{"id":355726,"date":"2026-01-06T20:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T20:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/355726\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T20:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T20:04:08","slug":"haulage-firm-worker-used-company-vehicles-to-transport-cocaine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/355726\/","title":{"rendered":"Haulage firm worker used company vehicles to transport cocaine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The charge spanned between March and June 2020, when Smith had access to vehicles belonging to a haulage company he worked for.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The court was told of various chats Smith had with associates on EncroChat, including messages about him selling 15kg of cocaine and &#8220;wishing&#8221; that he had another 50kg to offload.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In one conversation, Smith agreed to buy \u00a3385,000 of the drug, although it was unclear if the deal went through.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Prosecutor Bill McVicar added that Smith&#8217;s profit margins were about \u00a33,500 per kg at one stage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There were further discussion about cash and substances used to bulk out drugs for profit. Figures mentioned included \u00a330,000 to be paid to Smith.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Smith&#8217;s properties in Lesmahagow in South Lanarkshire and the north-east of Glasgow were later raided.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Officers only found an inoperable encrypted phone and documents related to his finances but evidence implicating Smith came from messages between him and others involved in cocaine dealing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">McVicar said:  &#8220;The messages indicated that between March 2020 and June 2020, Smith was a wholesaler of cocaine who acquired substantial quantities in bulk and sold on in kilogram quantities with a profit of around \u00a33,500 per kilogram.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The charge spanned between March and June 2020, when Smith had access to vehicles belonging to a haulage&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-355726","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}