Urban Smuggler

Book excerpt: Urban Smuggler chronicles the rollicking life story of one of the most prolific smugglers of our time. After leaving school at 14, Andrew Pritchard started out selling weed at house parties before moving on to run some of the biggest warehouse raves of the acid-house era. The money began to roll in, but with it came trouble, and when someone was murdered at one of his parties he was forced to go on the run to Jamaica. It was there that Pritchard learned the tricks of the smuggling trade, and with corrupt UK Customs officers in his pocket it seemed that nothing could go wrong. But then someone in his network used his supply chain to start shifting industrial amounts of cocaine. When he went to meet a shipment of counterfeit cigars, he was seized by a Customs task force and arrested when the goods turned out to be half a ton of premium-grade cocaine. Following two controversial trials, Pritchard was acquitted after eighteen months on remand. In Urban Smuggler, he reveals just how easy it can be to import shiploads of contraband into the UK and exposes the corruption within the law-enforcement agencies tasked to tackle this kind of crime. Here, then, is the inside story of how to become an 'urban smuggler'.