Every parent's worst nightmare: Fears naive young Brits partying in Thailand are being targeted by gangs and duped into becoming drug mules after two women are 'caught smuggling narcotics'

Daily Mail​

24-05-2025

The quickfire arrests of two young British women alleged to have been hauling huge quantities of illegal drugs from Thailand have stoked fears naïve holidaymakers are being targeted by local gangs to work as drug mules.
Eighteen-year-old Bella Culley, from Billingham, Teesside, was arrested in Georgia on May 11, alleged to have been caught trying to bring some £200,000 worth of cannabis and hashish into the country via the UAE after an apparent leisure trip to Thailand.
Culley has yet to tell her lawyer how she came to be in possession of the narcotics.
Soon after, it emerged that a British former cabin crew member, 21-year-old Charlotte May Lee, had been arrested in Sri Lanka, accused of trying to bring 46kg of cannabis into the country - again, from Thailand.
The Mail revealed that Culley had told a source close to her legal case that she had flown to the South East Asian country 'for love', but has still 'said nothing about why she had the drugs'.
Lee is understood to have travelled to Thailand for her birthday in April before stopping back in the U.K. She mentioned having found a 'job on a boat', but did not tell friends she was planning to return.
How and why she ended up in Colombo, Sri Lanka, allegedly with bags of vacuum-packed cannabis, remains a mystery. Relatives say she, too, had made vague comments about meeting a man in Thailand, The Sun reports. She left Bangkok Airport within hours of Culley.
Jemal Janashia, a former police general in Georgia and one of the country's top drug crime experts, told the Mail that local investigators will be keen to explore 'the possibility of a link' between the two cases - and, hauntingly, 'that Thai gangs may be attempting to recruit vulnerable British travellers'.
'The fact that two young British women have taken off with large quantities of drugs from the same airport will interest investigators,' Mr Janashia told the Mail.
'They will be concerned about the possibility of a link and that Thai gangs may be attempting to recruit vulnerable British travellers.'
Mr Janashia, who used to head Georgia's national bureau for combating drug trafficking, said that a police crackdown on postal drug deliveries in Thailand may have pushed 'the cartel' to seek alternative smuggling routes.
'Georgia does look like an attractive middle transit point,' he suggested, close to Europe and visa free for European travellers.
Noting that Miss Culley was 18, foreign to Thailand and pregnant, and suggesting she may have been used as a pawn in a complex trafficking operation, he said that 'whoever chose her, they knew what they were doing'.
He told the Mirror that he would advise Miss Culley to cooperate with the investigation and 'indicate who were the youths that she was in touch with in Thailand' - and a fixer in Georgia, if there was one.
Bella was arrested at Tbilisi Airport on May 11 and found with 12kg of cannabis and 2kg of hashish after getting a £550 Air Arabia flight from Bangkok via Sharjah.
But Mr Janashia, who now teaches at the Georgian Technical University, said Miss Culley did not fit the typical profile of an international drug trafficker.
It does not appear she has any previous experience in drug trafficking - something investigators will try to understand and explore in the coming weeks.
Miss Lee is also a young British traveller who appeared to be visiting Thailand for leisure after reportedly going through a painful break up.
The 21-year-old, who had been working on a 'booze cruise' in Thailand before her visa in the country ran out, this week strongly denied any knowledge of the £1.2million stash in her bag
She told MailOnline from behind bars in Negombo Prison, where she is currently being held on reprimand: 'I had never seen them before. I didn't expect it at all when they pulled me over in the airport. I thought it was going to be filled with all my stuff.'
She decided to go to the country because it was relatively nearby - only a three-hour flight away - and she had never visited there before.
'I thought while I was waiting for the visa that I'd come to Sri Lanka.
'They [the people she believed planted the drugs] were supposed to meet me here. But now I'm here - stuck in this jail.'
And she added: 'I know who did it.'
Both women are said to have told friends and family they were meeting a man abroad.
Both women departed from the Thai capital during the Royal Ploughing Ceremony weekend.
It is one of the busiest festivals of the year when airports are overloaded with tourists - a prime opportunity for gangs to try to push through mules.
The story is not unique. In recent months, dozens of British nationals have been stopped at borders, accused of trying to bring huge quantities of cannabis into the country.
In the space of just two weeks of last year, more than 260kg of cannabis was found in suitcases at UK airports, carried by passengers arriving from Bangkok, SCMP reports.
By October 2024, British ports and airports were recording a record surge in drug seizures smuggled in from the country.
The trend appears to date back to the decriminalisation of most cannabis in Thailand in 2022. Since then, there has been a correlated hike in shipments to the U.K.
The Home Office took note, and a partnership between UK Border Force and Thai customs helped bring down cannabis arrivals by post by 90 per cent in the first three months of this year.
Minister for Citizenship and Migration, Seema Malhotra said last month: 'By stopping these drugs at source, we're disrupting organised crime, protecting communities, and freeing Border Force to focus on other priorities.'
The fear is that, now, gangs could be looking to circumvent the border crackdown by recruiting naïve young holidaymakers to move drugs across the border for them personally.
Some 800 people, including as many as 50 British nationals, were 'intercepted' between October 2024 and March 2025.
More than nine tonnes of cannabis have been seized, according to the Home Office.
Only last month, authorities in Thailand showed off how they arrested the alleged ringleader of a drug smuggling group operating out of the country.
Adel Mohammed, a British national, was accused of running a network of Brits picking up marijuana from farms on Koh Samui island, of White Lotus fame, to be moved on to the capital.
Mr Mohammed was arrested on April 12 at an apartment in Bangkok, as police said they had caught nearly a dozen Brits, a Malaysian, a Dutch and a Romanian national who they believe were involved in a complex network.
'They were planning to smuggle cannabis buds out of the country via Samui International Airport,' Major General Natthakorn Prapayont, Deputy Commissioner of the Immigration Bureau, said at the time.
A month prior, Darryl Poole, from Camden, was detained at an airport, alleged to have been part of the same ring.
Koh Samui, said to have ideal conditions for growing cannabis, has featured several times in newspaper headlines for the wrong reasons.
On March 15, four British tourists were arrested boarding a plane on the island, allegedly found with £1.7mn worth of cannabis.
Customs officers said they found eight suitcases between the four men stuffed full of vacuum-sealed bags.
Antony Paul Mudd, 62, from London, Billy Daniel Harman, 36, from Newham, Philip Edward Goldstone, 63, from West Ham, and John George Canning, 34, from London were identified by police.
A police spokesman said at the time: 'The suspects claimed they were hired by an employer abroad to travel to Thailand and smuggle cannabis out of the country.
'The employer arranged for travel tickets and accommodation for them, and they would receive the cannabis-packed suitcases at their hotels.
'They travelled to Koh Samui through a domestic flight from Bangkok. The alleged smugglers' were flying to Singapore with their final destination being London in England.'
The case is exceptional in the suspects all being slightly older. In recent months, it has predominantly been young people - teenagers or those in their early 20s - who have been nabbed at customs with huge quantities of drugs, accused of involvement in smuggling.
Police in Croatia saw an irregularity before arresting a 21-year-old roofer with 39 bags of cannabis, also neatly vacuum packed, at customs in Zagreb earlier this year.
The man, who was not named, claimed to have no idea how he had ended up with 23kg of marijuana.
He was revealed to have travelled from Thailand to the Croatian capital via Istanbul before sniffer dogs sounded the alarm.
Often, police in Thailand intervene before the drugs leave the country.
On March 4, British tourist Luziela Aaliyah Carvalho, 19, was allegedly caught with 35kg (80lbs) of marijuana while trying to board a plane at the Chiang Mai International Airport in Thailand.
She was scheduled to fly to Hong Kong before taking a second flight to London on Cathay Pacific flight CX 251 before officers allegedly detected the contraband in her luggage and arrested her.
National Crime Agency Branch Commander Andy Noyes suggested at the time that the arrests of 11 people accused of trying to bring drugs into the UK had been ensnared in a trafficking operation.
'The gangs behind this trafficking don't care about those who get caught – they just want their money,' he said.
'If you try to smuggle drugs into the UK, you will be arrested, and you will spend time in prison.'
Experts on drug trafficking - and indeed the family of Miss Culley - believe that she, too, may have been exploited by one of the gangs during a leisure trip to Thailand.
Miss Culley is said to have told legal sources that she was in love with an unknown man who now forms a central part of the police investigation.
On socials, Miss Culley told the world that she did not want to have a 'boring' life and was 'hungry for success'.
Online, she referred to herself as part of 'Bonnie and Clyde' and shared images of herself with wads of bank notes.
But family agreed that the idea she had willingly involved herself in a complex foreign drug trafficking scheme was preposterous.
'She's not daft,' her grandfather William Culley, 80, argued. 'She's an intelligent girl. Why has she done it? Has someone dangled money in front of her?
'We are just hoping that someone can do something. She must be terrified. She's got sucked into something, somehow,' he told reporters.
'She's not an international drug trafficker. She was just going on holiday.'
Later, he recalled a vague conversation he'd had with his daughter Lyanne Kennedy – Bella's mother – about how she had gone off to Thailand to meet someone called Ross or Russ. He couldn't be certain.
These details are expected to be combed through in court as investigators work to unpick how an 18-year-old with her sights on becoming a nurse ended up journeying from the U.K. to Thailand to Georgia, allegedly with hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of cannabis.
Likewise, investigators have been stumped by the arrival of a British 21-year-old former cabin crew member in Sri Lanka, allegedly carrying 46kg of cannabis in her luggage.
Charlotte May Lee, 21, from Coulsdon, south London, was detained in Colombo on May 12, a day after Miss Culley was stopped in Georgia.
Officials from the Customs Narcotics Control Unit in the airport said they had found with Miss Lee the largest amount of Kush, a quality strain of cannabis, ever to be detected since the international hub opened.
Sources close to the investigation said the 'massive consignment' is worth around 460 million Sri Lankan rupees - about £1,150,000.
The drugs, which have now been seized, were allegedly found 'tightly packed in luggage' and are believed to have been intended for 'high-end local buyers'.
Miss Lee has been remanded to custody while the Police Narcotics Bureau (PNB) investigates the case and potential legal action, according to local reporters.
According to friends, Miss Lee first flew out to Thailand in April to celebrate her 21st birthday with her older sister.
She then returned to Coulsdon and told friends she 'loved Thailand and wanted to work out there'.
She had said that she had found 'a job on a boat' a few weeks before her arrest, but did not voice plans to return.
So it came as a surprise when she started posting photos of herself partying abroad in Thailand, days before her arrest.
Upon news of her arrest, friends were equally shocked.
'I couldn't believe it. She's a hard worker and a grafter,' one said. 'We are shocked. I am in total shock. She's a nice girl.'
'There were no red flags or anything,' another said.
Again, it is unclear why Miss Lee decided to return to Thailand. Again, it is unknown why the 21-year-old suddenly found herself in Sri Lanka.
Mr Janashia suggested that Thai gangs may be explicitly targeting British backpackers, making them carry drugs across borders to get around a crackdown on mail-order shipments organised on the dark web.
Older headlines make note of British nationals arrested trying to bring heroin into the country from Thailand.
Today, most of the heroin imported into the UK is thought to originate from Afghanistan, often trafficked via the Balkans.
But the decriminalisation of cannabis in Thailand appears to have created new opportunity for gangs to harness tourists to smuggle narcotics around the world once more.
The policy shift has taken some of the power away from these gangs, and efforts to stop postal orders of drugs has cut off their lifeblood.
But a disturbing pattern of young Brits found at airports with huge quantities of drugs suggests a sinister movement still fighting back against threat of extinction.