A people smuggling gang kingpin based in east London has been jailed for buying boats for up to 10,000 migrants so they could cross the Channel into the UK. Ilford resident Hewa Rahimpur, 30, was sentenced to 11 years behind bars on Wednesday for aiding nearly 10 per cent of all migrant crossings to the UK across a 12 to 18-month period. Rahimpur, who is Kurdish and originally from Iran, came to the UK to claim asylum in 2016.He sourced the boats in Turkey and had them delivered to Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, before they were moved to the north French coast.The gang would make between £175,000 and £260,000 in profit from each of the dangerous crossings, the UK National Crime Agency (NCA), who led the investigation, said. At that time people were charged between £3,000 and £6,000 per crossing, with around 40 people crammed onto a small boat.As with other smuggling gangs they openly advertised their services on social media, with officials describing the fight to get the entries removed as like playing “whack a mole”.
