Jail for international drug dealer Samson Kuteyi who tried to import cannabis through Stansted Airport

An international drug dealer who tried to import cannabis through Stansted Airport has been jailed.

Samson Kuteyi’s smuggling operation was discovered after he was arrested on an unrelated matter.

He was stopped before boarding a flight from Heathrow Airport to Los Angeles on April 22 last year.

Two iPhones, more than £7,000 and $500 in cash, and a Rolex worth nearly £43,000 were seized.

When the phones were examined, it became clear he was involved in buying large amounts of cannabis in the USA and Canada and importing it into the UK.

The 32-year-old, of Nags Head Road, Enfield, then sold the drugs to end users or to other dealers who would then start their own drug lines.

Through their investigation, officers from Essex Police’s specialist proactive money laundering and drug liaison team established that Kuteyi had imported between 89kg and 95kg of cannabis between February 27 and April 21 last year.

More than 23kg of the drug was seized by Border Force at Stansted Airport before it was able to reach its destination between August 2022 and June 2023.

On each occasion, Border Force officers found the drugs in vacuum-wrapped packages weighing roughly half a kilo each.

All the packages were sent from the USA to addresses in the UK. Through work with Border Force officials, it was possible to link the airway bill reference numbers back to Kuteyi.

Officers were also able to establish that he was involved in the supply of at least 14kg of cannabis to people in the UK.

They also identified that he had been involved in obtaining and facilitating the supply of false driving licences.

Kuteyi was charged with being concerned in the supply of a class B drug, concerned in the fraudulent evasion of a prohibition on the importation of a class B drug and two counts of copying a false instrument with intent to be accepted as genuine.

He admitted the charges at Chelmsford Crown Court on May 30. At the same court on Tuesday (November 26) he was jailed for six years.

Acting Detective Inspector Mike Monkton said: “Samson Kuteyi was an international drug dealer involved in selling cannabis on a commercial scale, employing at least seven people.

“Drugs are a poison on our society, infecting communities and ruining lives. The sale of drugs like cannabis goes hand in hand with violence and exploitation, and it is something we cannot tolerate.

“We will now work to seize Kuteyi’s ill-gotten gains through the Proceeds of Crime Act.”