Two men who used shipments of lawnmowers to smuggle more than a tonne of ecstasy, cannabis and ketamine into the UK have been jailed for 14 years.

The BBC reported that Derek Maguire, 55, and Neil Snazel, 42, both of Manchester, worked together to bring the Class A and Class B drugs in 15 crates from the Netherlands.


The drugs were smuggled in 15 shipments, which were all labelled 'Machinery'

Maguire's nephew, daughter and her boyfriend, all from Manchester, were then employed to distribute the drugs.

All five were sentenced at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court.

Maguire, 55, of Harbury Crescent, Manchester, was found guilty of eight charges concerning the production, possession and supply of drugs.

Snazel, 42, of Kenworthy Lane, Manchester, was jailed for 14 years after admitting three similar offences.

The pair were caught after Thames Valley Police seized a crate addressed to a courier in October 2015 and found a lawnmower containing 175lbs (80kg) of MDMA - the active ingredient in ecstasy pills.

The Manchester Evening News said that Snazel arranged for drugs to be smuggled into the UK from the Netherlands in at least 15 shipments of machinery over a four-month period.

It was only in October 2015, when a shipment was held up by problems in the Channel Tunnel, that the conspiracy was uncovered.

A freight company in Slough was dealing with a lorry which had collected a pallet shipped from a company in Holland.

Because the curtain on the side of the lorry had been slashed, staff decided to check the load.

On inspection of a crate, they found a box containing a lawnmower with a hidden compartment containing 76 black packages.



Testing revealed they contained £2m of extremely high purity MDMA - ecstasy.

The packages had been addressed to a courier business in Stockport.

In November National Crime Agency officers identified 14 similar deliveries to the address made between July and October 2015 whose labels indicate Snazel had shipped 1,033kg of drugs into the country with a potential street value of between £20m and £25m.