Drug gangs 'grooming' Brits with proven tactic as they flock to 'booming' region
Organised crime expert Nathan Paul Southern says the spate of British young people getting arrested for drug smuggling is no coincidence as Southeast Asia's booming drugs production overtakes the rest of the world
Criminal gangs are 'grooming' naive young British backpackers holidaying in Thailand amid a huge boom in the country's production of illegal drugs, an expert has warned.
In the last two weeks, three British women have hit the headlines after they were accused of attempting to smuggle drugs. Bella May Cullen, 18, was arrested after flying into Georgia from Thailand with around 14kg of cannabis and 2kg of hashish in her luggage.
A day later former TUI stewardess Charlotte May Lee was allegedly caught with 46kg of Kush – a high-grade strain of cannabis – in her luggage valued at £1.2million after arriving in Sri Lanka, again from Thailand. And at the weekend, it emerged another Brit, Isabella Daggett, 21, from Leeds, has been held in a hellhole Dubai prison since March, when she was arrested on suspected drugs offences.
Nathan Paul Southern, the Operations Director at The EyeWitness Project, which specialises in the investigation of organised crime, conflict and corruption, says southeast Asia has now become the world 's leading supplier of both narcotics like heroin and synthetic drugs like ecstasy and crystal meth.
The 'Golden Triangle' - a large mountainous region on the borders with Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, recently overtook Afghanistan as the world's largest producer of opium, used to make heroin. And he says gangs are 'flocking' to the region from around the world, where they appear to be using grooming techniques used in other types of crimes to ensnare impressionable young Westerners.
Mr Southern told the Mirror: 'The idea of charming strangers, grooming backpackers isn't new, it's just the same old tactics in a region with a booming drug trade. The same grooming techniques we've seen in romance scams and human trafficking could be getting adapted for drug smuggling.
"The Golden Triangle is the world's most prolific drug-producing region and Asian drug syndicates are outpacing even the Latin American cartels - not just with heroin, but now increasingly synthetic drugs and has become the world's producer of meth.'
But Nathan believes it's not the Golden Triangle's powerful drug kingpins who are recruiting young Brits, but smaller criminal outfits which have set up in the country to smuggle drugs into Europe, particularly cannabis, which Thailand decriminalised in 2022 and can be bought legally in the country.
He continued, "Those massive syndicates don't need to recruit British backpackers. Their supply chains are global, efficient, and far beyond the reach of one-off couriers. What we could be seeing is opportunistic crime—newer, smaller players taking advantage of Thailand's legal cannabis market to groom travellers into smuggling it out, where it remains illegal."
He added: "These crime types are becoming incredibly prolific in the region and has led to criminal gangs from around the world flocking to Southeast Asia. Many of these criminal groups actually have connections to Georgia [where Bella May Cullen was arrested]. The organised crime trade, from scams to drugs, is absolutely booming in Southeast Asia right now and nobody is coming to stop it.'
According to reports, criminals based in Thailand have been offering potential mules free paradise holidays, unlimited booze, drugs and a £2,000 payout if they agree to carry their illicit wares back home, or to a third country. Since cannabis was legalised, it has become so cheap to buy that smuggling gangs can make an astonishing 3,000% mark-up in the UK.
Gangs used to send cannabis by post, but since an agreement between UK Border Force and Thai customs requiring parcels to be checked before they are shipped, smugglers have turned to recruiting Brits flying home. Last July, British and Thai authorities launched Operation Chaophraya, an operation at Bangkok Airport, to target potential smugglers before they get on the plane.
By April this year, 50 British nationals had been arrested for attempted cannabis smuggling, and over 2 tonnes of cannabis seized, with an estimated value of £6million, according to reports. Nathan believes many end up transporting drugs both because they have been 'groomed' by smugglers, and because young people don't regard cannabis as a dangerous drug.
Bella May Culley, from Billingham, County Durham, had travelled to Thailand, but after her family reported her missing, was caught at Tbilisi Airport in Georgia, where she faces a long prison sentence. Her grandad William Culley, 80, revealed that she went to Southeast Asia on her own but said she was meeting a man named "Ross or Russ", adding: "She's got sucked into something, somehow."
Charlotte May Lee, from south London, who left Bangkok airport at almost the same time as Ms Culley, denies knowledge there were drugs in her luggage, telling MailOnline: "I had never seen them [the drugs] before. I didn't expect it all when they pulled me over at the airport. I thought it was going to be filled with all my stuff."
Ms Lee, who is being held in a prison north of the south Asian country's capital, Colombo, where she is sleeping on a concrete floor, claimed she had packed her bags in her hotel room the night before heading out for the night. "They must have planted it then," she claimed. "I know who did it."
Isabella Daggett, 21, from Leeds, is understood have been arrested just five weeks after moving from Yorkshire to start a new job in the United Arab Emirates. But her family insist she was taken by police simply for being 'in the wrong place at the wrong time' and has never used drugs.
She was working for a businessman doing internet recruiting for construction sites in the UK and he offered to send her to the Middle East for a similar role. But police in Dubai allegedly arrested her along with another man not long after she arrived in Dubai.
Nathan warns other young travellers to be 'cautious'. He warned: 'This is a consistent threat... don't trust anyone you've just met who tries to pull you into anything illegal.
"The trick is often emotional manipulation. They don't ask outright. They build the bond, earn trust, and then make the crime feel like your idea. You might believe cannabis should be legal… but that won't help you when you're caught smuggling it out of a country where it's still very much illegal.
"Bottom line: if you're committing a crime for someone you barely know, chances are you're being played."
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