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REVENUE’S CUSTOMS officers are conducting a major investigation into cigarette smuggling and are carrying out an average of one “blitz raid” every day with a view to securing a record 150 smuggling convictions this year.The extent of the heightened activity aimed at gangs smuggling contraband and counterfeit cigarettes was revealed yesterday by senior Revenue official Tom Talbot at a conference in Dublin on cigarette smuggling.He said Revenue this year planned to carry out at least six “national blitzes”, which would each involve periods of up...
Police and customs officers in Northern Ireland who launched a major operation against organised crime have uncovered a fuel laundering plant, seized a large sum of cash and arrested three men.There were raids on 13 commercial and private premises in Co Antrim, including in Belfast, as part of the investigation into large-scale fuel fraud, money laundering and VAT fraud.Officials said they recovered £300,000 in cash, plus a mobile laundering plant, 72,000 litres of illicit fuel, a number of vehicles, pumps and other equipment.John Whiting, assistant...
Welder Mark Lang, 37, of Pendennis Road, Torquay, and farmhand Peter Ferguson, 57, from Liverpool, brought drugs with a street value of £2.2million into the country.The cocaine was hidden in the piston of a hydraulic press sent from South America to the workshop of Taylor Made Gates on Newton Road, a business owned by Lang.Both men denied the charge, as did a third defendant Daryl Wilson, 33, a security door fitter from Queensway, Torquay.The jury took three hours to find Lang and Ferguson guilty of conspiring together to fraudulently evade the...
Anthony Kelly, 49, appeared in court in the northern city of Santander yesterday accused of planning to import the drugs to the UK.Kelly was due to board a Plymouth-bound ferry just hours after he was arrested by Spanish drug squad detectives on Wednesday June 15.The country’s National Police allegedly recovered 171kg of cannabis, worth £513,000 had it been sold on the street.Kelly was held after he returned to his Santander hotel in a taxi in the early hours of Monday morning.After searching his Vauxhall Astra, which was parked outside the hotel,...
HEROIN dealer was jailed for five years for his part in what the judge said was the “miserable trade in drugs on Teesside”.The Crown said that Gary David O’Hare, 31, from Middlesbrough who was caught with nearly £12,000 of the Class A drug was not just a street level dealer.Text messages showed he was higher up the chain dealing in bigger amounts than just selling wraps to addicts, said prosecutor Michael Bosomworth.O’Hare, pictured, a building contractor, who had served a two-year sentence for heroin dealing in 2008, was caught with 117g of heroin...
A car being chased by a Roanoke police officer for speeding crashed into a minivan at a busy northwest Roanoke intersection Friday, shoving the minivan onto its side and sending its driver to a hospital, police said.A large amount of cocaine was found on the car's driver, Roanoke police spokeswoman Aisha Johnson said.Joshua Markey Hairston, 21, of Roanoke is being held in the Roanoke City Jail without bond in connection with the incident.The suspect led police on a pursuit that started before 4 p.m. Friday when a Roanoke officer conducting a radar...
Funk icon Sly Stone has been MIA from the rock scene for quite some time, but that doesn’t stop him from rocking the boat with the law.According to a post on Reuters, the 68-year-old rocker, who is the front man for Sly and the Family Stone, was arrested April 1, along with his driver, after police found cocaine in the clothing of both Stone and the driver. One of Stone’s defense attorneys, Peter Knecht, insisted that the cocaine didn’t belong to Stone, stating that: “A lot of musicians hang out with people who have drugs. How are they supposed...
traffic stop by North Carolina state troopers led to one of the largest cocaine seizures in the Charlotte area, according to the Justice Department.On Thursday, June 16, state troopers stopped a Ford F-150 truck along Highway 74 in Monroe. During the stop, state troopers said they saw three duffel bags in the back seat of the truck.One of the bags was slightly unzipped troopers said, and they saw what appeared to be packages wrapped in brown tape.A drug-sniffing dog was called to the scene and the animal indicated to officers that drugs were present...
Saudi security forces have foiled attempts to smuggle drugs worth more than SR1.65 billion into the Kingdom during the last three months and arrested 503 drug smugglers, the Interior Ministry said on Sunday.Addressing a press conference, ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mansour Al-Turki said those arrested were 252 Saudis and 251 foreigners from 24 countries.During the drug busts, which took place during March, April and May this year, three security officers were injured while five smugglers killed.During the first operation, drug enforcement agencies...
TWO drug traffickers were sentenced to death, one with a two-year reprieve, by a court in northeast China's Jilin Province yesterday.Weng Tanggen was found guilty of possessing drug paraphernalia and possessing and selling illegal drugs and sentenced to death.Police seized more than 10,000 magu pills, 757 grams of magu powder and drug-making equipment from a house rented by Weng.Wang Jianping, who had 5,912 magu pills and 265 grams of methamphetamine in his apartment in Changchun, Jilin's capital, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve.Magu...
A clandestine factory was reportedly found where methanol was being used to make counterfeit alcoholic drinks.Four Russian tour guides died and some 20 fell ill after being served tainted alcohol on a yacht near the resort of Bodrum.The deaths of the guides, mostly young women, made headlines in Russia.According to Turkish news agency Anatolia, arrests were made in four different regions of the country.In the southern province of Mersin, 7,000 bottles of bootleg liquor were found along with empty bottles, stickers and other materials used in production.Police...
Drug dealers are increasingly using Oman's strategic location as the transit point for drug trafficking, according to Lt. Colonel Yaqoub Bin Salmeen Al Habsi, Acting head of the Drug Control Department at the Directorate-General of Criminal Investigation.He said that the proximity of Oman to drug producing nations was another cause of increase in attempt to use the country as a transit point for global drug smuggling.Traffickers were getting innovative in smuggling drugs through sea route. "Among the newer methods used, infiltrators are used as...
