How a British man allegedly tricked Brazilian sailors into cocaine trafficking

For Daniel Guerra, an ambitious Brazilian sailor who aspires to travel the world, the vacancy was a dream come true.

A British yacht owner was looking for two sailors to sail his boat across the Atlantic Ocean from Brazil, one of the great ocean voyages.

There would be no salary, but all expenses would be paid – and, crucially, Mr Guerra would gain some of the sailing experience he needed to qualify as a sea captain.

“My dream was to become a captain and work in Europe,” recalls the 43-year-old, who saw the ad from an online sailing recruitment agency.

“So I was super happy, knowing that my path to my dream began.”

Things looked even better when Mr Guerra and his colleague, Rodrigo Dantas, 32, met their new British employer.

They feared he might be a snobbish sailor or a posing Instagrammer who would make sure they knew who was in charge.

But no. George Saul was a smiling, friendly figure who did not care for formalities. The sailors, he said, could even call him by his nickname: “Fox.”

“I worked on some boats and the owners were old, super demanding, super rude and talked down to me,” Mr. Dantas adds. “He was very cool, very friendly.”

Fox even passed the approval test of Mr. Dantas’s parents, who were concerned about their son taking such a long trip on a yacht owned by a total stranger and asked to meet him themselves.

To borrow the old sailing expression, they liked the cut of his jib. They learned that Fox had taken the Rich Harvest to Brazil for renovation and that they wanted a competent crew to sail it back to Europe on his behalf.

In addition to the newcomers, Mr. Dantas and Mr. Guerra, there would be two others, including a qualified captain.

“I said, ‘Look, look out for my son,’” Dantas’ father, João, recalled. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of Rodrigo.’”

It turns out his parents weren’t the only ones who wanted to make sure everything was okay aboard the Rich Harvest.

Before leaving Brazil, local police searched the yacht for drugs for about six hours, using a sniffer dog.

However, they didn’t find what they were looking for and the sailors assumed it was just a routine check.

They had heard stories of cocaine being planted on boats, and at least now they knew they were free.

“When you travel through an airport… your bags go through the X-ray machine,” Mr Dantas said. “So I thought, it’s an international trip and they’re coming to inspect the boat.”

Such concerns were far from their minds when they finally embarked on their epic journey on August 4, 2017, as the Brazilian coastline slowly receded behind them.

With them were an additional crew member, Daniel Dantas (no relation to Rodrigo Dantas) and the yacht’s newly hired captain, Frenchman Olivier Thomas, 56, a replacement for a former British captain whose sailing skills had proven to be subpar.

Fox, meanwhile, had returned to Europe by plane two days earlier.

“It was a beautiful day, perfect weather, sunshine,” recalled Mr. Guerra, who posted a message thanking Fox on his Facebook page.

It read: “I’m truly grateful, Fox, for this…opportunity to learn and for our bond that has made me stronger. Thanks mate.”

After two weeks of sailing, the yacht developed engine problems, forcing it to stop in Cape Verde, an archipelago off the coast of West Africa.

Once again, Mr. Guerra and Mr. Dantas found reasons to view it positively. The islands are a tourist paradise and Fox said he would send them money to enjoy themselves while repairs were made at a local marina.

And when more police arrived to search the ship, Mr. Guerra wasn’t concerned.

‘They didn’t find anything in Brazil,’ he thought to himself. “They won’t find anything in Cape Verde either.”

Cape Verdean police were even more thorough than their Brazilian counterparts, using specialized cutting equipment to open the bowels of the yacht.

Hidden under false floors they found almost 1.2 tonnes of cocaine – worth an estimated £100 million ($134 million) if sold on Europe’s streets.

“I felt like all my freedom was shattered,” Mr. Guerra said. “I was furious and couldn’t accept what was happening, you know? I was really fooled.”

In March 2018, the crew was tried in Cape Verde, in protest of their innocence.

They had never heard of Rich Harvest or its owner until they responded to the job posting, they insisted.

However, they were each sentenced to ten years in prison – in what was hailed as one of the country’s biggest failures.

But while the catch was impressive, the man Brazilian police considered the big catch escaped.

They believed the mastermind behind the operation was Fox, whose hunt was first brought to their attention by a tip-off from Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA).

Brazilian police believe he was the ringleader of the operation to smuggle the drugs.

In August 2018, Fox was arrested in Italy, where Brazilian police initiated extradition proceedings. They wanted him returned to Brazil to answer the allegations against him.

But the paperwork arrived too late and he was released – much to the frustration of Brazilian police inspector Andre Gonçalves.

He feared Fox had subsequently gone into hiding.

“We were left with the feeling that after all our work we would never get to the bottom,” he told the BBC. “It was very, very frustrating.”

Mr Gonçalves said his team had monitored both Fox and the yacht in Brazil. They believe that the “renovations” to the boat were partly to equip it with secret compartments, and that the drugs were loaded onto the ship before the sailors were hired.

Mr Gonçalves admits that he initially thought the four sailors were also involved.

“If someone is on a boat full of drugs, you think that person must have something to do with it,” he said.

But when he dug into their backgrounds, he couldn’t find anything that previously linked them to the drug world or to Fox.

“The deeper I went, I still couldn’t find a connection… but at the same time it strengthened the evidence we had against Fox.”

The sailors’ innocence also received support from an unlikely source: fellow American Robert Delbos, a man reportedly an accomplice of Fox.

Delbos, 71, is a convicted drug trafficker who was jailed for 12 years in 1988 for attempting to smuggle 1.5 tonnes of cannabis into Britain.

Before Rich Harvest left Brazil, Mr. Gonçalves’ team watched Delbos oversee the early stages of the yacht’s renovation.

They initially suspected that he fit into secret compartments, and initiated successful extradition proceedings for him around the same time as those against Fox.

Delbos spent months in a Brazilian supermax prison awaiting trial, but he too said the drugs were later planted without his knowledge.

He was acquitted after the judge in his case ruled that it could not be proven that he was aware of the smuggling plan.

In an interview with the BBC, he claimed that even drug traffickers had codes of ethics, and that Fox had violated them by using innocent sailors as mules instead of hiring professional smugglers.

‘This is completely beyond all expectations. “I mean, you don’t do this,” he said.

“He was a stupid man who was greedy. Instead of paying the crew properly and getting a professional, damn smuggling crew, he hired four innocent guys.”

As doubts about the sailors’ guilt increased, their families started a campaign on their behalf, which became a cause célèbre in Brazil.

In 2019, their convictions in Cape Verde were overturned and they were allowed to go home.

Fox, meanwhile, never faced a trial and returned to Britain.

The 41-year-old lives in Norwich in the east of England, where he grew up, attended university locally and was an accomplished amateur sailor sailing off the nearby Norfolk coast.

Today he lives in a suburb of Norwich and runs a property company.

He was a member of a local business networking association and posted photos of himself with the city’s then-mayor James Wright on his social media feed last March.

There is no indication that Mr Wright was aware of the allegations against Fox.

The BBC tracked down Fox when he arrived at one of his network association’s weekly business breakfasts at a hotel in Norwich.

He declined to comment on the bountiful harvest and the ordeal of the sailors.

Asked about allegations that he was a drug trafficker, he replied: “I’m not.”

An NCA spokesperson said that if Brazilian police still wanted to pursue the case, they would have to make an extradition request.

Brazil’s Justice Ministry said it did not comment on individual cases.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo Dantas and Daniel Guerra try to rebuild their lives in Brazil, with their dreams of becoming yacht captains abandoned.

Mr Dantas says he struggled to find sailing work when he returned home, with some employers assuming he was guilty after all.

Guerra’s sailing ambitions around the world remained “locked in Cape Verde”.

He says he has lost his ability to trust people, which was essential during the challenges of any long hunting trip.

Even now, he still wonders who Fox really was: that “cool” British man he was once so grateful for, whose job posting subsequently turned his life upside down.

He says he would “really like to see justice done,” but he never wants to meet Fox again.

“When I meet him, I won’t be the one to talk. It will be a different Daniel. All the bad feelings I had in prison will come out and I won’t be able to be a civilized person.”

Coming in October World of Secrets, Season 5: Finding Mr Fox.

A joint BBC Africa Eye, BBC Brasil and World of Secrets podcast investigation into a plot to smuggle cocaine worth more than $100 million into Europe.