• 4 days ago
• Posted in:Drugs offences, Misc. non-violent offences
• 0
• Author: Trans Crime
• Tags: Aged 40-49, Company director, England, Gender issues cited as mitigation, HMP Wormwood Scrubs, Judge rejects call for no jail, Lenient sentence, Likely story, Male prison, Metropolitan Police, Norfolk, Police /courts using defendant pronouns, Pronouns, Taxpayer victims, Trans woman, Wig

Anthony/Keira Borrett, a male who identifies as a transgender woman, was convicted at Isleworth Crown Court in August 2025 of drug offences, after attempting to smuggle 26kg of cannabis (with a street value of £800,000) into the UK from Thailand.

Borrett, aged 46 and from Gorleston-on-Sea, Norfolk, claimed not to have known what was in the multiple vacuum-packed bags of the drug, which were discovered in two very heavy suitcases on arrival at Heathrow Airport in May 2025. The judge said this “stretched credulity” as did the defendant’s claims that smuggling the drugs was an ‘impulsive decision’ as Borrett had visited Thailand twice in a matter of months.  See here for other trans-identified males who have tried to bamboozle judges with tall tales. 

The prosecution told the court that Borrett agreed to smuggle the cases for a five-figure sum after meeting a man from Essex in a Bangkok bar and after apparently discussing how expensive gender-affirming operations are. Media were keen to run with this angle of Borrett committing the crime to fund gender surgery – however, operations to invert men’s penises are in fact free on the NHS but are rarely taken up. The cosmetic operations to e.g. insert breast implants or remove body/facial hair may be harder to access and are much more likely to be what trans-identifying men want/undergo. 

See here for examples of trans-identified men who have perpetrated robberies and fraud to fund gender surgeries.

The Telegraph reports that Borrett, whose middle name is Anthony according to Companies House records, previously sold videos on the bespoke video message platform Cameo. The smuggler is also the sole director of a beauty company called Lashes by Sweetie, which was formed in October last year.

 Borrett’s defence team used female pronouns for the offender and tried to argue he should be spared a prison sentence after being forced to “detransition”, stop using female pronouns and wear male clothing while on remand for three months at HMP Wormwood Scrubs, and that ‘every day in prison has been harder for her [sic] given her [sic] identity’. The judge didn’t buy it and sentenced Borrett to 18 months in prison – a pretty lenient sentence, given an ex-footballer, Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, was sentenced to 4 years in jail for a very similar offence in June 2025.

Image credit: Daily Mail

Media reports

Eastern Daily Press https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/25393833.norfolk-transwoman-smuggled-drugs-fund-sex-change/  archive

Daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15005893/Trans-woman-cannabis-sex-change-operation-jailed-mens-prison.html  archive

Daily Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/16/trans-woman-caught-smuggling-drugs-to-fund-surgery/  archive