A lorry carrying 28 pallets of Skims underwear and clothing was used to smuggle more than £7m worth of cocaine into Britain, and the driver behind the plot has been jailed for 13-and-a-half years. Jakub Jan Konkel was sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court on Monday, May 18, after officers found 90 packages of the drug hidden in a specially adapted compartment in the rear trailer doors.

Border Force stopped Konkel at the Port of Harwich in Essex after he arrived on a ferry from the Hook of Holland. The hidden packages, each containing a kilo of cocaine, had a street value of around £7.2m, prosecutors said.

The haul was discovered in what investigators described as a legitimate load, with neither the exporter nor the importer involved in the smuggling. The Skims clothing was being carried normally, but the trailer had been modified with a hide built into the skin of the rear doors, giving the drugs a place to sit unnoticed as the truck crossed into the country.

Konkel’s tachograph showed a 16-minute stop that he failed to declare when questioned by the National Crime Agency, and investigators believe the cocaine was loaded during that halt. He initially denied knowing anything about the Class A drugs, before later pleading guilty to drug smuggling and confessing that he had agreed to move the cargo for a payment of €4,500.

The case underlines a pattern police and border officials say they see again and again: criminal groups using drivers to move cocaine and heroin hidden among lawful freight. Paul Orchard, an operations manager at the National Crime Agency, said organised crime groups use corrupt drivers like Konkel to move Class A drugs hidden on entirely legitimate loads, and said the seizure had stripped a major crime group of a large share of its profits and an important helper.

Jason Thorn, an assistant director at Border Force, said the drugs destroy lives and bring misery to communities, adding that the interception had deprived criminal networks of millions in profit. He said officers would continue working around the clock to pursue criminality, protect the borders and keep dangerous drugs off the streets.

What mattered most in this case was not just the size of the shipment, but the method. The cocaine was carried inside a load that looked routine, on a truck moving through a busy port with a legitimate cargo of Skims underwear and clothing. That combination of normal freight and a concealed hide in the trailer doors is what made the smuggling attempt dangerous, and what made the Border Force stop decisive.

Konkel’s 13-and-a-half-year sentence closes one chapter, but the case leaves the bigger problem in place: organised crime networks still rely on trusted drivers willing to trade a single journey for cash, and they are still trying to move drugs through ordinary supply chains. On Monday, the court punished one man. The wider network behind the load remains the real target.