By REBECCA CAMBER, CRIME AND SECURITY EDITOR Published: 15:24 BST, 18 May 2026 | Updated: 15:27 BST, 18 May 2026
A lorry driver who smuggled £7.2million of cocaine in a shipment of Kim Kardashian's Skims underwear has been jailed for 13 years.Jakub Jan Konkel hid 90 packages each containing 1kg of cocaine in a specially adapted truck transporting pallets of Skims shapewear clothing.Border force officers stopped the 40-year-old Polish driver at the Port of Harwich in Essex as he arrived on a ferry from the Hook of Holland on September 5.An x-ray of the heavy goods vehicle revealed 28 pallets of legitimate clothing from the company co-owned by the star, but it also showed the truck had been specially adapted, with a hide constructed in the skin of the rear trailer doors.Investigators used Konkel's tachograph, a device fitted to commercial vehicles that automatically records distance and driver activity, to work out that he had stopped on his journey for 16 minutes when they believe drugs were loaded onto the vehicle.The defendant from Kartuzy in northern Poland initially denied knowing anything about the Class A drugs, but eventually pleaded guilty to drug smuggling, confessing he agreed to smuggle the drugs for a payment of £3918 (4,500 Euros).Today, he wept in the dock at Chelmsford Crown Court as he was jailed for 13 and a half years.Judge Richard Wilkin said Konkel offered himself as a 'willing driver' to collect the drugs from an industrial estate in Belgium. Jakub Jan Konke (pictured) has been jailed for 13 years after smuggling £7.2million of cocaine in a shipment of Kim Kardashian's Skims underwear The lorry driver hid 90 packages each containing 1kg of cocaine in a specially adapted truck transporting pallets of Skims shapewear clothing Skims underwear found in a HGV driven by Konkel, which was used to help conceal cocaine in the vehicleThe judge told him: 'Your role was not peripheral or limited. It was a significant role in this large-scale, commercial operation.'Officers had become suspicious of how he was driving his lorry and decided to x-ray it at the port.A mobile phone linked to the drugs supply was found in the vehicle, which had been set to automatically wipe itself after 18 hours.James Gray, defending, told the court that his client accepted what he did.The National Crime Agency discovered that neither the exporter nor importer were connected to the smuggled load, but they believe that Konkel was working with a wider organised crime gang.He will be deported after serving the sentence.After the sentencing, NCA operations manager Paul Orchard said: 'Organised crime groups use corrupt drivers like Konkel to move Class A drugs often hidden on entirely legitimate loads such as this.'The detection and investigation have removed a significant amount of cocaine whose profits are lost to the crime group behind the smuggling attempt, and with Konkel they've lost an important enabler.'The NCA works with partners at home and abroad to protect the public from the threat of Class A drugs, which are at the epicentre of huge amounts of crime and suffering in UK communities.'
