In a case of another truck driver getting arrested in drug smuggling busts, a Ukrainian truck driver was stopped with 20 boxes of cocaine by Border Force. Serhii Tukalo (39) was originally arrested in May 2022 when authorities found the 20 kg blocks of coke hidden in equipment boxes.
Ukrainian Truck Driver Sentenced to 11 Years for Smuggling Cocaine in the UK – Estimated Street Value of $1.2 MILLION
The equipment included air compressors and pressure washers from Northern Italy. Tukalo was arrested on suspicion of importing Class A narcotics but claimed he wasn’t aware that over $1 million in cocaine was in the truck.
In addition to drugs, authorities found equipment used for trafficking such as two phones and, a SIM card holder. On the SIM card holder was a sticky note with a UK-based number—which likely damaged Tukalo’s claim that he didn’t know what was being smuggled.
A scrub of his phone and records showed that the SIM card was registered to someone else and that his bank transactions used a method utilized by drug trafficking rings in Europe. Also on the suspicious SIM card, Tukalo claimed that a family member sent it and he only used it for YouTube.
The scrub of the SIM card showed that it had never been used online and that only two numbers contacted him. Digging into the Ukrainian truck driver’s background found that smuggling wasn’t new to him as he’d been convicted of the human trafficking of two Albanian migrants in France back in 2021.
Serhii Tukalo was given 11 years for smuggling. The cocaine has an estimated street value of $1,203,315 or about £1 million.
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