Man jailed for one million euro cocaine deal bid - Crime, UK - The Independent

Man jailed for one million euro cocaine deal bid - Crime, UK - The Independent: "middle-aged drug trafficker was jailed for 18 years today for masterminding an attempted one million euro (£873,700) cocaine deal.
Timothy Dale admitted trying to buy 37kg of the class A drug from a British gang based in Amsterdam.
It would have been worth more than £4.5 million once cut to street level purity, Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) said.
Dale, 47, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply a controlled drug after Dutch authorities passed evidence to the UK.
The case was a rare example of a prosecution based on such evidence, according to Soca.
Dale, who confessed to dealing drugs for more than 20 years, was caught after Dutch investigators busted the gang of middle-aged men he was trying to arrange the deal with in September 2007.
He was unaware that they were already being targeted by the Dutch National Crime Squad (NCS).
Phone calls between Dale and one of the men, Richard Wright, in the Netherlands, were intercepted by the NCS and when Wright arranged for a courier to transport the drugs concealed in the door panels of a Vauxhall Astra, police stopped the car as it approached the Belgian border."