A three-man Dutch gang have been arrested over the elaborate plot, in which they used a fake ambulance company set up in Hoofddorp, Holland, to run the advanced drug smuggling operation across Europe to the tune of 2 billion dollars.

 

The drug peddlers identified as Leonardus Bijlsma, Olof Schoon, Richard Engelsbel posed as paramedics and used bogus patients to make their cover more authentic, as they smuggled a variety of illegal drugs to organised crime groups across the country. The drug merchants were caught following an investigation by the National Crime Agency in collaboration with the Dutch National Police in North Holland.

 

NCA officers found evidence to prove the company’s ambulances were used to transport drugs into the UK at least 45 times over a 14 month period, with the total street value of the drugs estimated to be up to £1.6 billion. The men were finally caught after NCA officers tracked one of ambulances on 16 June when it entered the UK at Harwich Port and went to a car park in Smethwick, Birmingham.  

 

When Vogelaar and Engelsbel got out of the ambulance in paramedic uniforms and met with Schoon and Bijlsma, who had arrived in a Mercedes, officers moved in and arrested all four men with assistance from West Midlands Police. Secret compartments behind the ambulance’s interior panels, in cupboards and under the floor contained 193 kilos of cocaine, 74 kilos of heroin, 2 kilos of MDMA crystal and 20,000 ecstasy tablets with a combined likely potential street value of over £38 million.

  

The drugs had been taped up with different coloured tape which correlated to a list of 20 customers found inside the car.

 

Rob Lewin, Head of the NCA’s Specialist Operations Unit, said: “This was a highly specialist drug transportation service. By shutting it down the NCA and its partners have disrupted criminal activity across the UK.

 

"There will be some very frustrated high-level criminals out there who, given the size of their orders, will have lost a lot of money.

  

“The human cost of class A drug addiction is huge but these men, who made trip after trip, were motivated only by profit. We will now start to focus on stripping them of any assets.

 

“I would like thank colleagues from the Crown Prosecution Service and the Dutch National Police for their support in bringing these men to justice.”

 

Following a two-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court, Leonardus Bijlsma, 55, from Haarlemmermeer in Holland, was found guilty of conspiracy to import Class A drugs, Olof Schoon, aged 38, from Haarlemmermeer, who owned the company and directed the operation, and Richard Engelsbel, aged 51, from Amsterdam were all convicted.