With Ferrero, gardaí really foiling drugs deception

FERRERO Rocher is more associated with the Ambassador’s reception than Nigerian drug lords.

But the worlds of cocaine and chocolate collided yesterday as drugs squad detectives foiled an elaborate plan to import €50,000 worth of cocaine disguised as Ferrero Rocher chocolates.

The white powder was wrapped in gold foil and made to look like the chocolates. But gardaí, acting on a tip-off, sniffed out the ruse.

One of those involved in the plan was jailed yesterday for eight years at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.

Two boxes of the ‘chocolates’, wrapped in a parcel, were sent from Brazil to Germany, and then via Dublin Airport to a flat at Cork’s Lower Glanmire Road.

Drugs squad gardaí mounted a surveillance operation. The drugs were posted to an apartment at Rockgrove Terrace.

Nigerian national Matthew Ilo, aged 30, with an address at Glenvera Hotel, Wellington Road, Cork, visited the apartment several times in the previous few days, and picked up the parcel there on August 20.

As he walked away from the apartment, gardaí arrested him.

Judge Patrick J Moran jailed him for eight years. “This was a new method of bringing drugs into the city,” the judge said.

The parcel was addressed to an apartment where the tenant had not resided for several months. The woman who lived there at the time knew nothing about what was going on, Det Sgt Lawrence O’Brien said.

Ilo claimed he was delivering the parcel and hadn’t a clue what was in it.

He said he was paid €150 and €40 worth of cannabis grass to pick up the parcel and give it to a man at Kent Railway Station.

Det Sgt O’Brien said the gardaí had no way of knowing if that was what the defendant was paid.

Judge Moran noted jurors did not believe what Ilo told them. Pearse Sreenan, the barrister who prosecuted the case, challenged the accused during the trial and said to suggest he did not know what was in the package was rubbish.

Because of the large quantity of drugs involved, Ilo could have received a 10-year mandatory sentence but the judge took his nationality into account and said serving time in prison would be difficult for him. On that basis the eight-year term was imposed.

The jury convicted Ilo of being in possession of over €13,000 worth of the illegal drug for the purpose of sale or supply to others at Lower Glanmire Road, Cork, on August 20, 2003.

Authorities in Germany became suspicious about the parcel and alerted customs officers in Dublin Airport. The parcel was allowed through but its progress was monitored by drugs squad gardaí until Ilo’s arrest. The sentence was backdated to August as Ilo has been in custody since then.