Gun-smuggling gang receives lengthy sentences
A group of men convicted of attempting a sophisticated plot to smuggle a lethal cache of automatic weapons into the UK have been jailed for nearly a century.
A group of men convicted of attempting a sophisticated plot to smuggle the largest ever seizure of automatic weapons into mainland Britain have been jailed for nearly a century.
The gangs leader Harry Shillings, 25, and his lieutenant Michael Defraine, 30, who both denied the charges, were sentenced to 30 years and 27 years respectively at the Old Bailey on Friday (June 3).
On August 10, 2015, a boat carrying the weapons the MV Albernina arrived in Kent having sailed from Boulogne in France.
The haul was tracked across the Channel by the National Crime Agency (NCA) working with partners including Border Force, the National Maritime Intelligence Centre and Kent Police in Operation Seventy.
The following day, NCA surveillance officers watched as 22 Czech VZ-58 assault rifles and nine Skorpion machine pistols guns, along with more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition, were placed in holdalls and a suitcase and unloaded into a van.
Alongside Shillings and Defraine, Richard Rye, 24 another lieutenant, David Payne, 43 who captained the boat used to smuggle the weapons, and Christopher Owen, 30 who helped unload the haul, were sentenced to 14 years and three months, 14 years and six months and five years and four months respectively after pleading guilty in April.
Jonathan Ramsay, head of the Crown Prosecution Services (CPS) international justice and organised crime division, said: This was a sophisticated importation of weapons with a lethal capacity.
The CPS built a strong case focused both on the gangs plot to import the weapons and on the intentions for their deadly future use.
The jury heard how the guns had been initially deactivated and sold legally in Slovakia.
They were later reactivated and found their way onto the black market where they had been purchased by Shillings crime group.
Evidence showed Shillings, who in messages to Defraine had boasted of being officially a gangster after hearing news of the shipments arrival, had already begun brokering the sale of some of the weapons to criminal contacts.
Armed officers from the NCA and Kent Police arrested Payne as he drove away from the port, and Owen while on board the Albernina.
Payne immediately admitted the bags contained guns. One was found to be loaded and ready to fire.
Later that day, Defraine and Shillings were detained by armed NCA officers outside a DIY store in Orpington, Kent, where they had just purchased spades and pick-axes to bury the weapons. Rye tried to flee but was arrested in a nearby McDonalds.
Rye and Payne admitted importing firearms and possessing weapons with intent to endanger life, while Owen pleaded guilty to the importation of weapons.
NCA Head of Specialist Operations, Rob Lewin, said the weapons seized whcih could “cause mass casualties” were hugely powerful and that evidence showed Shillings and his gang would have had no hesitation in using them.
In seizing these guns and by stopping this organised crime group we have protected the public and saved lives, he said.
They thought having this kind of firepower made them untouchable, but we were determined to stay one step ahead of them all the way.
The NCA is continuing to work with European partners to investigate the source of the guns.
The judge also imposed serious crime prevention orders on the five men, which will limit their travel and use of mobile phones, and become active on their release from prison.