A Brazilian crime couple who ran a multi-million-pound “Deliveroo service” with chemsex drugs delivered within 10 minutes have been jailed.
Suellen Miguez and Diego Arruda Reis, both 36, lived an “extravagant lifestyle”, living in multi-million-pound properties in south London and Surrey and driving luxury cars including an orange Lamborghini.
Inner London Crown Court heard customers rang a dedicated drugs line and ordered from a “menu of narcotics” including cocaine, ecstasy and the chemsex drug GBL.
Drivers would collect the drugs from Airbnbs and self-storage lockers and drop them off to the customer within 10 minutes.
The racket came to an end in 2018 when police seized drugs worth more than £3m, including the UK’s largest haul of GBL, and found evidence of at least £2.4m in transactions.
The couple, who sat together in the dock chatting and giggling before the hearing began, were jailed for a combined 26 years.
Miguez was convicted after trial for 14 drug offences and seven money laundering charges and was jailed for 13 years while Reis pleaded guilty to 14 drug offences and one count of money laundering and was also jailed for 13 years.
Two other members of the gang – Isabella Braga Da Silva, 23, and her boyfriend Bernardo Henrique Salles, 28 – described themselves as a “great duo” in WhatsApp messages and made references to Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Da Silva was jailed for three years and eight months in March last year and has since been deported back to Brazil, and Salles, along with Carlos Edurardio Libardi Da Silva will be sentenced tomorrow.
Another member of the gang, Dyego Melo Dos Passos, 33, was jailed for six years and eight months in December last year.
Former cleaner Miguez and privately-school educated Reis were said to be “at the very top” of the organisation and prosecutors say there is no evidence anybody sat above them.
Prosecutor Tom Coke-Smyth told the court Miguez had nearly £1million in various bank accounts, and one of Reis’ bank accounts had a balance of £853,617.
The couple lived in the lap of luxury while running the racket, renting a penthouse in the Riverside Quay complex in Battersea, south London, and a £12,500-a-month mansion in St George’s Hill, Weybridge, Surrey.
Mr Coke-Smyth said: “The network offered a unique service as it offered to provide a full range of illegal drugs to any users without the use of low-level street dealers.”
The largest amount of drugs seized were MDMA, of which 64,381 tablets were found, and 2,200 litres of GBL.
He said a “menu of drugs” was designed and given to customers, and described the network as “the Deliveroo of drug services”.
Reis fled the country in July 2018 but was extradited back to the UK in December.
Minka Braun, defending Miguez, said: “I’m not suggesting she’s a reluctant participant but her role was not one and the same of her husband. She is never referred to or described as by anybody as the boss.”
Miguez is said to have “thrown herself” into charitable enterprises and supporting pregnant and vulnerable prisoners during her time on remand.
The court heard Reis is from a “decent respectable family” in Brazil with his mother working as a university research biologist, his father an accountant and his sister a lawyer.
David Nathan QC, defending Reis, said his client was “recruited” to run the cell by other criminals and he was “living the dream” with all the trappings of wealth.