Catering boss turned £20 million drug smuggler is jailed for nine years
A catering company boss who turned to dealing ecstasy and cannabis to prop up his failing business was caught out when part of his £20 million drugs haul was intercepted at a Black Country parcel depot.
Simon Dunmore has been jailed for nine years after he attempted to smuggle shipments of skunk and 70kg of MDMA Hydrochloride – the raw material used in ecstasy tablets – into the UK from the Netherlands through Coventry Airport.
But his plan was foiled by Border Force officials when seven packages which were destined for Dunmore's business address in Birmingham, from where he supplied food to cafes, businesses and conferences, were seized.
Drugs which did make it through were flagged up when they arrived at the DPD parcel depot located in Broadwell Road in Oldbury.
They were addressed to a firm called WeTakeAnyBox.com trading from the same premises in Harborne Road, Birmingham.
The packages were found to contain more than 100,000 ecstasy tablets.
And when the 41-year-old arrived in a VW Transporter van to collect the stash on July 31 last year, police officers pounced and he was arrested and taken into custody.
Dunmore, of St Mary's Row, Moseley, Birmingham, claimed his WTAB.com business stored items for people unable to collect them in person or who had no warehousing space.
But an investigation showed just seven log-ins over a five-month period to the company's website – set up only weeks before the first drugs were seized – while there were no storage facilities at the Harborne Road HQ.
Dunmore couldn't provide a contact name or number for the person he claimed ordered the drug packages but suggested he received a call from the mystery client during the course of July 28.
However, detectives were able to prove he was on a family holiday in Cornwall at the time he claimed to have been chatting on an office landline to the customer.
He admitted six counts of importing drugs at Birmingham Crown Court on Wednesday.
Investigating officer Detective Constable Richard Simpson, of West Midlands Police, said: "The purity of the MDMA seized was between 81 and 89 per cent. When cut into street deals we estimated that alone was worth £14 million.
"His motivation was purely money to prop up struggling businesses – but as the judge pointed out, there have been many cases of young people dying due to ecstasy use and Dunmore's greed could well have led to more tragic cases."
