WITH his easy-going charm, former British soldier Nick fitted in with the wealthy yacht owners sipping gin and tonics on their decks at Ramsgate Marina.
Having grown up sailing on the Channel with his dad, he was thrilled with the 21ft-long yacht he had recently bought and loved to take it out at night, enjoying the peace and freedom he experienced under the stars.
GettyFormer builder Nick turned to people smuggling after work dried up, before realising he could smuggle them into the UK on yachts. Stock picture[/caption]
ITVAlbanian nationals were found hidden below deck on a yacht in Cornwall just weeks ago[/caption]
ITVWhen Border Force officers searched the yacht they found 20 passengers – 19 men and one woman – hidden below deck[/caption]
UNPIXS (EUROPE)Nick helped smuggle in Albanian migrants to work on cannabis farms. Pictured, a drug factory found in a former post office[/caption]
But these trips were fraught with danger because amiable, good-humoured Nick was actually a secret people smuggler on his way to pick up illegal migrants at Dunkirk in France and bring them to the UK.
And, in choosing Ramsgate, he was deliberately flouting the law under the very noses of the UK Border Control based there.
It’s a far cry from the image of hazardous crossings, with migrants packed on to inflatable rafts, that we see in the news.
In fact, it was all plain sailing until Nick was eventually rumbled. But he says that the luxury yacht crossings that he pioneered continue to happen every day from swanky marinas around the country.
The astonishing revelation comes after 1,194 migrants crossed the Channel on small boats on Saturday, marking the highest daily number of migrant small boat crossings since 2022.
Nick (not his real name) reveals his story to investigative journalist Annabel Deas in the 10-part BBC Radio 4 series Shadow World: The Smuggler.
“We all think we know who people smugglers are,” says Annabel. “They are people from far away countries with different values and ideas. People who can somehow justify making money out of desperate migrants.
“At least, that’s who I thought they were. But what if some of the people illegally smuggling migrants into the UK are actually from here? British people smugglers with an intimate knowledge of our borders.”
The builder turned smuggler
Nick had unexpectedly become a people smuggler in 2009 after his work as a self-employed builder dried up and his Albanian employee, Matt, told him that he could make easy money as a white man with a British passport.
With a baby on the way, he was desperate and soon discovered how easy it was to take his car on to the ferry at Dover, pick up pre-arranged illegal Albanian emigrants at Dunkirk and hide them in the boot as he drove back on board for the return journey.
Once on the ferry, he would wait for people to evacuate the car deck, then go down and release the man from the boot of his vehicle before finding a suitable lorry for the migrant to cut a hole through the tarpaulin and hide inside.
At Dover, he sent a picture and registration plate of the lorry to a member of the Albanian gang keeping watch and then drove through passport control in his car.
That was his work done. The following of the lorry and getting the immigrant out of it was somebody else’s business. Nick would pocket £3,500 for his “day trip to France”.
“It was so easy,” he says. “I did it many times and made good money.”
His girlfriend broke up with him a few months before their baby was born, but by now, Nick was enjoying the lifestyle.
However, after several successful runs, his luck ran out when his car was pulled over to be checked at Dunkirk and a migrant was found hidden in the boot.
Nick feigned surprise he was there but he served five months in a French prison before being released. It was a relatively short sentence because they were unaware that he was a seasoned people smuggler.
North Wales PoliceCops uncover a cannabis farm after a drugs bust in North Wales[/caption]
SWNSCops arrest a suspected Albanian drug smuggler in Cofton Hackett, Worcs[/caption]
While he was in prison, he heard that Matt had also been caught after a hidden migrant unexpectedly jumped out of a lorry after leaving Dover and got his foot caught in the wheel.
The police were called and their investigation led to Matt receiving a seven-year prison sentence.
Having served his time in France, Nick returned home to England and began trying to get work as a decorator, but within days he was visited by a mysterious man and woman who refused to identify themselves.
“They showed me a long list of ferry bookings from Dunkirk to Dover, all booked under my name and said, ‘You’re going to help us or we’re going to hold you responsible for some of these.’ I had a feeling they were from MI5.”
So, for a time, in 2015, he acted as an undercover informant, providing details about the workings of the Albanian gang who had employed him, before one day it suddenly ended.
“The guy just said to me, ‘Thank you for your help but we don’t need it any more.’ And that was it.”
After Matt was granted early release, in 2017, he contacted Nick about a new operation brokered by a glamorous, middle-aged Vietnamese woman called Lin, who wanted to smuggle in her fellow countrymen to work on the 35 cannabis farms she had set up around the UK.
This time Nick would receive £12,000 per migrant – almost four times the previous rate. It was too tempting to turn down.
No longer able to book ferry crossings without alerting the authorities, Nick came up with the idea of using a sailing boat.
Matt was surprised but was eventually persuaded and they purchased a boat. Nick then set about finding the perfect route, studying tidal charts and maps, and eventually settled on Ramsgate, Kent, where the UK Border Force is based.
“I chose it because I could monitor them,” he explains. “It’s a big marina and difficult to watch everyone and there would be several shifts of observers.
“Also, if you pretend that you are one of the wealthy, who can sit around on boats, then you will fit in. And I do that well.”
It was so easy. I did it many times and made good money
Nick on his ferry smuggling career
Lucy Moreton from the Union for Borders, Emigration and Customs, representing frontline staff, says: “We know that small boats in and around the UK don’t declare who they are or who they’ve got on board and don’t say where they are going. They don’t have to.
“The law doesn’t require them to do that. Generally, they are an independent bunch and the vast majority of them are completely law abiding and just want to go out and sail around.
“But that does leave a really exploitable loophole for individuals who want to do harm. There could be thriving small boat traffic that we’re not actually looking at.”
PAOver 1,100 migrants entered the UK on Saturday[/caption]
GettyHoliday hotspots like Cornwall are being used to unload migrants smuggled in on luxury yachts[/caption]
GettyNick ran his operation from Ramsgate by posing as an innocuous yacht owner[/caption]
After months of planning, Nick set sail from Ramsgate at 1am.
Directly, it should only take a few hours but he was being careful and headed north for at least an hour in case anyone was watching.
Once he was sure of not being followed, he made a sudden U-turn in the middle of the North Sea and began heading south to Dunkirk where four Vietnamese men were waiting for him.
Back in Ramsgate, with the four migrants hidden in the cabin, he moored the boat, walked away and drove home.
Following the plan, one of the Albanians would go to the marina and, under cover of darkness, collect the migrants. Once they were taken safely to the cannabis farms, Nick would be paid.
But on one occasion, when the migrants were collected while it was still light, they were observed by others and the police were contacted, and Nick had to stay away.
A surveillance team was called into operation to keep an eye on Nick’s movements.
Nick managed to carry out his ruse for up to 18 months before being caught. In late summer 2018, officers spotted him sail into view with four Vietnamese men in his boat.
He was arrested and charged with conspiracy to facilitate the illegal entry of foreign nationals into the UK and sentenced to eight years in prison.
“What Nick was doing was unprecedented,” says Annabel. “Smuggling people into the UK using a boat was virtually unheard of in 2016. You could say that Nick paved the way for the small boat crisis that would come later.”
Dinghy crisis
More than 13,000 people have crossed the English Channel on small boats so far in 2025. Last year, 78 people died attempting to make the journey – a record number.
“Most gangs now use small, over-crowded, inflatable boats to send people across the English Channel, knowing that once they enter British waters, those on board will be intercepted by Border Force and brought safely ashore. The migrants are then placed in hotels while their asylum claims are considered,” says Annabel.
“But what about the people who don’t want to be rescued and instead want to creep in unnoticed, like the ones Nick brought in?
“He told me that right now, gangs are still smuggling people into the UK using marinas and yacht clubs around the country.”
“While we were making this series, a luxury yacht, hiding 20 Albanians below deck was intercepted on its way to a marina in Cornwall.”
Labour’s vow to ‘smash the gangs’ won’t see Channel migrant numbers fall until NEXT YEAR, sources warn
Labour’s promise to “smash the gangs” will not see Channel migrant numbers fall until at least next year.
Measures to break the route “up stream” by tackling smugglers and boat suppliers will take months to trickle down according to law enforcement sources.
Ministers have been warned good weather this year is also contributing to a surge in crossings that are on course for a record year.
The number of so called “red days” when the calm seas and wind make it perfect to cross have doubled in 2025 so far according to the same point last year.
And intelligence monitoring of the Channel has indicated a rise in migrants from the Horn of Africa has seen riskier and larger crossings attempted.
Those smugglers are cramming more people into boats, which is also pushing up the numbers.
More than 13,000 people have already made the journey this year, putting 2025 on course to have the highest ever number of crossings, since records began in 2017.
Government insiders are highly pessimistic about the prospect of reducing numbers this year.
And they warn that policy changes and increase in enforcement measures not noticeably pay off until 2026 due to the high numbers of migrants already in France and ready to attempt the perilous journey.
Former Border Force chief Tony Smith told the BBC the “vast majority” of the agency’s resources were deployed to the Small Boats Operational Command and that he would like to see focus on other marinas.
“My preference certainly would be to be able to deploy more widely and to look more across the whole of the UK coastline to identify threats,” he said, adding he thought the interviews with Nick would be “really, really helpful as another source of intelligence”.
Nick insists small marinas are still being used today and adds: “People are going to hate me because there’ll be smuggling going on now. When they hear this, there’s going to be an issue.
“I regret a lot of it, but I don’t know that it would have ever been any different,” he says. “I think I was always out for self-destruction anyway.”
Shadow World: The Smuggler is available now on BBC Sounds
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