People smuggling

British man arrested for smuggling woman inside van's engine

A British man was sentenced to three years in the slammer for modifying his van’s engine — to accommodate an Albanian woman who sought to enter the UK illegally, the Daily Mail reported.

“This was a particularly elaborate concealment and it is a demonstration of the desperate lengths that individuals — and people smugglers — are prepared to go to in their attempts to breach the UK’s border controls,” border official Paul Morgan said of the Feb. 1 incident.

...“When officers flipped the hood of the van to examine the engine, they found it had been specially adapted,” Morgan said. “The whole engine had been lowered and in the void where you would normally expect to find a spare wheel, officers instead found a woman.”