Wiltshire woman jailed for smuggling crystal meth in dolls

Paolo Patricia Morrish and her husband David Morrish appeared at Swindon Crown Court

A woman who helped smuggle crystal meth with a street value of nearly £1m into the UK disguised as dolls and coffee beans has been jailed.

Paolo Patricia Morrish was caught after a package from Mexico was intercepted at Stansted Airport in January 2019.

That package contained 432 toy figures full of the drug.

Morris, 42, pleaded guilty to being part of a smuggling operation and was jailed for six years and four months at Swindon Crown Court.

Her husband David Morrish, 49, pleaded guilty to a charge of assisting an offender by disposing of a bag he found at their home.

He was given a nine-month sentence, suspended for 18 months.

Hundreds of toy figures filled with crystal meth were seized at Stansted Airport

Prosecuting, Tessa Hingston told the court Border Force officers who discovered the drugs at Stansted Airport replaced the package with a dummy version.

Officers tracked the fake package to an address in Chippenham in Wiltshire where it was collected by Morrish.

She was then arrested at her home in Malmesbury by officers from the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit, Ms Hingston said.

Crystal meth had been hidden inside the toy figures

She admitted receiving a total of four packages, one of which contained 21 bags of crystal meth painted to look like coffee beans.

Ms Hingston said the overall street value of the drugs was estimated to be about £997,880.

Judge Jason Taylor told Morrish her contact with criminals in Latin America suggested she had ambitions to expand the smuggling.

Representing Morrish, Michael Hall said she had tried to enter the world of drug smuggling but had not been very successful.

"She expresses huge amounts of genuine regret," he added.