William Eastment says he has no idea how the class A drug ended up in his suitcase (Picture: Facebook)
A British pensioner who allegedly attempted to smuggle five kilos of methamphetamine into Chile has been named and pictured.
William ‘Billy Boy’ Eastment,79,flew into Santiago from the Mexican city of Cancun on his way to Sydney,Australia.
But Eastment was detained after airport police allegedly found him travelling with crystal meth worth £200,000 in a hidden compartment.
The grandad claimed he had no idea how the five kilos of methamphetamine ended up in his luggage.
Eastment,a retired heavy goods and bus fitter,is known to his neighbours in Milborne Port as a ‘simple pensioner’.
The OAP lives on a quiet cul-de-sac in the Somerset village of fewer than 3,000 people,according to The Mirror.
Eastment has denied wrongdoing (Picture: Willian Eastment/Facebook)
Police estimate the methamphetamine would have been worth around £200,000 on Chilean streets
One local said they saw the Eastment only days before his arrest,with the bowler saying he was thinking of moving to Mexico.
They said: ‘I don’t know what day he left,but he must have gone in the week. I know he loves his bowls,and he fishes a bit too. What on Earth is someone like that doing mixed up in drugs?
‘He certainly hasn’t got a lot of money as far as you can tell. He’s just a simple pensioner,I thought,and he’s hardly living the high life here.’
Speaking to authorities in English,Eastment said he had been deceived and was handed the suitcase at Cancun airport.
He claimed he was promised $5,000,000 (£3,714,600) to deliver the suitcase to its final destination.
The Briton even produced a certificate with the prize money pledge before being remanded into custody.
Locals said the grandad loves to fish and bowl (Picture: William Eastment/Facebook)
Sergio Paredes,head of the police force’s Anti-Narcotics Division at Santiago’s international airport,said: ‘This case has its peculiarities.
‘A frail-looking,elderly person being caught with a large amount of methamphetamine who had recently been operated on and still had scars from that medical intervention and looked like a typical grandad if I’m going to be honest.
‘I always say anyone could be a potential drug smuggler. That’s the philosophy we work off here.
‘The false bottom in the British pensioner’s suitcase,where the drugs had been hidden,was filled full. It couldn’t have held any more methamphetamine.
‘We believe he was a drug mule in the pay of a criminal gang.
‘We’re still looking into where the drugs came from and where they were going to end up.’
Eastment is being kept at Santiago 1 Penitentiary alongside mostly non-violent offenders.
He can be held there for 120 days before he needs to be formally charged by investigators.
Initial reports pointed to a possible 15-year prison sentence if convicted,but Chilean legal experts have said five years behind bars is more likely.
The pensioner is far from the only British traveller allegedly caught up in a murky web of organised crime.
Bella May Culley sparked a massive international search operation in early May after she was reported missing while she was believed to be holidaying in Thailand.
Charlotte May Lee,a British former TUI cabin crew member who was arrested in a Sri Lankan airport after police discovered 46 kilos of ‘Kush’
But it was later revealed that the 18-year-old from Billingham,Durham,had been arrested 4,000 miles away on drug offences in Georgia,allegedly carrying 14 kilos of cannabis.
Londoner Charlotte Lee May,21,was arrested in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo after police discovered 46 kilos of ‘Kush’ – a synthetic strain of cannabis – in her suitcase.
The former flight attendant,who faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted,is claiming she had ‘no idea’ about the drugs and insisting they must have been planted in her luggage without her knowledge.
Bella May Culley went missing in Thailand before it emerged that she had been arrested on suspicion of drug offences in Georgia (Picture: Facebook)
Dr James Windle,of the Department of Sociology and Criminology,University College Cork,gave an insight into the ruthless tactics used by the traffickers to recruit mules.
He told Metro: ‘Larger,more sophisticated groups are very good at identifying people who might be open to exploitation.
‘At first,it might be consensual,with the person targeted being offered something they value,be it money,a holiday or something connected to an addiction.
‘There will very often be a grooming process where they might say a person has to go somewhere to pay for their holiday,with the flights paid for.
‘If they try and back out,then they might say,here’s a photograph of someone you love or even something as subtle as,“you know we’re very dangerous — only joking.”
‘Sometimes it takes the mules months,even years,to realise how they have been manipulated.’