2 men sentenced to prison for trying to ride Jet Ski from Netherlands to U.K. with $278,000 worth of cocaine

(The AEGIS Alliance) – Two British men who tried to ride a Jet Ski from the Netherlands to the UK with $278,000 worth of cocaine stuffed in a backpack were sentenced to prison on Tuesday.

36-year-old Steven Brogan and 34-year-old Anthony Reilly made an appearance in Ipswich Crown Court for their sentencings after their cocaine caper on the North Sea floundered in September of 2020. They each pleaded guilty to importing the drugs.

Brogan was sentenced to seven years and 6 months whereas Reilly was given a bit shorter sentence of seven years, according to Suffolk Police.

The duo had been apprehended on September 30 about 27 nautical miles off the Suffolk coast after they rode up to a survey vessel “reporting difficulties due to a fuel shortage,” police stated.

“At one point they were pitched into the sea,” prosecutor Hugh Vass informed the courtroom, including that one man was exhibiting indicators of hypothermia and the other showed he was exhausted, according to BBC.

The survey vessel made a mayday call and a coastguard helicopter and volunteers from Lowestoft RNLI Lifeboat Patsy Knight responded on the scene.

The men had been arrested after the helicopter crew alerted police to suspicious conduct on board, Vass reportedly mentioned.

It’s alleged that Brogan claimed he was “fishing… but ran into difficulty.”

Investigators later discovered the backpack stuffed with cocaine and a van owned by Brogan containing maps of the North Sea, a pick-up point within the Netherlands, tide timetables, a cell phone, and diving gear.

Brogan’s defense lawyer Mark Stevens reportedly stated his client was a successful boxer who “lost out on a fight” and ”had no cash coming in” when he “foolishly agreed” to smuggle the drugs.

“These men acted recklessly and put their lives at risk by crossing the channel to Holland on a jet ski to import class A drugs into Suffolk,” Suffolk Police Detective Inspector Matt Adams stated in a press release, “We hope that this sentence will act as a deterrent to criminals trying to bring drugs into our county,” he added.

Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.