Two Essex men are among four gang members jailed for plotting to import more than £20 million worth of cocaine.
Scott Richards, 51, from Wickford, and Scott Unwin, 52, from Dagenham, were sentenced at Snaresbrook Crown Court in east London on Friday.
Richards was jailed for 14-and-a-half years, Unwin for 13 years and the other two men for 22 years each.
Samuel Tokeley, 57, of Alicante, Spain, and Nicholas Shilling, 63, of Dubai, were convicted of conspiring to import Class A drugs.
The Metropolitan Police said the gang plotted to bring about 600kg of cocaine from South America to the UK.
The gang planned to hide the cocaine in frozen fish deliveries bound for Billingsgate Market in London. One of the gang’s legitimate businesses was due to receive the shipment.
Detectives dubbed it the “Fish Conspiracy” and said the planned cocaine shipment was worth more than £20 million in the UK.
Messages showed Tokeley, Unwin and Shilling discussing payments, shipping documents, logistics and Ecuadorian contacts who could source the cocaine.
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The shipment never arrived, police said, and investigators uncovered the plot through encrypted conversations on the EncroChat platform, which has since been dismantled.
Recovered messages referred to moving cocaine, ketamine, cash and cryptocurrency, and showed plans to hide the gang’s activities behind legitimate businesses and transport routes.
Police also uncovered separate plots to import industrial quantities of ketamine, with messages showing plans to source hundreds of kilograms, process it in Europe and sell it wholesale in the UK.
DCI Dean Grafton, of the Metropolitan Police’s specialist crime unit, said the gang was “operating on an industrial scale”.
DCI Grafton said: “The defendants believed that encrypted communication platforms would protect them as they discussed vast quantities of drugs, laundering criminal profits and exploiting legitimate businesses to facilitate their offending.”
The Metropolitan Police worked with the National Crime Agency and overseas law enforcement agencies.
The sentences were imposed for conspiracy to import Class A drugs, even though the cocaine delivery never took place.
Richards and Unwin are from Essex, while Tokeley and Shilling were based overseas. The sentences ranged from 13 to 22 years.
The case shows how police used encrypted messages to expose plans involving drugs, money laundering and legitimate businesses.
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