RAF Smugglers!
 

From the currant bun
RAF smugglers use hero coffin flights to bring cigarettes into UK | The Sun |News|Campaigns|Our Boys

Here we go again.......

I am a mover and before the venom hits, I would like to say most of the trade will hangs head in shame at this.

I hope all involved go down for a very long time and lose all the benefits this scam has brought them.

Sneaking back a bit of booze for personal use from on det is one thing. This is something else...........
And to use the cover of the dead..........! That beggars belief.

Well Done Tom Newton Dunn...the force's favourite hack...nicely reported..

just shows the level of some in the armed forces.

But what do we expect the armed forces reflects the country it recruits from and maybe were getting the armed forces we deserve.

Was this not the plot line for the flick "American Gangsters"? Did they get the idea from here? Shameful if it's true.

Even these idiots wouldn't have the gall or intelligence to specifically target repatriations. They have commited an offence, and they will get punished. But be wary of letting the tabloids turn this into something it is not.

Looks like the Pprune Outrage Bus is being wheeled out for a grand tour. :rolleyes:
As the poster above says, some movers were smuggling fags in boxes of PEs. These boxes may or may not have been on the same aircraft as coffins. The fags weren't in coffins :hmm:

All doors closed, you're in the process of starting the engines at an international airport (with a resident RAF handling team) and you have a slot time to make. Then the cargo door light illuminates for a few seconds, before extinguishing again.

What would you do?

(Old Ground Cat question!).

This is about 2-4 weeks ago. Using ISO I am told so not necessarily in PE boxes but lookalikes.

The BEagle door issue is a bit too amateurish.

Everybody expects and knows that happens and most in command while not turning a blind eye to it will allow personnel some leeway within reason.

However when morons decide they wish to engage in private enterprise like the alledged incidents then you have no option but to tackle head on.

When people go down the route alledged, they then start to make decisions which are primarily in their own interests, rather than in the interests of the service as a whole. Also they are more likely to take risks because of the greater pay back.

The question will be raised that how can people believe it was only cigarettes and not Afghanistan's other famous export.

A fair while ago a Herc nearly tipped on its arse when loading was complete. The reason? Some brave little soldier had filled spaces in some pongo machinery with contraband, then bodge taped over them......

Nevertheless, PN, I am told that it happened......

Herc Dry Bays
 

Surely if someone is serious about setting up a serious smuggling operation, C-130 "dry bays" on the upper wing would be better than coffins/PE boxes???

Hope UK C & E isnt reading this;)

It was my understanding these Feckers got pinched for this a long time ago, have their charges only just been presided on?

Or is this a different group?

Truly, truly disgraceful. I have a lot of lattitude with movers, all in all a good group of lads and lasses that work very hard and get slated by aircrew. I think most movers agree though that using PE's boxes to smuggle in tabs is quite frankly, an offence which deserves a significant custodial sentence.

It is funny that every other story the Sun prints on this board is met with 'utter buffoonery' calls. Yet every word is believed regarding this story :rolleyes:


Let the ivory tower brigade begin.

If this is true, those responsible deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered in a public arena.
But, firstly we need to let the disciplinary system do its duty, an secondly, two people out of a trade of several hundred is not justification for villifying an entire trade, some of whom work very hard.

MGD

I agree with racedo: a bit here, a bit there never hurt anybody. People get caught when they get greedy. First time maybe they managed a to get a carton of 200 in. Once they've finessed that the next stop is a master carton of 10,000. After confirming an outlet for more goods it's a 40' container with 8,000,000 in.

These guys got greedy and no doubt if they weren't stopped the bad guys they were selling to would have upped the game and started asking for something a little more valuable and a little less bulky. We've all seen the film Layer Cake, once you're in the only way out is in a box.

After these idiots have been sent down the Proceeds Of Crime Act should kick in and empty their bank accounts, drag their kids out of fee paying schools, strip the fancy clothes off their wives backs and repo their cars.

GREEDY AMATEURS

Ah. So. If they had been greedy professionals it would have been ok then?

No, they would be elected MP's.

Nah they'd be called Members of Parliment ;)

What a load of bollocks. I'm a Lyneham mover myself and know the two characters involved fairly well. Granted they took the piss abit with the quantities of contraband they brought back but this is the first i've heard of them using repat flights. Sounds like the Sun making up complete bollocks up as usual.

And what did you do about the quantities of contraband your colleagues were involved with?

I guess Lyneham crews will now have to look forward to being rummaged whenever they fly into the UK?

If they are not doing anything illegal then they need not worry about a rummage.

hmmm
 

Well lets look at this, its been going on for years since Customs decided not to meet aircraft going into Brize or Lyneham!!! (or very few). It does not take much of a brain to figure out you may get away with stuff like this. They should look at what goes on out in afgan or iraq on the hercs flying round there. They say that only 8 may be involved hmmm more like 40 to make something like this work

I seem to remember that many years ago a Vulcan was undergoing a deep strip examination and hordes of ciggies were discovered hidden in the wing that the miscreant presumably hadn't been able to recover when the aircraft landed back at base some considerable time previously.

There was some talk that it might just have been aircrew rather than ground crew.

Lesson: Everybody's at it given sufficient reward, temptation and opportunity.

Greedy and stupid

There's a much better mark up on Viagra


What would be interesting would be if they are Duty Free's or 'Counterfeit Afghan Market' (even cheaper). I don't think there's a limit on the latter.

If true, this sickens me.

This couldn't be more tasteless if the perps had pissed on the graves of our fallen heros, shame on them.

I know a family who lost a loved one doing their duty recently and I cannot imagine what their reaction to this story would be.

Shame on them again!

The bit that amuses me about some of the responses on here are that they are made by the very people who probably "bent the rules" bringing back goodies from outside the EU - it wasn't that long ago that the limit was £100 of other goodies be it Webers, steaks, lawn mowers, car exhausts, sunglasses, jeans, CDs etc etc etc regardless of whether they from a BX or not. And if I remember correctly the operating crew allowance was zero!

This incident has been made to sound worse because it is ciggies as well as a bit (by the sounds of it) of artistic licence by the Sun. Would the Sun have been interested if it had been routine stuff (i.e not ciggies / alcohol) bought back following an exercise in the States. I doubt it.

A couple of chancers pushed their luck, got caught, and if found guilty will get due punishment. Where it will hurt is if HMRC now do a full Red/Green channel on all returning flights.

There seems to be a few posters on here who seem to condone smuggling, as long as it is in small quantities. I'm not going to jump on the outrage express but just for the record if you bring in any quantity over the HMRC limit, or sell-on your duty-free, then you have broken the law - it's your choice.

It is real temptation for the badly-paid boys and girls who work as cabin crew for airlines to succumb to the special-offer on 400 cigarettes in order to make a few extra quid by selling them on to friends. Where I work now the company will instantly dismiss any employee caught over their limit, regardless of any HMRC involvement. No formal warning, no lesser administrative or disciplinary action - simply instant dismissal. In that climate you know the risk and you make your own choice. Sensible people will not even take a risk on: "Not taking cigs? Will you take these for me?".

If this story is true, then I'm sure that there will be prosecutions as HMRC will regard an organized racket by professionals with access to air-freight as a serious offence. However, it might be worth reflecting that this kind of thing could well have roots in a collective view that 'small amounts are ok, aren't they?'

Speak for yourself, wrathmonk - I was always scrupulously honest with HMRC and they never, ever shafted me. In fact they would often charge far less than perhaps they should have.

One Christmas I 'self declared' a fair amount of stuff from the USA via the 'blank cheque and honesty box' system at Brize - they never charged me a penny.

mams, if what you say is true (and I hope it isn't), then perhaps the SIB and HMRC will be on the case pretty schnell. As indeed they should.

On the way from Deci back to Wattisham, I once witnessed a VC10 navigator trying to have a conversation with a casualty on a stretcher after we'd bent into Wildenrath for an aeromed case - bloke was plumbed into a drip and surrounded by anxious-looking Paraffins.....

"Are you taking any duty free home, mate?", was the navigator's opening comment......:hmm: Chief Paraffin was most assuredly NOT happy!

Evanelpus - you have jumped aboard the outrage bus exactly as I expected the average Sun reader would.

The fact they were smuggling is the story - the possible crime. Not that they may have used flights (amongst others) that were being used for repatriation. Tell me you don't think we have the capacity to fly the deceased back on their own airframe - please.

Hang on......smuggling fags into the UK from Afg ?!?!?!

I can think of other stuff in Afg that would have made far more money....

Much more difficult to get from the NAAFI though, FFP

There is. Theatre orders state that the limit is 200 cigarettes per serviceman, per journey, no matter where or how purchased.
If you wanted to go by what (as a civilian) you're allowed, UK customs wise, then yes there's no limit (other than that it has to be for personal consumption) but you have to provide proof of purchase and proof that they are tax paid. Your chogie cleaner at BAS won't be able to provide you with either. So either way the bottom line is, it's an allowance of 200.

I think there's reasonable chance that these were freight!

These lead smugglers are awful, aren't they?

while we're at it, shall we try and justify insurance fraud too? to those who think that any kind of "it's over the allowance but that's ok" - it is tax evasion! "i claimed on my insurance, because every does" is a similarly asinine argument.

The Sun has used the typical BNP style journalism to work the public opinion up into a frenzy and it seems to have worked; even on this forum. shall we now condemn all movers and hang them? f**k it, let's go get the gibbet; why let the facts get in the way of a good public beheading? Or shall we wait and see the actual facts and let the disciplinary process work its course; like several others suggest?

People may think i am standing on some kind of moral high ground, but i, like many, own a piece of paper signed by the Queen (i know it's a stamp/copy) that quite clearly says "honesty" in amongst the text.

Rant over......and breathe:)

Doesn't matter, cigarettes are forbidden to be moved in freight, mail, or any kind of unaccompanied baggage. It has to be carried by the passenger. A whole different raft of customs regulations apply to taxable items moved as freight, in short you have to be a licenced distributor.

We used to scan all MFO boxes, freight etc at BAS... we'd let nothing through unaccompanied (and many would try mailing 1000 fags home at a time in the post, a big no-no) but we would turn a blind eye to the passengers carrying the odd extra carton or two at check in.
Of course once we'd scanned MFO's etc, we sealed them, and they went into the Movers secure yard for onward shipping. After that, it's down to the movers to keep them secure, and HM Customs to check the seals in the UK.

UK Customs have allowed us some leeway for many years now at major airheads and the seals never got checked, maybe that'll change in light of this.

Actually, for once on PPRuNe, this hasn't degenerated into a 'mover bashing' thread.

It is clear that the vast majority of decent Air Movs personnel are as equally appalled as everyone else; perhaps they are best placed to root out the miscreants?

ShyTorque, learn about weight and balance and you'll find that it doesn't take much to exceed CG limits if loaded on the ramp.....