The year was 2011.
At the time, there was a team called Paul Bird Motorsport (PBM) that was running Kawasaki's factory team in the World Superbike Championship (WSBK).
On April 17, 2011, after the 3rd round of WSBK at the TT Circuit Assen in the Netherlands, PBM boarded a ferry with two team trucks to return to the UK. However, the UK Border Force received a tip-off from the National Crime Agency that racing equipment was being used for smuggling, and they prepared for an inspection. As soon as the two PBM trucks arrived in the UK,
the Border Force immediately began their search. And the results were...
(The team truck at the time)
They found 6kg of cocaine, 30kg of ecstasy (MDMA) pills, 35kg of cannabis, and 68kg of cannabis resinโworth about ยฃ2.5 million by 2011 standardsโalong with a Walther P22 pistol, a silencer, and 35 rounds of live ammo. They exploited the fact that racing team trucks usually had lax inspections, making it easy to pass through. Anyway, four team staff members on the trucks were arrested on the spot. Investigations later proved the guilt of a driver named Philip Roe, finding his fingerprints on the drugs along with a text message saying 'we can hit it big.' He had tried to dodge the charges by intentionally not being in the truck carrying the drugs and denying everything, but he was eventually sentenced to 18 years in prison. The other three staff members were found not guilty.
Meanwhile, Kawasaki responded by immediately terminating their factory team contract with PBM for the following 2012 season. Consequently, PBM withdrew from WSBK in 2012 and entered MotoGP, but failed to achieve much and pulled out after three years.
Since then, they've been competing in their domestic league, the BSB (British Superbike Championship), where they've been killing it, winning several titles and remaining active today. This incident also served as a wake-up call that racing teams could be involved in such crimes, leading to much tighter paddock and border security. And as for the suspect Philip Roe, who got the 18-year sentence...
Apparently, he recently asked Mat Oxley, a motorcycle journalist and former Isle of Man TT winner, to write his autobiography (...) but got shot down. ~The End~ Source: F1 (Formula One) Gallery
"Users are floored by the GTA-level scale of the smuggling and the driver's audacity to ask for a biography after getting out, while the rest of the thread descends into typical DC Inside chaos involving random celebrity mentions and UK-bashing."
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