British Woman, 27, Caught Smuggling £15 Million Worth Of Cocaine Into America Avoids 60-Year Sentence

It’s a day ending in ‘Y’, which means we have ourselves another case of a British person being busted for smuggling copious amounts of drugs abroad. This act itself actually took place in 2024, but the smuggler in question has just been sentenced.

Kim Hall, 29, from Middlesbrough, landed herself right in it after allegedly transporting 43kg of cocaine from Mexico to Chicago as she prepared to catch a connecting flight to London.

She claims that two men who had paid for her holiday to Mexico held a gun to her head and ordered her to carry two suitcases through security (of course), and the rest is history.

Beautician Kim claims to have thought that the suitcases were stuffed with cash.

She told ITV’s This Morning: “It just seemed really legit and straightforward.

“I was going to go on a holiday, take a break and just do them a favour by bringing back this money to give to a member of their family.

“They just said that one of them had lost their passport and they were in trouble and needed to get some money home to their family.”

I’m not sure why they would feel the need to hold her at gunpoint if she says she thought that it was totally legit and above board, but hey ho. In the end, security at O’Hare International Airport discovered what was inside the cases, Kim was arrested and told she could potentially spend 60 years behind bars, especially following her not guilty plea.

It turned out to be a far more lenient sentence, however, as a judge sentenced her to just six years in prison after a court appearance yesterday (Monday 8 September). Which obviously won’t be fun at all, but an absolute result considering the amount of time she was looking at initially.

Her lawyer Brandon Carter negotiated the soft sentence by arguing that the court had no interest in holding a foreign national behind bars for a period as extensive as 30 or 60 years.

Dad John told The Sun: “It’s better news than we could ever have hoped for. When we first heard talk of a plea deal we didn’t dare to hope.

“I couldn’t get the figure of 60 years out of my head and feared the worst. But instead of the worst case scenario we are now looking at just about the best we could have hoped for. Kimberley has suffered terribly through this ordeal through no fault of her own, we all have.

“It’s been a long, hard struggle financially and emotionally but we always had faith in her and always supported her. She is not a criminal and never has been.

“She is just a naïve young woman whose decision making was affected by her bipolar condition. Thankfully the courts recognised all of that and it means we will be getting her home much sooner than we have always feared.”

Naive young woman? At 27? Well, I guess it’s all relative. Just goes to show that if you’re dense enough to smuggle drugs internationally, it’s best to stick to countries that are notoriously soft on crime, at least in relation to Eastern Europe or Asian counterparts. You live and you learn.

For the moment £500k-a-week drug lord James Harding was arrested after stepping off his private jet, click HERE. Something tells me he’s getting a lot longer than 6 years.