A WEST Devon man who turned police supergrass in an attempt to hide his part in a drugs racket, was last week jailed for 14 years. Andrew Lovelock, 38, met undercover officers to tip them off about a £300,000 cocaine smuggling operation from Spain to Britain. But a jury decided that the clandestine rendezvous was just a ?cynical? ploy to cover up the fact that he had masterminded the scam. Lovelock, of Town Cleaves, Hatherleigh, denied conspiring with two others to smuggle drugs between June and July 2003 but was found guilty at Canterbury Crown Court in Kent, last Thursday, December 22. Judge Adele Williams told him: ?You are an arrogant manipulative criminal. You thought by going to the authorities it would give you immunity from prosecution. In effect you tried to run with the fox while hunting with the hounds!? Prosecutor Sara Forshaw told how customs officers at Dover, Kent stopped a Vauxhall Cavalier in July two years ago. Stashed inside were four kilos of cocaine with a street value of £300,000, she told the court. At the wheel of the car was Andrew Davies, 45, of Ruislip, Middlesex who had been recruited by Lovelock?s second lieutenant Larson. Larson, of Bournemouth pleaded guilty to a similar charge at an earlier hearing and was jailed for 12 years and Davies for nine years. The prosecutor added: ?Three individuals, at least, that we know about and can identify were involved in the conspiracy to smuggle cocaine. ?You may think an organiser of an importation would be very careful to distance himself from points of danger during an importation and so it is that an organiser would not be sat in a car stuffed with cocaine when it drives through customs at Dover. ?He employs others for that dangerous role, others who may be greedy or needy and who are paid for that task. The organiser may not trust the needy and greedy man at the bottom so the organiser may insist he is ?minded? while he has the drugs in the car.? She said that Lovelock was at the centre of the operation and ensured that ?others would do the dirty work on his behalf.? Ms Forshaw added: ?Davies was the courier and was to be paid for his role. He was a mule employed by Lovelock and had been employed through Larson, Lovelock?s second lieutenant. ?He owned the Cavalier and was an associate of Lovelock and knew Davies and arranged for Davies to be the mule. ?If this car was going to be caught with the drugs inside, neither Lovelock nor Larson intended to be in the passenger seat,? she added. Larson, who was not in the Vauxhall, had travelled out with Davies but returned as a foot passenger, getting out of the car before it boarded the ferry. He was also stopped by customs officers and they discovered a piece of paper with two numbers ? one being Lovelock?s ? in his bag. Ms Forshaw said at 21.20 hours on July 1, Lovelock was found at a filling station in Bovey Tracey with his Porsche. Police were called to the station because of an incident when Lovelock had become unhappy with a member of staff. He told police he had just returned from Spain where he had been buying a villa. Lovelock was arrested in March 2004 but in a prepared statement claimed that in 2003 he went regularly to Spain for commercial and business purposes. He added that he went to a go-kart track but would never import drugs. He alleged that officers were corrupt and that was why he was refusing to answer any questions. Ms Forshaw claimed that when Lovelock realised his two co-conspirators had been arrested he set about providing himself with ?an insurance policy in case he was under suspicion?.
