An able-bodied Portuguese drug-runner has been sentenced to six years and nine months in prison for trying to smuggle nearly £1m of cocaine into the UK hidden in an electric wheelchair. Casimiro De Lemos Francisco, 56, attempted to hoodwink the authorities that he was disabled as he rode the electric wheelchair through Manchester Airport on Sunday 30 March this year.
He had arrived from Bridgetown in Barbados but when stopped by Border Force officers he said he was in the country for two days to see a friend. Francisco’s wheelchair was scanned by Border Force officials and when officers asked him about what was hidden inside, he replied: “I don’t know, you will need to ask my friend.” Concealed in the backrest and seat were 11 packages of cocaine weighing 12kg worth £880,000.
Hidden in the battery compartment was a tracking device for the crime group behind the importation to follow its progress.
De Lemos Francisco, who is from Guimaraes in the north of Portugal, admitted smuggling class A drugs at Manchester Crown Court last week and was jailed today.
NCA senior investigating officer Charles Lee, said: “Organised crime groups will try anything possible to smuggle drugs, but using a wheelchair and a man pretending to be disabled is particularly abhorrent.
“The NCA works with partners at home and abroad to combat the threat of Class A drugs and protect the UK public.”
Earlier this week in a separate NCA investigation, 71-year-old Ronald Lord, from Montreal in Canada, was jailed for six years after trying to smuggling £600,000 of cocaine into the UK hidden in his mobility scooter. He was stopped at Gatwick Airport in February this year with 8kg of the Class A drug hidden in a void in the seat back panel.