Everyone knows that cocaine is an excellent appetite suppressant. Why do you think models snort so much of it? Because they like to party? No. No one likes to party that much. It’s because it keeps you from eating.
So, when you are smuggling 1,000 kilograms of cocaine across the Atlantic and your food supplies are running low, naturally, you dip into your stash a little bit. Just a little bit. Only a couple of lines. Be less hungry, plus sail faster. Sail faster. Sail faster. Sail, sail, sail, sail, sail, sail.
Sail.
That’s what Benjamin Mellor, who was arrested last September off the coast of Ireland, did. Pretty ingenious, no? Well, minus the arrest part.
Mellor and two others were caught with approximately $200 million worth of blow. That’s a lot. One of the bales was broken into, which Mellor admitted to doing because he was hungry and out of food. From the Daily Mail:
The scheme began in 2013 when [John] Powell took charge of the 62ft Makayabella in the Caribbean.
He sailed it for a year as a charter boat to provide a cover story before picking up the 1,025kg consignment of cocaine in Venezuela last August.
Damn. You’d think if you had that kind of patience and plotting skills, you’d have crossed “Pack enough food” off your to-do list. But no.
Inspector Fergal Foley, a Garda investigator, said the Makayabella was in a grim state when they found it and was running out of drinking water.
He said: ‘To be blunt, they were delighted to see the navy’.
Mellor was sentenced to eight years in prison, where he will never have to worry about missing a meal again. Powell received 10. The brains behind the operation, John’s son Stephen, received 16.