A CATERING company boss has been jailed after drugs worth £20 million were intercepted at parcel depots in Coventry Airport.
Simon Dunmore tried smuggling shipments of skunk and 70kg of MDMA Hydrochloride, the ‘raw material’ used in ecstasy tablets.
Seven packages were seized by Border Force officials on Thursday (May 19) and Saturday (May 21) last year detained for Dunmore’s business address in Harborne Road from where he supplied food to local cafes, businesses and conferences.
More drugs consignments − this time addressed to a firm called WeTakeAnyBox.Com trading from the same Birmingham premises − were intercepted at DPD’s parcel depot in Oldbury.
They were found to contain more than 100,000 ecstasy tablets − and when the 41-year-old arrived in a VW Transporter van to collect the stash on Sunday (July 31), West Midlands Police officers were waiting to arrest him.
Dunmore, from Saint Mary’s Row in Moseley, claimed his WTAB.Com business stored items for people unable to collect them in person or who had no warehousing space.
But enquiries showed just seven log-ins over a five-month period to the company’s website − set up only weeks before the first drugs were seized − was while there were no storage facilities at the Harborne Road HQ.
Dunmore couldn’t provide a contact name or number for the person he said ordered the drug packages but suggested he received a call from the mystery client on Thursday (July 28).
However, detectives were able to prove he was on a family holiday in Cornwall at the time he claimed to have been chatting on an office landline to the customer.
He went on to admit six counts of importing drugs and at Birmingham Crown Court on Wednesday (November 2) and was jailed for a total of nine years.
Investigating officer, Detective Constable Richard Simpson, said: “The purity of the MDMA seized was between 81 and 89 per cent – when cut into street deals we estimated that alone was worth £14 million.
“His motivation was purely money to prop up a struggling businesses − but as the judge pointed out, there have been many cases of young people dying due to ecstasy use and Dunmore’s greed could well have led to more tragic cases.
“Dunmore came up with several explanations to try and distance himself from the drugs and even set up a bogus business in a bid to simply position himself as a middleman.
“We disproved everything he came up with and showed he was playing a pivotal role in the importation of potentially lethal drugs.
“Dunmore was of previous good character but the severity of the jail sentence handed to him shows how seriously the courts view this kind of activity.”
