Drone gang making ‘Deliveroo’ drug drops will be joining their customers behind bars

A gang that used drones to smuggle drugs and mobile phones into prisons have been jailed.

The seven criminals, believed to be responsible for 75 per cent of drone drops in prisons across the capital ‘as if by Uber Eats or Deliveroo’ a judge said.

Shafaghatullah Mohseni, 29, orchestrated dozens of late night and early morning ‘drops’ at prisons across London and the South East between December 2 2024 and February 26 2025.

Hashim Al-Hussaini, 28, Mohammed Hamoud, 22, Faiz Salah, 29, Zahar Essaghi, 51, Mustafa Ibrahim, 30, and Emanuel Fisniku, 25, assisted Mohseni, acting as lookouts and drivers, as well as receiving payments for the illicit shipments.

Hendon Magistrates’ Court heard at least two flick knives were among contraband planned to be smuggled into the prisons, as well as packages of drugs including cannabis, Xanax and Valium, and tiny mobile phones that could be hidden from guards.

The use of mobile phones in prison is banned for inmates and their value to prisoners attracts smugglers. Similarly drugs have a high value and can be used as currency in jails. 

The Met’s specialist crime unit began investigating the drone drops after an intelligence breakthrough in December last year, the court had heard. 

The investigating team set up surveillance posts outside prisons and analysed phone data that showed the suspects in the vicinity of prisons. The gang were primarily operating in London with Wormwood Scrubs, Brixton, Wandsworth and Pentonville on their list of drivery points. 

Experts also downloaded the flight data of drones that had been found in or around prisons. 

This allowed police to identify the drone pilots, co-pilots and taxi drivers as well as lookouts which made up the gang. 

The police identified 50 drone drops in the three months they were investigating the gang. They then swooped and arrested the seven who had believed they had covered their tracks and by working at night had stayed ‘off the radar’. 

The suspects were covertly pursued by officers and in the early hours of 26 February 2025, four men were arrested less than a mile from HMP Norwich. 

When searching their car officers found a knife, a drone and cannabis. The arrest led to seven men being charged. 

Judge James Lofthouse said it was a ‘well-oiled conspiracy’ which prison guards struggled to tackle – even if they had actually seen the drones making the drop-offs at cell windows.

Staff shortages meant guards could head to the cells to watch – through the door hatch – as ‘prisoners were stuffing items behind pipes’.

But by the time enough prison staff were available to conduct a search, the illicit items had vanished, said the judge.

‘Those who conspire for profit to flood our prisons with drugs and mobile phones, and are heedless to whatever else including weapons they smuggle in, facilitate further criminality, and undermine the general running and good order of our prisons’, said the judge.

He said inmates had items delivered ‘to order’, and criticised the ‘corrosive’ impact on prison safety and security from drones arriving with packages ‘as if by Uber Eats or Deliveroo’.

Mohseni, referred to in court as the ‘grand delivery driver’, was sentenced to five years and three months in prison as the leader of the conspiracy, having arranged drops in phone calls to prisoners and their relatives and received more than £30,000 in payments for the drone flights.

The Metropolitan Police said the gang was responsible for 75% of all drone drops into London prisons between December 2024 and February 2025.

All seven defendants admitted their roles in a ‘serious, organised, and prolific enterprise’ to supply Class B and C drugs, and conveying list A and B articles into prisons.

They would travel by car to the prisons, often in the early hours of the morning, and fly packages filled with contraband through cell windows.
The gang targeted at least nine prisons including Wormwood Scrubs, Brixton, Pentonville, Wandsworth, Norwich, and Leicester, the court heard.

Opening the case on Monday, prosecutor Sam Barker said: ‘Operation Buzzbin was a major police investigation conducted by the Metropolitan Police’s Specialist Crime Command to investigate drones being used to convey drugs, mobile telephones, USB sticks, and other contraband into prisons across the South East of England.

‘In total there were 70 different visits by the conspiracy group to prisons between December 2 2024 and February 26 2025, so the conspiracy ran until the involvement of the police for a period of 86 days.’

The court heard police arrested Mohseni, Al-Hussaini, Hamoud, and Fisniku travelling by car to a drop at HMP Norwich on February 26 last year after being tipped off that a knife was going to be smuggled into the prison.

They found a JD sports bag in the car with a drone, two packages containing phones and cannabis, and a knife.

The prosecution has accepted that the conspirators ‘may not have been aware’ that in one of the flights they conveyed a flick knife in one of the packages.

‘But the fact is they did convey one of the knives,’ added Mr Barker.
The conspirators were initially charged with conspiring to convey a knife into a prison, which has since been dropped as the defendants may not have packed the packages themselves.

Most of the 70 operations saw more than one flight take place, and the conspirators have been estimated to have made roughly 140 flights in total.

Along with cannabis, the conspirators also smuggled Xanax and Valium and were initially accused of smuggling cocaine, but this was later dropped.

One of the drones was recovered by police after it crashed into a woman’s backyard near HMP Wandsworth, the court heard.

She told officers that a man had knocked on her door to collect the drone in the early hours of the morning, but she had refused his entry.

Close relatives of prisoners were found to have sent large sums of money to Mohseni, as payment for the items, the court heard.

‘The headline is that Mr Mohseni received £26,785 from 14 individuals who are directly linked to a serving prisoner, at a prison where he was delivering items,’ said Mr Barker.

Mohseni was at the centre of a ‘web of financial transfers’ which saw him receive money and then pay the rest of his co-conspirators.

Defending him, Michael McAlinden, said that Mohseni began the offending as a means to pay off his debts.

Al-Hussaini, Hamoud, and Essaghi were sentenced to 33 months in prison, Salah was jailed for 31 months, Ibrahim received a sentence of 30 months in prison, and Fisniku was jailed for 27 months.

Mohseni, of Edgware, Salah, of north-west London, Essaghi, of north-west London, Ibrahim of Harrow Weald, Fisniku of Islington, Al-Hussaini, of Harrow, and Hamoud, also of Harrow were all told they must serve 40% of their sentences before being released on licence.

Concluding the sentencing hearing, Judge Lofthouse commended the work of Met Police officers including one who had gone to the Netherlands and China to secure key evidence from drone data records.

In July last year, the chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor warned of the increased risk drones would pose for smuggling drugs into prisons.

The watchdog chief said: ‘There is a level of risk that’s posed by drones that I think is different from what we’ve seen in the past, and both with stuff coming in and ultimately the potential for something even more serious to happen.

‘What I’d like to see is that the prison service really get a grip of this issue and and we’d like to see the Government, security services coming together, using technology, using intelligence, so that this risk doesn’t materialise.’

DI John Cowell, who led the investigation, said after sentencing: ‘This highly organised gang thought they were outsmarting the police and prison authorities. What they didn’t know is they were subject to sustained specialist surveillance by Met officers, who identified those responsible and brought them to justice.

‘We will continue to work closely with the Prison Service to tackle the gangs who bring violence and drugs to our prisons. Criminals should be under no illusion we will use every tool available to us to put them behind bars.’

Comments Add as preferred source