What Are Beta Projects?
A Google search of U.K.’s Beta Projects unit won’t yield many results, other than Stanton’s book, an interview he did in 2022 with The U.K. Sun and a couple book reviews, including one in The London Times.
Stanton admitted to The Sun that interested parties won’t find much public information about his undercover group because “almost no one knew we existed.” Even the majority of his family thought he was a regular, quiet customs agent—except his wife, Jo, a fellow HM Customs employee who was the only person who knew his real job.
He said the undercover agents like himself were embedded with gangs for as long as it took to make a break in the case, with some being away from friends and family for years. Those agents received fake IDs, new homes, vehicles and documents. Before he would go to a job, Jo would lay out his clothes and check the pockets for any documents or items that could reveal his true identity.
“My character Stanton was nasty, rude and arrogant and could explode at any moment,” he told The Sun. “I dressed well, never scruffy. My choice of suit was a black collarless number by Hugo Boss, often worn with a black polo shirt ... I drove a black E500 Mercedes Sport on Netherlands plates, a real beast that had been seized by Dutch customs and loaned to us. I switched between two gold Rolex watches that had been confiscated on another investigation.”
The Long Job
By 1996, Stanton and his undercover team from Beta Projects had nabbed some high-level individual criminals. In October of that year, he got a chance to bring down an entire criminal gang in one effort known as “The Long Job” that targeted drug smuggler David “Mr. Big” Huck.
Huck, 51 at the time, started as a cigarette smuggler in the late 1970s. He often sailed marijuana from North Africa to Britain and other parts of mainland Europe.
“He had lived a charmed life and never been convicted, having spent much of his time hanging around the Mediterranean before moving to Ireland to live in grand style in five acres beside Lough Derg,” Stanton wrote in his book. “He also owned a house in Dublin, two homes in Ibiza and a restaurant in Portugal.”
Huck had been known to HM Customs for at least two decades at that point, but was unknowingly under investigation for three years before The Long Job was carried out, which began after Customs was tipped off that a smuggler from west London wanted to bring marijuana from Morocco.
Stanton, who was already trusted as a bit-time criminal mobster, offered Huck a crew for the job. Stanton, trusted by the criminal underworld as a big-time mobster, offered a crew for the job.
The day the job happened, Huck and his yacht, Fata Morgana, were attempting to smuggle £10 million worth of marijuana into the U.K. ($13 million in U.S. dollars), through the Bay of Biscay between Western France and Northern Spain.
The weather hampered three attempts to deliver the drugs and finally, four customs agents got on a tugboat to intercept the yacht.
That plan was for Stanton to be stationed in Britain and use an inflatable dinghy to get the drugs. From there, Stanton would bring the drugs back to land and arrest Huck and his crew.
However, Stanto woke up to a message saying the boat had sunk and the crew was missing. The weather caused horrible conditions in the bay and the agents had trouble finding the target yacht. When the crew finally found the yacht, they tried to take the drugs through a floating line typically used for fly fishing, but the waves made it difficult, so they used the inflatable dinghy instead. The waters thrashed them around for hours before they were rescued.
By that point, the drugs Stanton and his crew would have used to arrest Huck sunk into the ocean. A helicopter search couldn’t locate the crew, but three and a half hours later, a Norwegian container ship spotted them.
Still, Huck’s team wasn’t aware the drugs had been lost, so Stanton and his agents pivoted and planted drugs used in another bust to eventually arrest Huck. A Royal Navy warship with customs officers on board eventually intercepted and boarded Huck’s yacht.
Huck was sentenced to 14 years in prison, and seven of his crew received between eight and 12 years. Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau won a court judgment to recover €570,000 in unpaid taxes and interest, and seized Huck’s property.
Stanton went on to work as a private investigator and later told The Sun he felt like "I was undercover too long.”
“I was proud of being a deep uncover operative, but Stanton became too notorious and he had to die,” he added. “Now at last his incredible story can be told.”
