A male model who flaunted his jet set lifestyle on social media has been jailed for nearly seven years in Peru after being caught trying to fly out of the country with £300,000 worth of cocaine.

Londoner Moudo Adams wowed his thousands of social media fans with his trendsetting looks and VIP globetrotting under the self-styled moniker of ‘boywholives’ in a show of excess branded by authorities as a front for his criminal activities. His apparent world of glamour today lay in tatters after he confessed to being a drug trafficker and was told he now faces the next six years and eight months in a hellhole South American jail.

Adams, 25, was held at Lima’s international airport as he tried to check in for a flight to London via Paris with almost three kilos of cocaine in his suitcase. He was handed his sentence in a quickie trial 24 hours after his arrest by the same police force that held Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid, the so-called Peru Two in August 2013.

Modou, a former marketing and public relations intern described online as an “experienced” model, made a very public show of his second fateful trip to the South American country on Tiktok and Instagram. He filmed himself posing as a tourist in Cuzco, a favourite cocaine pick-up for drug mules and the city McCollum and Reid visited before their arrests, and posted selfies on the road to Andes Mountains Incan citadel Machu Picchu. The glamour shots prompted one of his 11,200 Instagram fans to tell him: “Wow Mo! You look amazing.” Another said: “You are living the dream”, prompting Adams to respond: “Life is a dream always.”

Peru’s Supreme Court confirmed the jail sentence in a statement where it referred to the Brit by his full name of Modou Dodou Adams and described him as a Tiktoker alongside an unflattering photoshopped picture showing him behind bars. Revealing he had been jailed by a court in Lima’s Callao district specialising in punishing crimes where offenders have been arrested while committing an offence or immediately afterwards, it said: “Tiktoker Modou Dodou Adams, 25, has been jailed for six years and eight months for having co-ordinated the dispatch of nearly three kilos of cocaine to London. The sentence was delivered in less than 24 hours after the accused man admitted the crime he had been charged with.”

He was arrested on September 30 although confirmation of his incarceration only emerged overnight. Adams had jetted to Peru for the second time 11 days earlier following a first trip in February, documenting his trip to Cuzco before returning to Lima and checking into a hotel in the upmarket neighbourhood of Miraflores along the Pacific Ocean coastline.

CCTV images taken outside his hotel showed him wearing shorts and a black hoodie and carrying a suitcase into the building which would later be seized by police who intercepted him as he tried to fly back to Europe. The footage was taken the day of his arrest.
The dramatic moment he was taken into custody by two anti-drugs squad officers as he checked in for his flight was also filmed on cameras at Jorge Chavez International Airport.

One of the officers used a knife to cut through a false bottom of the suitcase where the cocaine was found and held it up as Adams looked on horrified. The police then proceeded to body-search him. Anti-drugs prosecutor Lincoln Fuentes said: “It wasn’t the first time this British national had come to Peru. The first time he had also taken drugs out of the country, most probably in the same way with a specially-prepared suitcase. In Peru a kilo of cocaine is around £3,000 but this amount multiplies in Europe by a massive amount.”

He added: “Each drug mule is paid £5,200 to £6,000 per drug run as well as getting all their expenses paid including the tourist trips they enjoy to camouflage their real reason for coming here. The objective this man had for coming here was solely to transport drugs back to Britain.”

In a message to other Europeans tempted by the money drug gangs offer to get them to smuggle cocaine out of Peru, he warned: “The prison sentences here are very high and it’s simply not worth the risk of putting your freedom in jeopardy.”

Earlier this year Adams boasted as he dipped his toes in the sea by a trendy beach bar on the Athens Riviera between Piraeus and Cape Sounion: “Sun in my eyes, sand in my toes, sea within touch, somewhere else I’d rather be?.” Between his two trips to Peru he took in the delights of Los Angeles, telling his envious Instagram fans as he videoed himself in some of its must-see attractions: “You hate but you wish you was this.”

Authorities in Lima say Adams will serve his sentence in full in the South American country, meaning he faces a lengthy enforced break from his ‘criminal cover’ sideline.