Cruise ship drugs gang jailed

A gang caught trying to smuggle £1.75 million of cocaine into Britain on a cruise ship was jailed today for a total of 48 years.
The three women and a man strapped packages of drugs to their bodies with shrink-wrap and tape and tried to hide it under baggy clothing as the ship returned to Southampton from a three-week cruise to the Caribbean.
They had picked up the 20kg of drugs – the biggest haul ever from a British cruise ship – when Arcadia called at the island of St Lucia.
Calvin Hilton, 41, from Manchester; Natalie Quinn, 26, from Rochdale; Briony Dyce, 25, and Camile Dupee, 19, from Handsworth, Birmingham, were each sentenced to 12 years in prison.
The ship’s security officer, Bob Ward, became suspicious of the four because they “looked out of place.” All the other passengers were white couples in their 60s and 70s.
Ward tipped off HM Revenue and Customs, who were waiting to search the group as they went ashore.