Teenager Turned Drug Lord: Arrested After £20 Million Ibiza Drug Bust

Eddie Burton was once a missing teen. He later became a drug boss. Sian Banks, his girlfriend, helped him run a £20 million drug business. Police arrested him in Ibiza in August 2023; he used a fake name then.

Years earlier, he lived in Europe, organizing drug shipments to the UK. Before all this, he was a teen who disappeared from home twice back in 2016.

His grandmother stated that he sold drugs as a teen under the influence of older men. She wasn’t surprised by his later crimes.

Burton and Banks will be sentenced soon for bringing drugs into the UK. Burton, 23, lived in Europe at that time. Police found two lorries with drugs in Dover in 2022; the drugs were heroin, cocaine, and ketamine, with a total value of about £20 million.

Officers first stopped a lorry on July 3, 2022, finding 90 kilos of ketamine and 50 kilos of cocaine. The cocaine was inside boxes and a shopping bag. Six weeks later, on August 12, they stopped another lorry and found 142 kilos of cocaine and 25 kilos of heroin hidden in a modified fuel tank.

Maris Fridvalds, the driver, was jailed for 14 years in March 2023 as a courier for the drug operation. Burton’s fingerprints and DNA were found on the drugs and the fuel tank. He left the UK in 2021 and lived in the Netherlands and Spain.

Spanish police arrested Burton in August 2023 at the Pacha nightclub, where he was dealing drugs under a fake name. He was sent to Germany and charged, then returned to the UK in March 2024, where he pleaded guilty to importing drugs.

Sian Banks, 25, also pleaded guilty, admitting to importing drugs and money laundering to help Burton’s criminal business. She was arrested in December 2023.

Banks traveled to Europe monthly from June 2022, visiting Burton in the Netherlands and Spain. She also smuggled drugs into the UK, carrying cocaine and ketamine in her luggage in August 2022.

Messages showed she prepared a drug shipment with Burton in June 2022, just before the first lorry got caught.

Banks worried about her fingerprints on the bags, but Burton said it did not matter, claiming she had never been arrested. She also sold fake Covid travel documents.

Burton and Banks will be sentenced on February 11. John Turner said they smuggled drugs, and Banks helped launder money and assist the importations from the UK. He added that the drugs would harm communities and fuel violence and exploitation.