A Welsh drug dealer left Colombia "never to return" after snorting cocaine from the grave of feared drug lord Pablo Escobar, a court has heard. Steven Semmens subsequently said he carried out the stunt for a bet and did not think things would go as far as they did.
Semmens' barrister said his client's actions – which were put on Facebook – did not go down well with criminal confederates of the former cartel boss and were a sign of his "naivete" and of the Walter Mitty fantasy world he was living in. Semmens and four fellow cocaine conspirators have been sentenced to a total of more than 52 years in prison at Swansea Crown Court for their parts in peddling the Class A drug.
The court heard the men were involved in trafficking large quantities of cocaine into south Wales – often shipping stock from areas where there was glut of supply to areas where the supply was more limited and demand and therefore profits were higher. One of the defendants, Shane White, used the EncroChat secure communications network to run the operation while still working for the family glazing business. White also plotted with Semmens to import kilos of cocaine from South America to the UK – though as his barrister told the court not a single gram of the drug was every actually brought into the country by the duo due to their lack of ability and there was "something almost comical about their ineptitude".
