A woman exploited her key worker status to transport drugs, leading to lengthy prison sentences for both her and the drugs boss.
Bolton: So, there’s this woman, Debra Charlton, who thought she could get away with transporting drugs during the Covid lockdown. She used her key worker status to move cocaine and heroin around, which is pretty wild, right?
She ended up getting caught along with Faruquz Zaman, the guy who was running the whole operation. He was buying huge amounts of drugs from international suppliers to sell in Bolton. Talk about a risky business!
Charlton was basically a courier for Zaman, handling money and drugs for him. Both of them were sentenced recently, and it’s a hefty time behind bars—Zaman got 18 years and Charlton got over eight years.
This all ties back to the takedown of Encrochat, a secret messaging system used by criminals. The police cracked its encryption, which led to a bunch of arrests, including these two.
They thought they could hide their tracks by ditching their phones and cars, but it didn’t work out. The police had enough evidence from those encrypted messages to nail them.
A detective said they really believed they were safe using that system, but they were wrong. They were just too open about their lives while doing all this illegal stuff, and it caught up with them.
In the end, both Zaman and Charlton were sentenced at Bolton Crown Court, and it’s just a reminder that crime doesn’t pay, especially when you think you’re cleverer than the law.
