Gang Jailed for Smuggling Drugs Using Fake Ambulances

Between October 2014 and June 2015, ambulances full of drugs were making their way from the Netherlands to old Blighty. Heroin, cocaine and ecstasy were transported over the course of around 45 trips in the Bad Ambulances – about £1.5 billion worth of naughty powder and pills. The amounts involved, according to investigators, were "truly colossal".

Six men have been jailed for 90 years in total, with the largest sentence handed down to 56-year-old James Gibson, who got 20 years.

The gang used sophisticated methods of transporting the drugs, posing as Dutch paramedics. They even enlisted fake patients, claiming they were going to the hospital as part of the pantomime of smuggling. They had real ambulance equipment in the cars, bandages and what have you, and uniforms to boot. It's a little bit like an emergency services cosplay, only with extreme crime.

Last year, three Dutch lads were jailed for pulling the same shit. Brent Lyon, the operations manager of the National Crime Agency, which sounds like a made up thing but, apparently, isn't, said that the imprisonment of the ambulance crew has "disrupted" organised crime in the UK.

Though, to be honest, if some guys have already packed loads of beak and pills and brown in a load of ambulances before, it makes you wonder how it was allowed to happen again, 45 times. Feel a bit like an ambulance is not a very inconspicuous drug hauling device, considering it's big and yellow and is covered in flashing blue lights and makes and almighty racket. But, hey, what do I know?

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