World

Driver Smuggled $8.4 Million of Cocaine In Kim Kardashian’s Underwear Shipment

By Erica Coleman · May 19, 2026

Jakub Jan Konkel, 40, was driving a truck full of Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS underwear from the Netherlands to England in September 2025. The 28 pallets of shapewear were entirely legitimate — Skims had shipped them legally, the importer was expecting them, and neither party had any connection to what else was in the truck.

What else was in the truck: 90 packages of cocaine, weighing 90 kilograms — approximately 198 pounds — with a street value of approximately $8.4 million. They were hidden in a specially modified compartment built into the truck’s rear doors.

Konkel had agreed to do this for 4,500 euros. Approximately $5,200. For $5,200, he agreed to smuggle $8.4 million in cocaine into the United Kingdom under cover of one of the most recognizable celebrity brand names in the fashion industry.

Border Force officers stopped his truck at the Port of Harwich in Essex when it arrived on a ferry. The truck was X-rayed. The modified compartment appeared in the scan. The cocaine was found wrapped in individual one-kilogram packages, 90 of them, filling the space in the door frame that had been custom-built to hold them.

Konkel initially denied knowing anything about the drugs. He eventually confessed to agreeing to transport them for the payment he had been promised. He was convicted of drug smuggling. On Monday, a judge at Chelmsford Crown Court sentenced him to 13 years and six months in prison.

The UK’s National Crime Agency was direct about what the case represents: organized crime groups routinely use drivers to move drugs hidden in legitimate commercial loads specifically because the volume of trade crossing major ports makes it impossible to X-ray every shipment. The SKIMS load was not chosen because of Kardashian’s brand. It was chosen because it was a plausible, large, legitimate commercial shipment that would not attract immediate scrutiny — exactly the kind of cover a drug network needs.

“These drugs destroy lives and inflict misery on our communities,” Border Force Assistant Director Jason Thorn said in a statement after the sentencing. “This significant interception is testament to the brilliant work of Border Force, depriving criminal networks of millions in profit.”

The NCA specifically stated that Skims, its exporter, and its importer had no connection whatsoever to the smuggling. Kardashian’s company is not implicated in any way. The case involves only Konkel and the organized crime network that recruited him.

The math of the decision Konkel made is worth sitting with for a moment. He risked his freedom for 13-plus years, his ability to work, his presence in his family’s life, and everything else that comes with a criminal record of this severity — for €4,500. The people who recruited him, organized the compartment, sourced the cocaine, and stood to collect the other side of $8.4 million paid him $5,200 and let him take all the risk.

He took it.