Finding Mr Fox: How a British man allegedly tricked Brazilian sailors into trafficking cocaine

For Daniel Guerra, an aspiring Brazilian sailor eager to journey the world, the job ad was a dream come true.

A British yacht proprietor was looking for two deck-hands to assist sail his boat from Brazil throughout the Atlantic, one of many nice ocean journeys.

There can be no wage, however all bills paid – and, crucially, Mr Guerra would acquire a few of the crusing expertise he wanted to qualify as a sea captain.

“My dream was to develop into a captain and go work in Europe,” remembers the 43-year-old, who noticed the advert from a web-based crusing recruitment company.

“So I used to be tremendous comfortable, figuring out that my path to my dream was starting.”

Issues regarded even higher when Mr Guerra and his fellow recruit, Rodrigo Dantas, 32, met their new British employer.

That they had feared he could be some snobbish yachtie or posing Instagrammer, who would be certain they knew who was boss.

However no. George Saul was a smiling, pleasant determine, who didn’t insist on formalities. The sailors, he mentioned, might even name him by his nickname – “Fox”.

“I used to work on some boats and the homeowners had been outdated, tremendous demanding, tremendous impolite and talked all the way down to me,” provides Mr Dantas. “He was like, very cool, very pleasant.”

Fox even handed the approval check of Mr Dantas’s dad and mom, who had been nervous about their son doing such an extended journey on a yacht owned by a complete stranger, and requested to satisfy him for themselves.

To borrow the outdated crusing expression, they appreciated the reduce of his jib. They discovered that Fox had introduced the Wealthy Harvest over to Brazil for renovations, and needed a reliable crew to sail it again to Europe on his behalf.

In addition to the rookies, Mr Dantas and Mr Guerra, there can be two others, together with a certified captain.

“I mentioned: ‘Look, be careful for my son’,” remembers Mr Dantas’s father, João. “He mentioned: ‘Don’t fret, I will handle Rodrigo.’”

Because it turned out, his dad and mom weren’t the one ones who needed to examine that every one was properly on board the Wealthy Harvest.

Earlier than the departure from Brazil, native police spent round six hours looking the yacht for medicine, with the assistance of a sniffer canine.

They didn’t discover what they had been in search of, although, and the sailors assumed it was only a routine examine.

That they had heard tales about cocaine being planted on boats, and now a minimum of knew they had been within the clear.

“Once you journey by an airport… your baggage undergo the X-ray machine,” says Mr Dantas. “So I believed, properly, it is a global journey they usually’re coming to examine the boat.”

Such worries had been removed from their thoughts once they finally launched into their epic journey on 4 August 2017, the Brazilian shoreline slowly receding behind them.

With them had been an extra crew member, Daniel Dantas (no relation of Rodrigo Dantas) and the yacht’s newly employed captain, Frenchman Olivier Thomas, 56, a alternative for a earlier British captain whose crusing expertise had not proved as much as scratch.

Fox, in the meantime, had made his method again to Europe by aircraft two days earlier than.

“It was a ravishing day, excellent climate, solar,” remembers Mr Guerra, who posted a message of because of Fox on his Fb web page.

It learn: “I am actually grateful, Fox, for this… probability to be taught and for our bond that has made me stronger. Thanks mate.”

After two weeks of crusing, the yacht developed engine issues, forcing it to cease in Cape Verde, an archipelago off the coast of West Africa.

As soon as extra, Mr Guerra and Mr Dantas discovered causes to look on the intense facet. The islands are a vacationer paradise, and Fox mentioned he would wire them cash to take pleasure in themselves whereas repairs had been finished at an area marina.

And when but extra police got here to go looking the vessel, Mr Guerra was not nervous.

“They did not discover something in Brazil,” he thought to himself. “They will not discover something in Cape Verde both.”

The Cape Verdean police had been much more thorough than their Brazilian counterparts, utilizing specialist slicing tools to open up the yacht’s innards.

Hidden inside beneath false flooring, they discovered almost 1.2 tonnes of cocaine – price an estimated £100m ($134m) if bought on Europe’s streets.

“I felt that every one my freedom was happening the drain,” mentioned Mr Guerra. “I used to be livid, could not settle for what was taking place, ? I’d been actually fooled.”

In March 2018, the crew went on trial in Cape Verde, protesting their innocence.

That they had by no means even heard of Wealthy Harvest or its proprietor till they answered the job advert, they insisted.

They had been sentenced, nonetheless, to 10 years in jail every – in what was hailed as one of many nation’s greatest busts.

However whereas the haul was spectacular, the person Brazilian police considered the large catch bought away.

They believed that the mastermind of the operation was Fox, whose yacht was first drawn to their consideration by a tip-off from the UK’s Nationwide Crime Company (NCA).

Brazilian police consider he was the chief of the operation to smuggle the medicine.

In August 2018, Fox was arrested in Italy, the place Brazilian police filed extradition proceedings. They needed him to be returned to Brazil to reply the allegations in opposition to him.

However the paperwork arrived too late, and he was freed – a lot to the frustration of Brazilian police inspector Andre Gonçalves.

He feared that Fox had subsequently gone into hiding.

“We had been left with that feeling that in any case our work, we’d by no means resolve it,” he advised the BBC. “It was very, very irritating.”

Mr Gonçalves mentioned his staff had saved each Fox and the yacht below surveillance in Brazil. They consider the “renovations” on the boat had been partly to suit it with secret compartments, and that the medicine had been loaded on to the vessel earlier than the sailors had been employed.

Mr Gonçalves admits that initially, he presumed the 4 sailors had been concerned too.

“If somebody is on a ship that is full of medication, you suppose that individual will need to have one thing to do with it,” he mentioned.

However as he dug into their backgrounds, he might discover nothing beforehand linking them to the drug world or to Fox.

“The deeper I went I nonetheless could not discover a connection… however on the similar time it strengthened the proof we had in opposition to Fox.”

The sailors’ pleas of innocence additionally bought backing from an unlikely supply – fellow Briton Robert Delbos, a person who was alleged to be an confederate of Fox.

Delbos, 71, is a convicted drug trafficker, having been jailed for 12 years in 1988 for trying to smuggle 1.5 tonnes of hashish into the UK.

Earlier than the Wealthy Harvest left Brazil, Mr Gonçalves’s staff noticed Delbos supervising the primary phases of the yacht’s renovations.

They initially suspected he was becoming secret compartments, and filed profitable extradition proceedings for him across the similar time as these in opposition to Fox.

Delbos spent months in a Brazilian supermax jail awaiting trial, however he too mentioned the medicine had been later planted with out his data.

He was acquitted after the choose in his case dominated it couldn’t be proved that he knew concerning the smuggling plan.

In an interview with the BBC, he claimed that even drug traffickers had codes of ethics, and that Fox had violated them through the use of harmless sailors as mules moderately than hiring skilled smugglers.

“That is utterly past the pale. I imply, you do not do that,” he mentioned.

“He was a silly man who was grasping. As a substitute of paying the crew correctly and getting himself knowledgeable, bloody smuggling crew – he employed 4 harmless guys.”

As doubts concerning the sailors’ guilt grew, their households started a marketing campaign on their behalf, which turned a trigger célèbre in Brazil.

In 2019 their convictions in Cape Verde had been overturned, they usually had been allowed to go house.

Fox, in the meantime, has by no means confronted trial, and returned to the UK.

The 41-year-old lives in Norwich in japanese England the place he grew up, attended faculty regionally, and was an completed newbie yachtsman – crusing off the close by Norfolk coast.

In the present day, he resides in a Norwich suburb and runs a property agency.

He belonged to an area enterprise networking affiliation, and on his social media feed final March, posted pictures of himself with the town’s then Lord Mayor, James Wright.

There isn’t a suggestion that Mr Wright was conscious of the accusations in opposition to Fox.

The BBC tracked Fox down as he arrived at one in every of his networking affiliation’s weekly enterprise breakfasts, at a Norwich lodge.

He declined to touch upon the Wealthy Harvest and the sailors’ ordeal.

Requested concerning the allegations that he was a drug trafficker, he replied: “I am not.”

An NCA spokesperson mentioned if Brazilian police nonetheless wished to pursue the case, they must file an extradition request.

Brazil’s ministry of justice mentioned it didn’t touch upon particular person circumstances.

In the meantime, Rodrigo Dantas and Daniel Guerra try to rebuild their lives in Brazil, their desires of changing into yacht captains deserted.

Mr Dantas says he struggled to search out crusing work on his return house, with some employers assuming he will need to have been responsible in any case.

Mr Guerra’s round-the-world crusing ambitions “stayed locked up in Cape Verde”.

He says he misplaced his capacity to belief individuals, important through the challenges on any lengthy yacht voyage.

Even now, he nonetheless wonders who Fox actually was – that “cool” British man he as soon as felt so grateful to, whose job advert then turned his life the wrong way up.

He says that he would “actually wish to see justice finished”, however has no want to meet Fox ever once more.

“If I meet him, it received’t be me who’s going to speak. It will likely be one other Daniel. All of the unhealthy emotions I had in jail will come up and I received’t have the ability to be a civilised individual.”

Coming in October World of Secrets and techniques, Season 5: Discovering Mr Fox.

A joint BBC Africa Eye, BBC Brasil and World of Secrets and techniques podcast investigation right into a plot to smuggle cocaine valued at extra $100m to Europe.