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Date Published: 10/05/2022

ARCHIVED - Costa del Sol Brit behind drug ring that injected ecstasy into gummy bears

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The drugs were sent through the post as part of an international trafficking based in Andalucía

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Costa del Sol Brit behind drug ring that injected ecstasy into gummy bears

Police on the Costa del Sol have seized 11 kilograms of gummy bears which were adulterated with a compound called 25N-NBOMe, a hallucinogenic substance which goes by the street name ‘The Bomb’, and arrested several members of a drug ring suspected to be behind the scheme, including the leader, a British man living in Alhaurín el Grande, Malaga.

Codenamed ‘Operation America’, the sting focused on taking down a criminal network based in the Malaga towns of Benalmádena, Alhaurín el Grande and Coín and which was allegedly involved in international drug trafficking using parcel delivery companies as a distribution channel.

The ringleader was identified as a British national resident in Alhaurín el Grande, who boxed up the parcels and used a gang of collaborators to deliver the mail through postboxes.

Some of the drugs were inserted inside gummy bears, giving the sweets a psychotropic aspect. The shipments were then sent in parcels and letters bearing sender logos from fake companies, or company logos with non-existent addresses to give them a legal appearance.

Many of the packages also had customs declaration stickers which were false and had merely been printed with a conventional printer. The letters were deposited in different mailboxes in the streets of Benalmádena and Torremolinos.

During the course of the investigation, a total of 461 letters and parcels were found to contain these drugs hidden in the sweets, with an accumulated 3,703 grams of toxic and psychotropic substances.

The drug known as ‘The Bomb’ is sold as an alternative to LSD or mescaline. There are several variations of the drug, but 25I-NBOMe is its most potent and abused form, with effects that can last for 12 hours or more.

Most of the drugs seized were derivatives of controlled substances, i.e. substances with similar effects on users as MDMA, ketamine, cocaine and mephedrone, but with small changes in their composition that made them new and therefore outside the official list of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs.

In all, seven arrests have been made and seven searches have been carried out in which 3,700 grams of toxic and psychotropic substances, 2,065 grams of marijuana, 1,065 grams and 500 millilitres of cutting substance, 900 euros in cash, several scales, a press, a packaging machine and material for shipments, among other things, have been seized. Police are pending court authorization to open a further 126 envelopes.

Just last week, a British man was arrested in Coín for the murder of a teenager in Liverpool in 2015, and is awaiting extradition to the UK.

Spain’s Costa del Sol is famed as a popular hideout for many international fugitives due to its good weather.

Image: Policía Nacional

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