Ex-football club boss jailed over smuggling

Guy Simpson, who used to be chief executive of Southern League Premier Division side Halesowen Town, helped organise the shipment from China loaded in two 40ft (12m) containers which held more than 21 million counterfeit cigarettes.

He admitted at an earlier hearing to fraudulently avoiding duty totalling 4.5m on the shipment.

The 53-year-old, of Flag Lane, Heath Charnock, Lancashire, was arrested after a routine scan of the container at Southampton docks found the fake Regal brand cigarettes.

They were on board the Maersk Algol which arrived in Southampton from China on December 13, 2008.

Tim Moores, prosecuting, told Southampton Crown Court that the containers were registered to Simpson's company DS Property Developments (North West) Ltd and were supposed to hold gym balls.

When Customs said the containers were to be scanned, the barrister said Simpson panicked and "started to take steps to cover his tracks" because he had organised the shipment and completed all the paperwork.

He said the goods were not his and belonged to a third party. He made up the name of a man called Derek Gardner, but the prosecution said did not exist.

In mitigation, Andrew Hallworth, said the offence was "motivated by financial difficulties" and that Simpson was to be paid only 25,000 for organising the shipment, but he didn't know how many cigarettes were in the containers.

He was nearly 900,000 in debt and faced bankruptcy.

After the case, HM Revenue and Customs spokesman John Cooper said: "Criminals like Simpson don't care about undercutting honest retailers, depriving the UK of public funds or consider the real content of their cheap fake cigarettes."