Gang Used Fake Ambulances In £1.6bn Drug Plot

A man has been found guilty of smuggling drugs worth up to £1.6bn into the UK using fake ambulances and paramedics, as well as bogus patients on crutches.

Dutchman Leonardus Bijlsma, 55, was the "right-hand man" in a group that brought the stash across the Channel and delivered it to organised crime groups.

Police found 193kg of cocaine, 74kg of heroin, 20,000 ecstasy tablets and 2kg of MDMA crystal hidden in one ambulance on 16 June.

The £38m stash was hidden behind panels, in cupboards and under the floor.

The drugs were marked with different coloured tape that matched with a list of 20 customers found inside the vehicle.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) says the ambulances had made at least 45 trips to the UK in the 14 months before the seizure, with the drugs worth as much as £1.6bn.

CCTV of one of the drug runs showed the four men arriving in an ambulance with a bogus patient on crutches - who later was seen walking around unaided.

The NCA cracked the audacious plot in June when they tracked one ambulance into Harwich port and tailed it to a car park in Smethwick, Birmingham.

They pounced when Leonardus Bijlsma and Olof Schoon met the drug-laden ambulance being driven by fake paramedics Dennis Vogelaar and Richard Engelsbel.

Rob Lewin, head of the NCA’s Specialist Operations Unit, called their smuggling ring "a highly specialist drug transportation service".

"There will be some very frustrated high-level criminals out there who, given the size of their orders, will have lost a lot of money," he added.

Schoon and Engelsbel, also from the Netherlands, admitted conspiring to smuggle drugs at an earlier hearing and will be sentenced alongside Bijlsma next week.

Dennis Vogelaar, 28, was found not guilty.