Wetherspoons barman led £100million cocaine smuggling gang and used private jet to bring in drugs from Colombia
The gang hired a private jet worth £138,000 and posed as music moguls as cover for their smuggling enterprise
A WETHERSPOONS barman led a £100million cocaine smuggling gang.
Alessandro Iembo, 28, used a private jet to bring in the drugs from Colombia.
Iembo, who pulled pints at Bournemouth’s Mary Shelley pub, recruited bricklayer pal Martin Neil, 48, Spanish waiter Victor Franco-Lorenzo, 40, and hairdresser Jose Miguelez-Botas, 56.
Last December the gang paid £138,000 for a private jet to fly them to Bogota.
They posed as wealthy crypto-currency dealers and music bigwigs heading to a Bruno Mars gig as cover for a successful smuggling trip, believed to have netted £60million.
A month later, after another Colombia trip, Border Force officers at Farnborough airport, Hants, found drugs worth £41million in 15 suitcases.
The four men were yesterday convicted at London’s Woolwich crown court of smuggling drugs.
Italian-born Iembo and Franco-Lorenzo, both of Bournemouth, and Neil, of Poole, Dorset, were all jailed for 24 years.
Miguelez-Botas, of Valladolid, got 20 years.
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