71-year-old tried to smuggle £640k worth of cocaine into UK in mobility scooter

A pensioner has been jailed after he attempted to smuggle cocaine worth an eye-watering sum into the UK by hiding it in his mobility scooter.

A whopping 8kg worth of cocaine was found located in the back seat panel of a scooter belonging to Ronald Lord. Lord, 71, was stopped at Gatwick Airport on February 7 2025, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said, and his vehicle was X-rayed by Border Force staff.

The cocaine, which was seized, is estimated to be worth more than £600,000. But Lord had claimed to have been on a seven-day holiday to Barbados and that he was coming to the UK to sightsee, the NCA added.

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Lord, from Montreal in Canada, told investigators he did not know how the drug had got into his scooter and denied any knowledge. However, the screw from the scooter seat panel was found in the pensioner’s pocket following a search.

Experts at the NCA valued the cocaine found at around £640,000 at street-level prices, according to the agency. Lord pleaded guilty to class A drug smuggling charges at a hearing at Croydon Crown Court on August 5 and was sentenced to six years in prison at the same court on September 5, the NCA said.

NCA Senior Investigating Officer Richard Wickham said: “Organised crime groups need smugglers like Lord to bring class A drugs into the UK, where they are sold for huge profit by gangs who deal in violence and exploitation. He obviously thought that because he was a pensioner he would be less of a target for law enforcement.

"He was wrong, and I hope this case sends out a message to anyone who would consider doing the same. Working with partners like Border Force, the NCA is determined to do all we can to stop class A drugs finding their way into the hands of criminal gangs, and target those involved in helping them.”

In May this year, two men who tried to smuggle almost £600,000 of cannabis into Scotland on a transatlantic flight were jailed for more than five years in total. K Border Force officers stopped Jamaal Darbasie, 27, and George Manton, 19, when they arrived at Glasgow Airport on a flight from Toronto in Canada on March 10 last year.

Prosecutors said each man had two suitcases which were later found to contain cannabis hidden inside 120 vacuum-sealed packages. Border Force officers stopped Darbasie and Manton, both of Harlow, Essex, in the nothing-to-declare lane at the airport’s arrivals zone last year.

Their suitcases were searched and the drugs, which weighed 60 kilograms in total, were discovered inside the sealed packages, prosecutors said. Each of the cases also contained an Apple AirTag tracker device, COPFS said.

Specialists estimated that if sub-divided, the Class B drugs would have a street value of £592,716. The two men pleaded guilty to being concerned in the supply of controlled drugs at a hearing at the High Court in Glasgow last month.

Darbasie was jailed for three years when he was sentenced at the High Court in Inverness on Wednesday, while Manton was ordered to spend 30 months behind bars, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS), said. Moira Orr, who leads on major crime for COPFS, said: “This was a substantial attempt to bring a significant quantity of illegal and harmful drugs through Scotland.”