Teddy bears, chocolate bars, coffee sachets and even a fake plug socket… Jersey’s drug smugglers and dealers have come up with some unusual places to hide their stash over the years, but Customs and police officers have proved equally creative in finding them.
Express delved into the archives to recap some of the strangest hiding places that failed to fool investigators…
Fancy a brew?
In 2015, a raid forming part of the wonderfully named ‘Operation Plum’ uncovered £26,000-worth of heroin at a man’s home, along with £4,000 of cash stashed in Douwe Egberts coffee jars.
Dealer Sean Lambotte and his associates were foiled following a major operation that culminated in the raid, and in 2016 three people were jailed for a total of 12-and-a-half years.
A little stronger than a caffeine kick…
Just this week, a man was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison by Jersey’s Royal Court for his attempt to import heroin and cocaine – hidden in Nescafé-branded coffee sachets.
Paul Duffy (43) admitted to two counts of importing class A drugs and one count of possession of class A drugs. The court heard he suffered from epilepsy and was unable to work, and that he had struggled with addiction for years.
He was caught after Jersey Customs and Immigration Officers intercepted the parcel as it arrived in Jersey and substituted it with a dummy package.
They watched Duffy collect it at an address and arrested him as he left.
When asked why he collected the parcel, Duffy initially said it was because he was “a thieving b*stard”, but later admitted to having orchestrated the importation of 33.28 grams of heroin and 16.37 grams of cocaine, with a combined estimated street value of between £32,800 and £45,500.
Bear-faced cheek… and a karaoke machine
A drugs ring made headlines last year after it was revealed to have used more than 40 children to pick up and distribute drugs, which were sent to their addresses hidden in teddy bears and karaoke machines.
Three local higher-ups in the ring – themselves aged 19 and 20 at the time of their sentencing – were jailed last year. Their ringleader, Birmingham-based dealer Mohammed Babrul Hussain, was jailed in 2024 for seven-and-a-half years.
He would send drugs to children’s addresses, concealed in various items, with the importations totalling nearly £2 million in value.
A galaxy far, far away from chocolate…
But seven of the bars contained 2.1kg of cocaine, worth around £261,000. Sold in one-gram units, they could have generated up to £614,750.
Diana Bowmen, who was 26 at the time of sentencing, was particularly vulnerable due to learning disability, a physical disability, and mental health issues, the court heard, and had been taken advantage of by people she thought were her friends.
The chocolate bars were “an ingenious method to disguise a significant amount of cocaine and not one that we have seen before”, Paul Le Monnier, senior manager at Jersey Customs and Immigration Service, said after Bowmen was sentenced.
A Wellington boot
In 2012, a man who had old dried-up drugs stashed in a Wellington boot admitted to dealing cannabis. He was sentenced to 240 hours of community service.
The court heard that six ounces of cannabis valued at about £1,000 was found stashed in the boot in a basement storage cupboard, along with drug paraphernalia and suspected deal lists.
Shower pow(d)er
Earlier this year, a man was given a community sentence order – which he was allowed to serve near his home in Wales – for attempting to import 13.44 grams of cocaine hidden in bottles of Lynx shower gel.
The drugs were valued at around £2,100 to £2,800 and Edward Carmody (39) had gone into “a dark place” when he ordered the drugs – not remembering ordering them afterwards.
Scent of suspicion
In a case that emerged earlier this year, gingerbread-scented candles were hollowed out and used in an attempt to smuggle cocaine into the Island.
24-year-old Benjamin Jake Bartlett-Noble admitted to being concerned in the postal importation of 57.15 grams of cocaine, which was sent via post to a fictional person.
The Airpure-branded candles were hollowed-out with a tea light placed in the middle – covering a cling-film wrapped package of white powder.
After Jersey Post tried to deliver the parcel twice, Bartlett-Noble claimed he had not ordered the parcel himself.
A genuinely ‘shocking’ discovery
When police officers raided the home of Robert Moon (48) – who had previously advertised his services as “The Accredited Dealer” – they found him cooking crack cocaine.
But another discovery was hidden in the wall: behind what appeared to be a plug socket was a cigarette packet containing 11 individually wrapped bags of cocaine.
Kinder… surprise!
Kinder Eggs appear to have been a surprisingly popular choice among cocaine smugglers targeting Jersey.
In 2019, a 28-year-old man was jailed for five years after smuggling cocaine internally in two Kinder Egg containers. The following year, a mother-of-two was jailed for four years after arriving in the Island with three containing 82.4g of cocaine.
And they were not isolated cases – in 2022, a three-year Customs investigation uncovered a trafficking operation involving at least three separate importations, with couriers carrying almost 300g of cocaine worth up to £82,320 in Kinder Egg cases.
Clearly, not the ‘surprise’ Customs was hoping to find inside.
