Truck driver gets 13 years for cocaine hidden in Skims shipment

A Polish truck driver who hauled 28 pallets of Skims clothing into Britain was jailed for 13 years and six months after officers found 90 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a compartment built into the rear trailer doors. The case turned a legitimate retail shipment into a conduit for Class A drugs, with investigators putting the street value of the seizure at about £7.2 million.

Jakub Jan Konkel, 40, of Kartuzy in northern Poland, was sentenced at Chelmsford Crown Court on Monday, May 18, 2026. Border Force officers stopped his heavy goods vehicle at the Port of Harwich in Essex on September 5, 2025, after it arrived on a ferry from the Hook of Holland in the Netherlands and was x-rayed. Inside the load were 90 packages, each containing 1 kilogram of cocaine, hidden in the skin of the rear trailer doors.

The National Crime Agency said the shipment itself was genuine and that neither the exporter nor the importer was tied to the drugs. That detail matters for freight security: the cocaine was not concealed inside a fake load, but inside a real commercial delivery moving through an ordinary supply chain. Konkel’s tachograph reportedly showed a 16-minute stop that he did not disclose to investigators, and authorities believe that was when the drugs were loaded into the vehicle.

Konkel initially denied knowing about the cocaine, then pleaded guilty to drug smuggling and admitted agreeing to transport it for a payment of 4,500 euros. NCA officials said the case reflects a wider method used by organized crime groups, who recruit or corrupt drivers to move Class A drugs inside legitimate cargo. Border Force and the NCA said the seizure stripped criminal networks of millions in profit and kept a large quantity of dangerous drugs off the streets.