THREE hired hands were caught red-handed unloading hundreds of boxes of smuggled cigarettes from a container lorry at a North-East industrial estate.

Customs officers swooped on a business unit at Langley Moor, near Durham, in a "knock" which yielded nearly six million contraband cigarettes, last December.

Durham Crown Court was told thousands of packets of Embassy Regal were recovered, hidden among a consignment of glassware on the 40ft lorry, which had travelled from Greece.

Robin Patton, prosecuting, said undercover Customs officers, keeping watch on the lorry, rammed roller- shutter doors in their vehicle to gain access to the unit, on the Littleburn Industrial Estate.

They found John Scott and Brian Booth huddled together, hiding in a cupboard in a maintenance room, while John McMann was attempting to drive a vehicle away.

All three were detained and McMann told the officers: "It's okay, you've got me banged to rights," said Mr Patton.

He said the lorry reached Britain on a ship from the Greek port of Piraeus, before travelling north from Felixstowe.

In an interview, all three said they were recruited simply to unload the cigarettes from the lorry and to despatch them to "customers".

Mr Patton told the court the loss to the Treasury on the consignment would have been more than £700,000.

Defence barristers said the trio were recruited in South Tyneside pubs and were offered £50 each, not realising the amount of cigarettes they would have to unload. Each jumped at the chance as it was nearing Christmas and they were in need of money.

Graham Duff, for McMann, said: "This was clearly an arrangement where the organisers distance themselves so they don't get their hands dirty."

McMann, 43, of Renoir Gardens, and 27-year-old Booth, of Tanfield Gardens, both South Shields, and 35-year-old Scott, of Hadrian Road, Jarrow, each admitted being knowingly concerned in the fraudulent evasion of duty on cigarettes with a retail value of about £1m.

Recorder George Moorhouse accepted that none of the trio was involved in the organising or planning of the load. But he said each would have faced a "substantial prison sentence", if they had been deemed "perpetrators".

McMann and Booth were ordered to perform 200 hours' community service and Scott was given a three-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months.

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