Select a region
Jersey police played a key role in the conviction of a criminal gang which tried to smuggle more that £500m worth of drugs into Australia.
Recently, a 38-year-old electrician from Wales called Scott Felix Jones was found guilty of being part of an audacious plot to land cocaine, ecstasy and crystal meth worth almost one billion Australian dollars into the country in September 2019.
Their method was to sail the drugs from Madagascar on a sailing yacht and bring them ashore via a remote set of islands off Western Australia.
Jones was in the landing party, one of three men to take a high-speed rib to liaise with the yacht.
But the plot unravelled due to a mix of mistakes and misfortune:
both the yacht and the rib ran aground on the barren Abrolhos Islands;
an inadvertent pocket-dial which the police intercepted clearly linked gang-members with the drugs; and
a giant seal roused from sleep by some of the fleeing criminals blocked off their escape.
The modus operandi – using a chartered yacht to import large quantities of Class A drugs - was strikingly similar to another smuggling attempt, 9,000 miles away in Jersey, which happened just three months before the foiled Australian plot.
Two of gang in that operation – Jones and fellow Brit John Alexander Roy – were also involved in the Australian attempt, and evidence gathered by Jersey officers helped secure the southern-hemisphere convictions.
Video: How the Australian police caught Jones and the rest of the criminal gang in September 2019.
Detective Sergeant Jim McGranahan, who heads up the States of Jersey Police’s Drug Squad, said: “I gave evidence at the Australian trial for 40 minutes via video-link.
“It was sheer coincidence that on the very day we arrested Roy in connection with the Jersey attempt in September 2019, he was texting the smugglers in Australia, who were about to bring the drugs ashore. He had four phones when we nabbed him and only phone that was unlocked was the satellite phone.”
Those intercepted text messages provided key evidence for the Australian case, as they clearly showed Roy had a coordinating role, albeit one from England.
Roy – now in prison at HMP La Moye following his sentencing in September 2020 - was described by Australian police as the “kingpin” of the West Australian attempt; however, Det Sgt McGranahan is clear that was not the ultimate leader.
Pictured: The drugs that Jones was supposed to land on the Australian mainland had been hidden by seaweed. Credit: WA Police.
“He may have been the ‘kingpin’ above those who were arrested but he was just a conduit between the moneymen and the workforce. He is not the top of the tree.
“When we arrested him, he was living with his girlfriend’s mother in a council estate in England. There were no trappings of wealth there.
“I think the people making the big money would need a national agency looking at them - these are the ones travelling in private planes and living in mansions.”
Jones, the boatman in Australia, had a less direct role in the Jersey attempt. The joint Police and Customs operation, dubbed ‘Lion’, tracked people for several months in the run-up to the failed importation – which involved sailing a yacht from England to St. Catherine - on 21 June 2019.
Jones flew to the island at least twice in the run-up to the June attempt and took cash back to the mainland. He was not stopped so not to disrupt the wider aims of the criminal enterprise.
Money was also laundered back to the UK through Darius Pearce, a jeweller in the Central Market.
Pictured: The dramatic end to the Jersey smuggling attempt: a UK Border Force cutter intercepts a chartered yacht off St. Catherine in June 2019.
By September 2019, Jones had reappeared on the radar – this time in Australia.
Convicted in April, he is now awaiting sentencing, with Western Australian prosecutors reportedly calling for a life sentence.
"He might be wishing it had been us who caught him"
Det Sgt McGranahan said: “We still have a warrant out for his arrest, shared with Interpol and the Australian authorities. He could come here in 20 years to face charges, although the Jersey courts could take a view on that at the time.”
“We still are trying to extradite an Irish national to Jersey to face charges in relation to his role in Operation Lion.”
He added: “Yes, Jones is in custody and my colleagues in Australia have done a fantastic job. It was a three-year case for them, and I appreciate all the hard work they have done.
“I’m glad someone has him at the end of the day, but it would have be nice if it was us because having Jones and the Irish national would have meant we could close our case.
“I understand that the prosecution is recommending a life sentence for Jones and his accomplices so he might be wishing it had been us who caught him because he’s looking at 20 years without any day off. At least if he was here, he might be able to transfer back to the UK and maybe have less of a sentence.
“But that’s how things go. People never learn their lesson because they are greedy; they want to make money without having to work for it.
“That’s why we’re still busy and why we are still catching smugglers.”
Comments
Comments on this story express the views of the commentator only, not Bailiwick Publishing. We are unable to guarantee the accuracy of any of those comments.