Two jailed after £4 million of cocaine collected from airfield in Corby
They were arrested after officers saw drugs being transferred from a plane to a car at Deenethorpe Airfield in Northamptonshire in February 2022.
Two men from Coventry have been jailed for more than 24 years after 50kg of cocaine was picked up from a light aircraft at Deenethorpe Airfield near Corby.
The plane had flown in from Belgium on 23 February 2022. Officers from the National Crime Agency were watching when a black suitcase was removed from the aircraft and put into a car driven by a man later identified as 39-year-old Richard Farmer.
When Farmer left the airfield, Northamptonshire Police stopped the car and found 50 taped packages of cocaine worth an estimated £4 million in the boot.
Investigators found phone messages linking Farmer to Blaine Harvey, also 39, who they said was waiting nearby to help distribute the drugs. The pair had been in regular contact and planned to sell the cocaine across Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Coventry, Kent and Essex.
Harvey was arrested at his home in Coventry in April 2022. Both men denied being involved but were found guilty at Northampton Crown Court on 16 July 2025 after an eight-day trial. Farmer was sentenced to 12 years in prison and Harvey received 12 years and six months.
The aircraft continued its journey to Ireland, where three men from Sweden and Lithuania were arrested by Irish police. They were later extradited and convicted in Sweden for drug offences.
National Crime Agency Branch Commander Lydia Bloomfield said: “This is a significant haul of Class A drugs brought in on a private plane in the hopes of avoiding detection. Farmer and Harvey were working together under an organised crime group to deal them on our streets with little regard for anything but their profit.”
She added: “These convictions will disrupt the upstream organised crime group behind this smuggling and we will continue to work to stop those who attempt to bring drugs into the country from overseas.”