A woman who was sentenced to nine years behind bars for smuggling guns and drugs into the UK gave an unlikely excuse for what she was doing before she was caught.
40-year-old Kasha Sanderson was stopped while returning to the UK on a ferry from Calais, France on 24 February last year, when her car was searched police found hidden compartments.
Inside they found two Skorpion submachine guns, an Uzi, a Glock handgun and nine converted blank firing pistols, while 289 rounds of ammunition were also recovered from the vehicle, an Irish registered Peugeot 3008.
Officers also found 5kg of heroin which has an estimated street value of £500,000.
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Sanderson, who was officially unemployed, first claimed she'd been in France to scatter ashes in Lyon and when questioned by officers she then tried to give the excuse that she only thought she'd been attempting to smuggle cannabis into the UK.
That excuse did not cut the mustard, and the woman later admitted to attempting to smuggle firearms, ammunition and Class A drugs into the UK, for which she was jailed for nine years.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) said she was sentenced on Thursday (5 March) at Canterbury Crown Court.
NCA branch commander Rachel Bramley said: "These terrifying weapons and ammunition are out of the hands of extremely dangerous criminals.
"Firearms crime in the UK is among the lowest in the world, but these guns had the potential to cause horrific damage.
"We have seen in recent years the tragic consequences of entirely innocent victims getting caught in the crossfire of criminals with automatic weapons such as Skorpion machine pistols.
"With Sanderson’s jailing, the organised crime group behind this smuggling plot have lost a trusted courier and profits they are unable to plough back into further offences."
The two custom-made secret compartments in the car's footwell containing drugs, guns and ammunition represent a significant find for the NCA in their efforts to block drugs and deadly weapons from being smuggled into the UK.
Elsewhere in the NCA's work they found drug smuggling, assassinations, and the sale of firearms being planned over EncroChat, an encrypted message service used by criminals.
This investigation was the topic of Channel 4 documentary Operation Dark Phone: Murder by Text, which resulted in an operation that led to 746 arrests, 77 guns being seized, two tonnes of drugs recovered and £54 million in dirty money seized.
Joe Harker