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Moment Police Raided Trader's Home over £20m of Cocaine in Frozen Fish Plot
Police said the gang used encrypted messages and legitimate businesses to conceal plans for 600kg of cocaine worth more than £20 million.
On Friday, four men were sentenced at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London for conspiracy to import Class A drugs, receiving prison terms ranging from 13 to 22 years.
Detectives dubbed the investigation the "Fish Conspiracy," as the gang planned to smuggle around 600kg of cocaine from South America hidden within frozen fish shipments bound for Billingsgate Market.
The Metropolitan Police estimated the shipment's value at more than £20 million; DCI Dean Grafton stated the group was "operating on an industrial scale" after police decrypted EncroChat messages.
Although the cocaine shipment never reached London, police uncovered separate schemes involving industrial quantities of ketamine, with intercepted messages revealing plans to source and process the drug across Europe.
Close collaboration between the Metropolitan Police and the National Crime Agency led to the convictions; ringleaders Samuel Tokeley and Nicholas Shilling were based in Spain and the United Arab Emirates.