TWO men from Chingford who tried to smuggle cocaine hidden in pot plants have had appeals against their sentences refused.
David Notley, 52, of Heathcote Grove, and 41-year-old Iain Palmer, of Valleyside, were jailed for 20 and 12 years respectively for their roles in an operation involving nearly half a million pounds of the class A drug at Chelmsford Crown Court in May last year.
The pair lodged appeals in a bid to get their sentences reduced, but Mrs Justice Swift, sitting in the Court of Appeal in London on Wednesday, ruled they were of an appropriate length.
Notley was found guilty of conspiring to smuggle after a trial and Palmer had previously admitted his role in the operation.
Jurors in Notley's trial hear the pair were involved in smuggling £400,000 of cocaine from Nicaragua in plant pots headed for a Waltham Abbey company.
Customs officers at the border inspection of Tilbury Docks in Essex found large quantities of the drug concealed inside about 120 pot plants during a search of a container which arrived from Nicaragua in March 2008.
The court heard port officials had removed the drug then re-packed the soil and gravel into the pots prior to their delivery at Petals Plants in Galley Hill, Waltham Abbey.
Officers from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) placed hidden microphones at the site and the court heard recordings of workers swapping angry exchanges while they frantically searched the pot plants for the cocaine.
Notley was identified as being the man in charge of the operation as he was doing most of the talking and becoming frustrated because he couldn’t find the cocaine.
Jurors heard Notley was immediately arrested outside the warehouse and a mobile phone and paperwork linking him to the delivery was seized.
The court also heard bank statements recovered from Petals Plants showed there had been no income from the sale of pot plants and receipts from a shipping company showed there had been several other deliveries from Nicaragua throughout 2007.
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