Drug gang caught smuggling £42m of cocaine on inflatable boat in National Crime Agency sting

Dramatic video tracks the moments leading up to a failed drug smuggling attempt, involving an inflatable boat. Watch how the men tow the RHIB (rigid hulled inflatable boat), down to a slipway, where two gangsters then launch the vessel in the botched smuggling operation.

Mark Moran, 23, and 40-year-old Colombian national Didier Tordecilla Reyes used the boat to move the drugs from a larger ship a few hours away before returning to Easington Beach, 18 miles away.

Daniel Livingstone, 25, was waiting for them and had been seen shining a torch out to sea and talking on his mobile phone before they approached.

NCA officers spotted Moran and Reyes ditch the RHIB on the beach after unloading a number of bags into the van.

Earlier in the day Moran was in Norwich where he drove a hire van and the RHIB up to Grimsby where he met Livingstone and Reyes.

The gang drove on to Hessle and Livingstone stopped to fill two large jerry cans with fuel.

They were charged and on October 28 Moran was found guilty of conspiracy to import drugs after an eight-day trial at Hull Crown Court.

Daniel Livingstone, 25, admitted to ‘conspiring with others to import a controlled drug’. He was arrested on May 4 this year with 524kg of cocaine in his van outside a hotel in Lelley, East Yorks., after a covert investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA).

Livingstone and Tordecilla Reyes admitted the same offence at a previous hearing while a fourth man, from Argyll and Bute, was cleared by the jury.

Moran, of Ardrishaig, Argyll and Bute, was jailed for 15 years.

Livingstone, of Campbeltown, Argyll and Bute, was jailed was jailed for seven years and nine months. Reyes will be sentenced at a later date.

NCA Senior Investigating Officer Alan French said: "There's no doubt these drugs would have been sold into communities around the UK, but working with our partners including Humberside Police and Border Force, we have disrupted this crime group's offending and made a huge dent in any profits they were due to make.

"We are determined to do all we can to tackle the class A drugs threat activity, and protect the public from the horrific damage it causes our society."