Basildon man jailed for role in sending £45m MDMA into Australia

William Sartin, of Timberlog Lane, Basildon, was part of a group who hid 448 kilos of the drug within the arm of an industrial digger, and organised an online auction to make the excavator's arrival in Australia look legitimate. There, the MDMA would have sold for far more than the UK street price.

He was convicted in September and sentenced to 23 years in prison at Kingston Crown Court today, joining co-conspirators Danny Brown, Stefan Baldauf, Peter Murray, Tony Borg, Leon Reilly and Philip Lawson who were sentenced for their roles in 2022.

Jailed - William Sartin (Image: National Crime Agency)

The digger cost 75,000 Euros and was first stored in an industrial unit in Grays, which was under the control of Sartin.

It was worked on in Grays, with Borg, of Southwark Path, Basildon, and Lawson, sealing the Class A drugs behind a lead lining, before it was moved to Southampton Docks to be shipped off. It took almost three months to arrive in Brisbane, Australia.

Australian Border Force officers x-rayed the digger, removed the drugs and sealed the arm before letting it move onto its intended destination under surveillance.

Two men from the Australian gang, who had been forwarded a diagram showing exactly where the drugs were hidden, realised something was wrong in May 2020 after spending two days looking for the drugs. 

Plot - the MDMA was hidden inside this Doosan digger (Image: National Crime Agency)

The individual at the heart of the plot, Brown, had been identified by National Crime Agency investigators infiltrating and taking down encrypted platform EncroChat, after he had sent an image of his pet to co-conspirator Baldauf. The dog's tag had his partner's phone number on it.

The group were arrested by National Crime Agency officers between mid-2020 and early 2021. Sartin, 63, had communicated with the fellow gang members under the Encrochat handles "haplessbadger" and "urbanmallet".

Scan - Border force officers discovered the MDMA after an x-ray scan (Image: National Crime Agency)

He had multiple previous convictions. In 2000, he was involved in an attempt to smuggle 480kg of cannabis into the UK from the Netherlands, hidden amongst scrap metal. In 2011, he was convicted of conspiracy to cheat the public revenue, having conspired to smuggle tobacco and tobacco shredding machinery into the UK.

Chris Hill, NCA Branch Commander, said: "Sartin played a vital role in this conspiracy; it was in his industrial unit that the excavator was concealed, cut open, and filled with MDMA.

"All of these men thought that they were safe on EncroChat, but NCA officers painstakingly combed through every single message they sent to build evidence against them.

"Our work with partners abroad, shown here through our collaboration with the Australian Federal Police, protects the public from the dangers of Class A drugs, which destroy lives and communities here in the UK and across the world."