Drug Mule-Wheelchair-bound mother, 53, is jailed after trying to smuggle £1million worth of cocaine into Britain

A wheelchair-bound mother has been jailed for seven years for trying to smuggle around £1million worth of cocaine into the UK hidden in toiletries.

Myrtle McCreath, 53, from Ayr, was arrested at Glasgow Airport on February 26, 2014 after arriving on a flight from Sao Paulo, Brazil, via Amsterdam.

During a search of her baggage, Border Force officers found around 50 containers of face cream, talcum powder and other toiletries. Inside, there was 7.8 kilos of high-purity cocaine.

McCreath denied knowledge of the drugs, telling National Crime Agency (NCA) investigators that she had been in Brazil for a week on holiday.

But messages found on her mobile phone showed she had been given a suitcase to carry back to the UK, and was due to take a train to Manchester where she would hand it over.

Officers also discovered that she had been paid 1,000 euro (£700) just days before travelling, and had been transferred a similar sum for a return trip to Australia via China a few months earlier.

McCreath - who normally spent her days sewing at her Ayrshire home - was lured into the crime by a mysterious drug cartel after meeting a man called John Edwards on Facebook, a court heard.

Edwards claimed to have been in charge of a gold-mining business in Africa.

The pair struck up an internet romance before he introduced his friend Philip Okoko to McCreath online.

McCreath eventually agreed to ferry drugs despite never having met the two men in person, the court heard.

She told a jury she thought she was travelling the world to pick up a substance to clean £30million of dirty banknotes left to the men by generous relatives. 

McCreath was found guilty of importing class A drugs following a trial at the High Court in Glasgow in October and has now been sentenced to seven years in prison.

Daily Mail