Five couriers have been sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court over a cannabis import attempt worth £13.8 million. The National Crime Agency investigated the smuggling gang after Border Force officers arrested its members in August 2024, when class B drugs were found packed into 22 suitcases. The couriers arrived in the UK on flights from Thailand, via Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, and each carried two suitcases. The court heard the suitcases contained 20 kilos of cannabis each, adding up to 460 kilos. To get the heavy bags into the aircraft hold, the couriers paid an excess charge at Bangkok Airport. Each suitcase had a thin layer of clothing placed above vacuum-packed cannabis, and eight suitcases contained Apple AirTag trackers. Investigators linked the trackers to the same Apple ID account. Border Force became suspicious after linking the seizures to other travellers using connecting flights into Birmingham. Officers then fully staffed the “nothing to declare” customs green channel. That approach led to the drugs being found. Gideon Oluwasetemi Olumoyegun, 26, of Dagenham; Ryan Boachie, 32, of Edmonton; Claire McCullough, 36, of Wythenshawe; Jaden Ramen, 23, of Colliers Wood; and Paige Crisp, 25, of Broomhall, Worcester, were among those sentenced. Tasia Nelson, 22, of Newquay, Cornwall, and Jamal Clarke, 22, of Walthamstow, will be sentenced on 30 October. At court on 22 October, Olumoyegun was sentenced to 24 months, Boachie to 24 months, McCullough to 24 months plus two months consecutively for assaulting a shop worker, Ramen to 32 months and Crisp to 30 months. Four other couriers linked to the same conspiracy were sentenced earlier, on 21 September, receiving a combined total of more than 11 years in prison.