A drone gang that made 70 smuggling runs to London prisons, including HMP Wandsworth, has been jailed for a combined 22 years. The detail that brings it close to home: one of their drones crashed into a backyard near the prison. A man knocked on the resident’s door in the early hours to retrieve it. She refused.
Harrow Crown Court sentenced seven men on Tuesday as part of Operation Buzzbin, the Met Police investigation that identified the gang as responsible for the majority of drone drops at prisons across London. Over 86 days between December 2024 and February 2025, they made 70 visits to eight prisons, dropping cannabis, Xanax, Valium, mobile phones and at least two flick knives to inmates.
The gang’s leader, Shafaghatullah Mohseni, 29, of Overbrook Walk, Edgware, received the longest sentence of five years and three months. Prosecutors showed he had received £26,785 from 14 individuals linked to serving prisoners. Five other men acted as pilots and co-pilots; a further two as drivers and lookouts. All seven had pleaded guilty at earlier hearings.
The Met said the gang was responsible for 75 per cent of all drone drops into London prisons during the period. Mohseni, referred to in court as the “grand delivery driver”, arranged drops in calls to prisoners and their relatives. The conspiracy ended when police, tipped off that a knife was about to be smuggled in, arrested four of the gang travelling to a drop at HMP Norwich. Officers found a JD Sports bag in the car containing a drone, phones, cannabis and a knife.
The judge, James Lofthouse, described the operation as a “well-oiled conspiracy” that prison staff struggled to tackle. He noted that even when guards saw drones dropping packages at cell windows, staff shortages meant searches came too late. By the time officers could act, the items had already been hidden.
Inmates had items delivered “to order”, and the judge criticised the “corrosive” impact on prison safety from drones arriving “as if by Uber Eats or Deliveroo.”
This is the gang behind the drone problem at Wandsworth that we have been documenting since BBC Newsnight footage showed a drone dropping a package into the prison in July 2025. In January this year, three men were arrested near the prison with a drone and a bag of wrapped items. A separate incident, but the same pattern of exploitation. The wider context is bleak: an investigation into organised crime infiltration at Wandsworth found security failures being exploited at multiple levels.
DI John Cowell, the lead investigator, said the gang “thought they were outsmarting the police and prison authorities” but had been under “sustained specialist surveillance” throughout.
All seven must serve 40% of their sentences before release on licence.
