UK Smuggler Busted With £140,000 in Skull-Shaped Ecstasy Tablets

A 22-year-old man has been jailed for attempting to smuggle nearly 30,000 skull-shaped ecstasy tablets into the UK. 

This deal—facilitated via the social media platform Snapchat—earned Marshall Scurfield four years in jail.

According to the National Crime Agency (NCA), the package came from the Netherlands and contained 29,000 tablets testing positive for MDMA, Sky News reported. 

The package of skull-shaped ecstasy tablets has a street value of £140,000. However, Border Force officers were able to intercept it at Birmingham Airport. 

“Working with our colleagues at Border Force, we were able to prevent a sizeable quantity of ecstasy from making it to our streets, where it would have created exploitation and violence,” said NCA branch commander Martin Clarke, per Sky News. 

Scurfield, who was receiving parcel tracking updates on Snapchat, allegedly “thought that by using the postal system he would escape attention from law enforcement,” Clarke explained.

However, officials sent a fake package to Scurfield’s address instead of the real one, which led to his ultimate arrest. He was then charged with importing class-A drugs and sent to jail on Tuesday, where he is set to serve a four-year sentence. 

“We continue to pursue and dismantle high harm organised crime networks behind smuggling attempts like these,” Clarke said.