A crime boss who employed women motorbike couriers to deliver drugs across London using pink rucksacks has been jailed for 18 years.
Tiago De-Lima, 31, was the head of a gang advertising a nine-page “candy shop list” containing more than 90 different drugs, including cocaine, MDMA, LSD and cannabis.
Delivery to customers across the capital was offered from Monday to Saturday between 1pm and 10pm by four teams of motorbike couriers, from distribution centres in Notting Hill and South Kensington, in west London.
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The gang were sentenced at Southwark Crown Court
Up to £1.35 million of stock was seized in February this year when police raided the hubs, while officers found pre-packed pink rucksacks containing drugs worth between £5,000 and £10,000 reports PA.
De-Lima had employed a bookkeeper, manager and four teams of couriers to rake in £90,000 profit a month through the retail side, while the wholesale arm traded drugs in bulk to other dealers.
Messages found on Encrochat – an encrypted messaging service brought down by law enforcement last year – referred to him selling fake identities, moving people out of the country by private helicopter and bribing a prison officer to help inmates.
Police found pictures of kilogram blocks of cocaine on De-Lima’s mobile phone and he boasted of selling up to 10kg of the Class A drug a week across seven different lines.
Some £200,000 of unaccounted for cash went through his bank account between January 2019 and February 2021.
De-Lima, of North Kensington, was jailed for 18 years, while Vanessa Ananias, 29, of Harlesden, north London, who managed the distribution centres, was sentenced to six years, after they admitted the same charges.
De-Lima also pleaded guilty to driving while disqualified.
Couriers Nayene Fernandez-Silva, 25, of Kingsbury, north-west London, Andressa Santos, 25, of Waterloo, south London, and Nayara Robeiro, 33, of Ealing, west London, were paid £220 a day to make the deliveries, Southwark Crown Court heard.
They were each jailed for four-and-a-half years on Thursday after pleading guilty to three counts of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs, four counts of conspiracy to supply Class B drugs and conspiracy to acquire criminal property.
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Judge Gregory Perrins told the gang: “Each of you were part of a professional, highly organised and well run organised crime group involved in the supply of a vast array of controlled drugs.
“The retail business supplied extremely large quantities of controlled drugs to individual users across the whole of London by a network of motorbike couriers.”
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