A French bulldog called Bob has helped collar a drug gang and foil their plot to smuggle more than 70 stone of MDMA to Australia.
They hid the Class A drug, also known as Ecstasy, with a street value of £45million in the arm of a mechanical digger.
But the traffickers were unaware the encrypted phone network they used had been hacked by the National Crime Agency, in part of the UK’s biggest-ever organised crime probe.
And one of the gang sent an image of Bob which included the dog’s tag and the phone number of the crook’s partner, which would help the NCA catch him.
On Tuesday, at Kingston crown court in South West London, six men were jailed for a total of 140 years for the smuggling operations. One plotter, Danny Brown, 55, sent the shot of his pet anonymously to co-conspirator Stefan Baldauf, 62, via EncroChat, the phone network.
They did not use their real identities and investigators later had to prove their code names, or handles, were them. Brown was called “throwthedice”. Baldauf, known as “Boldmove”, also sent accidental selfies – giving investigators more proof.
In one message, Brown forwarded a photo of his TV which showed his reflection.
Baldauf, of Ealing, West London, shared a picture of a brass door sign in which his face was visible. Chris Hill, NCA operations boss, said: “These men thought they were safe on EncroChat but my officers did a superb and painstaking job of building evidence against them through a mix of traditional and modern detective skills.
“Brown and Baldauf’s accidental selfies and the photo of Bob the dog were the cherry on the cake in proving who was operating those handles.”
Bob was present when his master’s home in Bromley, South East London, was raided in June 2020.
The gang had stuffed 448kg of MDMA in the arms of a mechanical digger, and created a fake auction to make shipping the machinery 10,000 miles from Southampton to Brisbane in Australia appear legitimate.
But they rigged it by agreeing a pre-arranged bid with the intended recipients.
The auction gave the gang a nervous moment when other potential buyers registered their interest in the digger. Leon Reilly, 50, of Bantry, Co Cork, Ireland, messaged Brown on EncroChat: “There are six people watching it.”
Brown replied: “F***ing hell, that’s not good is it.” The trio and their conspirators plotted in late 2019 and early 2020 to send the drugs, which were 77.5% pure, to Australia where MDMA’s street value is far higher than in the UK.
They gang bought the excavator, a Doosan DX420, for £65,000.
Australian Border Force officers X-rayed the digger, removed the drugs, sealed the arm and installed a tracker and listening device before letting it go to its intended destination – an auction house in Sydney.
Two Australian suspects were later arrested.
In June Brown, Baldauf and Reilly, were convicted of drug trafficking with three others. Yesterday Brown was jailed for 26 years, Baldauf for 28 and Reilly for 24.
Fellow plotters Tony Borg, 44, of Basildon, Essex, Philip Lawson, 61, of Staines, Surrey, and Teddy Murray, 59, of Greenwich, South East London, got 15, 23 and 24 years.