Yahoo Finance Brazilian gang who offered 'menu of drugs' for delivery in London jailed after police brought down £3m empire
Six members of a Deliveroo-style drug gang who couriered and supplied drugs across London have been jailed after they were busted by police.
Detectives shut down the multi-million-pound Brazilian operation and seized what is believed to be the UK's largest haul of the chemsex drug GBL, worth £2.2 million.
Customers would order from a "menu of narcotics", including GBL, methylamphetamine, cocaine, ketamine, heroin and cannabis, and have them delivered by courier in 10 minutes, while drivers were paid £730 a week to collect the drugs from Airbnbs and self-storage lockers and collect the cash for the business.
Four members of the gang - who were making millions of pounds from the enterprise - were handed prison sentences at Inner London Crown Court, the Met Police said, after being convicted of 14 counts of conspiracy to supply or offer to supply Class, A, B and C drugs after a trial.
A fifth was sentenced after previously pleading guilty to 14 counts of conspiracy to supply or offer to supply Class, A, B and C drugs, while a sixth was jailed earlier this month after being found guilty of 14 counts of conspiracy to supply or offer to supply Class, A, B and C drugs and has since been deported to serve her sentence in Brazil.
Police said the high-tech drugs delivery service operated from June 2016 until the gang were arrested in July 2018.
It was run by married couple Suellen Miguez, 36, and Diego Arruda Reis, 35, who lived an extravagant lifestyle featuring expensive homes in London and Surrey and luxury cars including a Lamborghini.
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The couple's chief lieutenants Henrique Bernardo Medina Salles, 27, and Carlos Eduardo Libardi Da Silva, 35, ran the day-to-day running of the drug network and managed its finances respectively.
Detectives from the Met Police’s Specialist Crime South team started investigating the gang in March 2018 after receiving a tip-off about a 'drugs phone line' being used by the group.
They worked out how the operation ran, with drugs supplied from temporary accommodation booked for short periods of time, generally not for longer than a week.
Between January and July 2018 the gang operated from a total of 26 different addresses across London and used five storage facilities to supply drugs to them.
They employed around 30 moped couriers, working six days a week, with a full-time worker earning £730 a week but fined by the gang if they were late back from their deliveries.
Police swooped on the gang between July 25 and August 20, 2018, carrying out a series of arrests in Wandsworth and Newham.
Braga Da Silva was arrested on July 25, 2018, after £500,000 worth of drugs were found in a vehicle, along with three peli-cases containing the contents of a mobile drug supply unit. Officers also seized £40,000 in cash and drug equipment from the vehicle including plastic wrapping and a credit card receiver to handle card transactions.
After his arrest, Diego Da Souza Arruda Reis fled to Spain on the same day. He was extradited back to the UK in December 2018, where he pleaded guilty at Inner London Crown Court.
Miguez and Libardi Da Silva were arrested on July 30, 2018 while Salles was linked to the gang through police surveillance and was arrested on August 20, 2018.
Cocaine, heroin, crystal meth, GBL and cannabis worth around £3 million was seized from five different storage facilities across London. The investigation found that the gang had sold more than £2.5 million worth of drugs between 2016 and 2018.
Reis and Miguez were each jailed for 13 years, while Sallas and Carlos Libardi Da Silva were both jailed for eight years and Braga Da Silva was jailed for three years.
Detective Constable Gary Smith, from the Met's Specialist Crime Command, said: "These men and women were supplying dangerous drugs to vulnerable people who often didn’t know what they were taking.
"They lived a lucrative lifestyle, paying £12,500 in rent for a property in St George’s Hill in Weybridge and driving around in a flamboyant orange Lamborghini. Their lives will now dramatically change as they spend many years in prison.
“Drugs can cause significant and life-altering harm, have a horrendously negative physical and mental impact on users and this gang were making huge profits whilst potentially destroying lives.
"We will do everything in our power to disrupt these criminals. Please keep supplying us with information either about drug dealing, or about people you feel may be exploited by drug dealers.”
Inspector Allen Davis, from the Met’s Honour, Belief and Sex (Crime and Vulnerability) Partnership Team, added: “The Met is committed to working in partnership through Project Sagamore to tackle the crime-related risk, harm and vulnerability within the Chemsex context.
"The drug(s) of choice predominantly but not exclusively used in the Chemsex context are Crystal Methamphetamine, Mephedrone and GHB/GBL (G). With GBL there is also a significant risk of overdose, which can result in death.
“The effects of the drugs used also promote extreme behaviours leading to vulnerability and exploitation; the use affects memory recall and results in evidential difficulties and barriers to reporting, attracting perpetrators to the scene as a result.
“We recognise that controlled drugs used within the Chemsex context bring a number of challenges.
"In addition to the potential harm for the individual person who engages in sexualised substance misuse of addiction and health-risk sexual behaviours, chems can be weaponised to harm others (particularly GHB/GBL) and as in this case the supply attracts the involvement of Organised Criminal Networks.”
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