Brit drugs mule Kim Hall who smuggled £15m of cocaine dodges lengthy sentence

A beautician has been jailed for just six years in jail for trafficking £15million worth of drugs through a United States airport.

Kim Hall, from Middlesbrough, was stopped at Chicago's O'Hare airport after two suitcases were found packed with 43kg of cocaine. She was later charged with possession with intent to supply and faced a lengthy sentence. The 29-year-old was facing 60 years behind bars in America if found guilty but a plea deal meant she would serve just a fraction of the maximum term.

Hall agreed to plead guilty at a Chicago court in order to get a reduced sentence between four and six years. And after striking a plea bargain deal with prosecutors, a judge in Chicago on Monday (8 September) sentenced her to six years in prison.

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It is understood there is a possibility she will be home in two years after taking into account time already served plus early release for good behaviour.

The prosecution in the case accepted she was forced by two British men to take the suitcases, which she believed were filled with $250,000 (£185,744) to the UK from a holiday in Mexico.

Beautician Hall was allegedly offered a free holiday to Cancun, Mexico, by two British men she met on a previous break in Portugal and was then asked towards the end of her trip to take the two cases home with her. She says she was told they were filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars.

She told The Sun how the men threatened her and held a gun to her head. She added: "I agreed to it because there was no reason not to. It was just money and I didn't see anything wrong in it.

"One of them dragged me off the bed by my hair and held a handgun to my head. He said: ‘I'll f****** shoot you.’ It was the most frightening thing I've ever experienced in my life."

After being stopped with the drugs during a flight connection in Chicago, Hall was taken to Cook County Jail and charged with unlawful possession of a controlled substance and possession with intent to deliver.

Her lawyer Brandon Carter said that he had negotiated lower terms for Hall in a plea bargain as she was not a US citizen and the court had no interest in a foreign national being held for an extended period.

He told ITV News : "She's not a citizen of the United States, let alone a local of Chicago so we have no business really in keeping her here." He added: "Of course when you're facing 30 years, something that's less than that is going to be a Godsend."

Previously her family told of their joy at the prospect of a massively reduced sentence. "We are over the moon," her scaffolder dad John, 60 told The Sun. "It’s better news than we could ever have hoped for.

"When we first heard talk of a plea deal we didn’t dare to hope. I couldn’t get the figure of 60 years out of my head and feared the worst. But instead of the worst case scenario we are now looking at just about the best we could have hoped for. Kimberley has suffered terribly through this ordeal through no fault of her own, we all have.

"It’s been a long, hard struggle financially and emotionally but we always had faith in her and always supported her. She is not a criminal and never has been. She is just a naïve young woman whose decision making was affected by her bipolar condition. Thankfully the courts recognised all of that and it means we will be getting her home much sooner than we have always feared."