British TikTok influencer Modou Adams jailed after trying to smuggle £300,000 worth of cocaine out of Peru

A British Tiktok influencer and model has been jailed for more than six years after being caught trying to smuggle cocaine into the UK.

Modou Adams, who has more than 11,000 followers on his Instagram account @boywholives, was stopped and searched at the Jorge Chavez International Airport, in Peru’s capital Lima, on Saturday 30 September, according to Sky News. About 2.9kg of cocaine was found hidden inside a suitcase, which was bound for Paris before being sent onto London. The drugs were worth an estimated £300,000, according to reports. 

The 25-year-old pleaded guilty to the drug trafficking charge and was sentenced to six years and eight months by a court in Peru. He was also fined about £1,500. Peru's Supreme Court posted an edited image of the online influencer behind bars on social media after his sentencing.

Adams, who is from London, last shared photos of himself on Instagram a month ago. On Tuesday 26 September, he posted a series of images and a video showing he was at Machu Picchu, a historic site set in the Andes Mountains. The glamour shots prompted one of his 11,200 Instagram fans to say: “You are living the dream” to which Adams responded: “Life is a dream always”.

Adams, who has a link to Shelley Durkan Casting on his Instagram account which suggests he was managed by the talent agency, was known for showcasing a lavish lifestyle online. Just a month before his arrest, he posted photos of him attending the Pause Magazine’s London Fashion Week launch party and the Dazed Magazine’s Autumn/Winter 2023 issue launch party. Prior to that he posted numerous glamorous images of himself enjoying a sun-soaked holiday in Athens, Greece.

Similarities with ‘the Peru two’

Adams had been in Peru for around 11 days before his arrest, according to reports, and he had also filmed himself posing as a tourist in Cusco, the city that infamous drug mules Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid visited before their arrests in 2013. The pair, who became known as ‘the Peru two’, were also apprehended at Jorge Chavez International Airport after they were caught smuggling £1.5million of cocaine which they had hidden in food packets. They were sentenced to six years and eight months in prison, but were released after serving around half of their sentences and returned to the UK.

Peru's Supreme Court confirmed the jail sentence in a statement where it referred to the Brit by his full name of Modou Dodou Adams and described him as a Tiktoker and shared the image of him behind bars.

Revealing he had been jailed by a court in Lima's Callao district specialising in punishing crimes where offenders have been arrested while committing an offence or immediately afterwards, it said: “Tiktoker Modou Dodou Adams, 25, has been jailed for six years and eight months for having co-ordinated the dispatch of nearly three kilos of cocaine to London. The sentence was delivered in less than 24 hours after the accused man admitted the crime he had been charged with.”

‘Not worth risking your freedom’

The moment Adams was taken into custody by two anti-drugs squad officers as he checked in for his flight was also filmed on cameras at the airport, as reported by the Daily Mail. The footage shows that one of the officers used a knife to cut through a false bottom of the suitcase to find the cocaine and then held it up to Adams, who looked horrified. The police then proceeded to body-search him.

Anti-drugs prosecutor Lincoln Fuentes said: “It wasn't the first time this British national had come to Peru. The first time he had also taken drugs out of the country, most probably in the same way with a specially-prepared suitcase. In Peru a kilo of cocaine is around £3,000 but this amount multiplies in Europe by a massive amount.”

He added: “Each drug mule is paid £5,200 to £6,000 per drug run as well as getting all their expenses paid including the tourist trips they enjoy to camouflage their real reason for coming here. The objective this man had for coming here was solely to transport drugs back to Britain.”

In a message to other Europeans tempted by the money drug gangs offer to get them to smuggle cocaine out of Peru, he warned: “The prison sentences here are very high and it's simply not worth the risk of putting your freedom in jeopardy.”