A Nigerian national who duped elderly victims, including an 80-year-old, into smuggling class A drugs has been jailed, following a National Crime Agency investigation.
“Callous” Tonny Iheoma Ezeh, 51, convinced innocent drugs mules they were entitled to huge, legitimate windfalls and they had to travel abroad to get paid.
Ezeh, who holds Nigerian, Canadian, and Jamaican passports, fooled two German men aged 80 and 67 into carrying methamphetamine hidden in sweets into the UK for onward flights to Hong Kong.
The 67-year-old was stopped on 18 October last year and three days later the 80-year-old was stopped. Both had flown into Heathrow Airport and were each unwittingly carrying around three kilos of methamphetamine.
Both men were charged with smuggling class A drugs but the charges were dropped once investigators established that Ezeh had scammed the pair.
On 13 May Ezeh pleaded guilty to smuggling class A drugs when he appeared at Isleworth Crown Court. He was jailed for nine years and three months.
Ezeh was based in Mexico where he organised drug shipments with other Nigerian contacts based internationally.
His mobile phones revealed that he was part of a West African crime group responsible for transporting Class A drugs internationally via air passenger courier and fast parcels.
Elderly and vulnerable couriers were singled out and recruited via email finance scams.
Ezeh’s crime group told the victims they were the beneficiaries of large sums of money. To obtain the money – millions of Euros or dollars – they travelled to Mexico and signed fake paperwork and were given gifts of ‘Elvan Chocolate Truffles’. These were to be given to hosts in Hong Kong where the money would be paid to them.
But before the men could catch connecting flights from the UK to Hong Kong, they were arrested by Border Force officers.
NCA officers arrested Ezeh when he flew into the UK on 23 December last year.
NCA operations manager Peter Jones said, “Tonny Ezeh is an extremely callous criminal. He and his crime group singled out and took advantage of elderly, vulnerable victims.
“He didn’t care at all about the trauma the men would experience when stopped, arrested and remanded in a foreign land. If an offer is too good to be true, it very likely is and we urge anyone who is approached and asked to transport goods to think very carefully.”
