Men jailed for cigarette smuggling after getting caught at Dover docks

Video footage reveals the moment a smuggler realised he was going to be caught after being pulled over in Dover.

Panic can be heard in Thomas Coulton’s voice as he told his companion “these are going to be all over us” in reference to Border Force officials who stopped him after arriving in the county on a ferry from France.

He had been attempting to smuggle two million cigarettes into the country – which would have evaded duty totalling £615,805.He has now been jailed for two-and-a-half years following an investigation by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).

Coulton, from Morecambe in Lancaster, owned Heysham-based Tommy’s Removals and Storage company and had travelled to Brittany in France with his employee Reece Fox, 20, to collect the contents of a house move.

But they had taken a detour to Tamines, in Belgium on their return to the UK to pick up the cigarettes, an investigation found.They were stopped by Border Force at the Port of Dover’s Eastern Docks on February 27, 2019 after disembarking a ferry.

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/dover/news/smugglers-panic-at-being-pulled-over-caught-on-dashcam-263036/