022.
He was arrested in September last year and his mobile phone interrogated by specialists who discovered a secure messaging app linking him to fellow footballers Shaquille Hippolyte-Patrick, 29, Jamarl Joseph, 28, Adam Pepara, 35, Andrew Harewood, 34, and Melchi Emanuel-Williamson, 29.
Officers spent countless hours examining CCTV which captured the dealers coming and going from warehouses with drugs concealed in holdalls and boxes.
The Metropolitan Police said: “The operation we’ve dismantled here is not some minor undertaking, involving a group of chancers – this is a highly organised criminal group who were supplying drugs on an industrial scale throughout the UK.
“This is a criminal group who had otherwise promising careers – semi-pro footballers with other jobs and courses they were undertaking – but they were motivated by making money from drugs that fuel misery and violence on our streets.
“Anyone else wondering if they can make cash from this type of activity should take a look at these sentences and think again, because it’s only a matter of time before you are caught.”
Peoplesmind