Kurtis Hoyte, 35, was convicted by a jury at Southwark Crown Court on March 25 in relation to drugs and money laundering offences concerning 540 kilos of the class A drug.
He was arrested in May 2020 after he was observed handing over five kilos of cocaine with an estimated street value of £180,000 to the driver of a flat-bed truck near Beckenham Hill Station.
It was found that he used this to orchestrate the importation of 540 kilos of cocaine over a nine-month period between June 2019 and March 2020, using the handle “retroblade”.
In October 2020, a jury convicted him and truck driver Kieran Graham, 27, of Rayleigh, Essex, in relation to the seizure of the five kilos of cocaine.
Hoyte was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in November last year for the five-kilo seizure, and to 18 years imprisonment at the same court today (April 8) for the importations shown on his EncroChat phone.
The sentences will run at the same time.
Andrew Tickner, NCA Operations Manager from the OCP, said: “From the seizure of a relatively small amount of cocaine, my team was able to build a picture of largescale drug dealing arranged by Kurtis Hoyte.
“He was behind multi-kilo importations which would have seeped on to the streets of London and the UK, leaving a trail of violence and exploitation with them.
“The crucial partnership between the National Crime Agency and Metropolitan Police Service has helped put a high-harm offender behind bars for a very long time.
“Our fight against the organised criminal networks behind the drugs trade will never slow down.”
The Organised Crime Partnership has been in operation for 20 years and is comprised of equal numbers of specialist NCA officers and Metropolitan Police detectives.
The team works to stop the flow of drugs to the criminal market in London, target upstream criminals that impact on London, as well as disrupting those overseas that make huge profits from this illegal activity.
